On Tuesday night I had the privilege of sitting down with some dear friends from my childhood in Seattle. Marian and Mark were here visiting and reuniting with long time colleagues of her husband (Mark’s dad) at the air base in Fort Worth. Dan was a heavy influence upon my young life growing up in Seattle. He passed a while back, and it was good medicine to visit with his wife and son.
As we sat there at a restaurant in Richardson for nearly 3 hours, something dawned on me. Marian is older than my mother, and Mark is more like an uncle to me. The conversation was non-stop, yet there was really nothing to point at as a commonality between nearly three generations represented at that small table. I wondered to myself how can these three adults sit and talk like best friends with such a varied age distribution and life station? Our only common bond was a relationship forged through our previous church. Now this isn’t a new dynamic in churches, but to have the social intimacy among three very different people was unique in my opinion. Think about it, how often do you hear or see adults doing life together with nearly 20 years apart in age?
The church in today’s climate, probably more so in larger church settings, is just as generationally/relationally fragmented as the neighborhoods we live in. Churches, right or wrong, build programs and networks tailored to age-specific groups as to ‘better connect’ them. Is this healthy? Had I grown up in the Bible Belt and attended a large church, I probably would not have those friendships. My social experience would have been limited to those who look like me and share my same life station. I realize why churches break down the dynamic according to age – I have spent years trying to master it through formal education and professional experience. But I wonder this morning – is that healthy? Are we robbing the generations of the ability to understand one another by creating sterile pools of like-aged personalities? I think so. I think half of the problems church leadership face are somewhat self-induced… through tradition and pragmatism. We have created fragmented cultures within our own, supposedly unified, church.
How do we solve this? Give me a lifetime and I will get back to you. But there has to be a way to unite these spans of lifestyles and perspectives in the local church in such a way that we can learn from and encourage each other. We must learn from our past, and press on with excitement to much of what is unknown with regard to our culture’s future. It takes both young and old to do this. The church would serve itself well to address this, or in the least, talk about it.
Thoughts?
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