Generational Unity: Is it possible?

Things are more like they are now than they have ever been.
Gerald R. Ford US Republican politician (1913 - 2006)

Every generation has grown up with certain church standards, habits, and accepted norms. For example (and this is one of the more low key ones, I think), one generation of women sees dresses as the standard for church attire; the next is comfortable with dress pants, and the next with jeans and t-shirts. Each preference displays a different mindset about something that is not scripturally mandated, but has spiritual thought behind it. For the older generation, the thinking was that you dressed to present your best self to God as a sign of respect. The next generation felt somewhat the same, but the definition of ‘best’ was already changing with the culture. The current young generation feels that it is inauthentic to dress up for worship—they feel it is like putting on a mask. None of these motivations are unbiblical. They are just different. They are a reflection of the culture and thinking of that generation.

In the church circles I work and live in, there is a generation gap that lately seems unbridgeable. While opinions on “appropriate” dress, music, and decorum in worship are the most obvious differences, there are growing differences in focus and changing deeply held attitudes about living out our faith. Some challenges to the status quo include: Is it more important to support pro-life candidates or to support those who are working for social justice (issues of poverty, race, and affordable healthcare)? Is it more important to have correct doctrinal beliefs (beyond the core), or to be living out the beliefs we have by serving others? Is it more valuable to give to missionaries around the world, or to give to local efforts to help the poor and addicted? Should our focus be on those who already believe and have access to tools to grow in their faith, or on those who have not yet begun to explore life with and in Christ. (again, these are issues of focus and not necessarily either/or questions).

These issues are fundamentally more important than ‘dressy’ vs. ‘casual’ and ‘hymnal’ vs. ‘praise chorus,’ but get much less discussion time among the churchgoers I know. As a matter of fact, part of the division seems to be that the older generation (forgive me, those of you who are the blatant exceptions to the rule!) doesn’t even seem to know there are brewing changes in thinking (even among scholars and theologians) on these issues, let alone that the younger generation is concerned with them. The generation I hear discussing the more meaningful issues I’ve thrown out here is the 20 somethings –who seem to have stepped right over the worship service issues, seeing them as a battle their parents engage in that doesn’t really concern them (in my experience, most just don’t seem to see what all the fuss is about—which gives me some hope for our future!) If you haven’t seen this, sit down with your church’s college and career group, or visit relevant.com, a website/magazine that both my young adult children and their friends read cover to cover.

The problem with accepted norms and standards comes when we begin to defend them as though they are Truth. When we are challenged to examine them, we should seriously consider our own reasons for defending them. The issue, that to me leads to offense, comes when we don’t bother asking the generations coming behind us OR the generations who have come before us why they do what they do, and instead condemn and pass judgment on their choices. Do we trust that God is leading the younger generations in what they choose to focus on? Or do we berate them for not focusing on our battles of preference? Do we look to the older generation for examples of wisdom and patience, asking them to stand beside us as we do battle? If we move forward in our churches without generational unity, don’t we all lose?