Prior to 2014, I spent the majority of my life in massive, multi-campus mega-churches which hosted anywhere from 2,000 to 20,000 people across 3-5 worship services every weekend. These churches were at the forefront of the hipster Christianity movement back in the mid-2000s; and still, today, you can see their commitment to cutting edge technology like HD livestreams and in-sermon QR codes, chart-topping, newly-released worship music, and pastors whose charisma and public speaking skills rival those of many Hollywood actors and Fortune 500 CEOs.
In my experience, what draws so many people to these churches is, more often than not, a few simple things:
Incredibly talented musicians (who are generally not bad to look at, either)
A funny, down to earth, relatable pastor delivering “relevant” messages
An openly stated commitment to being non-churchy, or at least being “different from other churches”
Freedom from the inherent “awkwardness” (and accountability) of small, tight-knit church congregations
I remember sitting in one of the fastest growing churches in the nation in Lafayette, Colorado and hearing the pastor say “we don’t have a cross in the sanctuary for a reason.” The reason is that they didn’t want to scare off unbelievers with something that might remind them of a past church they had attended or their “traumatizing” Christian upbringing. The goal was to be as “non-churchy” and get as many people through the front door as humanly possible.
The “sermon” was often referred to simply as the “message,” or “talk.”
Baptism was done in large inflatable pools by the stage and open to anyone who wished to come forward, church member or not, first-timer or regular attender.
The Lord’s Supper was an individual matter; people could even grab a pre-packaged wafer and cup of grape juice “to-go” on their way out the door.
Now, if you’ve followed me for any length of time, you probably know where I’m going with this so let me say up front: not all big churches are bad.
Grace Community Church, led by John MacArthur, is filled to capacity during both morning worship services each Lord’s Day (3,500 seats x 2), and I believe him to be a faithful, Biblical, and courageous preacher even if I disagree with him on minor issues (he’s also way smarter than me, so I doubt he cares that a guy who runs a meme page disagrees with him). Spurgeon preached to thousands of people in the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London. Size alone is not (necessarily) the problem.
But I’d like to focus on one aspect of these fairly progressive, technologically-savvy, hipster-focused churches that often gets overlooked, something men with families might not have considered, but should: the importance of our children witnessing inter-generational faith.
Something I observed that I could never really shake was the reality that almost everyone around me at the church I attended was generally in the same one or two phases of life; young adulthood, or early parenthood. The few children who did come were shuffled off to another room (or building) to play dodgeball or finger paint or listen to Pastor Chad’s standup routine, while any elderly folks whose kids or grandkids managed to drag them to the church often had to sit in the lobby because the music was too loud or they couldn’t read the lyrics 500 feet up on the big screen, and certainly didn’t know the words to an Elevation song that hit the radio yesterday morning.
So what ended up happening was that the church rarely attracted anyone outside of a 20 year range, usually between 20 and 40 (ish). This type of age exclusive worship can easily turn the corporate worship of God’s inter-generational people into a consumer-obsessed entertainment show tailored to specific individual preferences.
I write about this passionately because I lived it for so long, but also because I’ve experienced the opposite. The church I attend now would bore 99% of American Christians half to death. I can already hear the cries of “it’s so awkward,” and “boring,” and how old everybody is. It’s certainly not perfect.
But I can’t explain the joy on my children’s faces when they receive a Christmas or birthday card in the mail, addressed to them, from their 80-year-old Sunday school teacher. Or the times (literally every Sunday) when my daughter sprints over to Mrs. Sally at church (now a great grandmother who was baptized in our church building as an infant) who kneels down and squeezes her half to death with the biggest hug.
And more importantly, when they see their friends, sitting with their parents, and their parents, and their parents, all in the same pew, all singing the same hymns and Psalms that their great-great-great grandparents sang back before planes flew, before iPhones, internet, livestreams, and Spotify, it does something to a child’s heart. They learn that they are part of a long line of devout believers who have inherited a true and living faith once delivered to the saints, not simply spectators of a new and edgy, big-tech enabled, self-help curriculum. There’s a big difference.
There is a plaque hanging on the wall behind the pulpit commemorating the first pastor of our church from the 1840’s (whose great-great-great-great grandsons are now elders at the church). Every single Sunday since then, without fail, and without exception, God’s people have gathered in that same sanctuary for worship.
Christianity is an intergenerational faith. Countless Biblical commands only make sense within the context of an inter-generational congregation. How are older women to train the younger women in the faith (Titus 2) if the entire church body is comprised of 20-somethings all with the exact same life problems, all reading the same books and listening to the same self-help podcasts? Why does it matter that the glory of young men is their strength and gray hair the splendor of the old (Proverbs 20:29) if these two groups never interact?
There is a beauty in seeing God keep His promises to families, as He does throughout Scripture. To see grown children coming home from college or the military still strong in the faith and teaching it to their own families was almost unheard of in these big trendy churches. More often than not, kids would go away to college, slowly develop anti-Christian convictions, and come home as a blue-haired rainbow mafia disciple who had a thing or two to teach Mom and Dad about justice and equity and the oppressive patriarchy of the Old Testament that coincidentally sounded like a Rachel Maddow monologue that she learned from her Sociology professor (all while Dad coughed up $50K a year to be chastised and hated by his own bloodline).
Simply put, the churches that so attracted me as a kid had one glaring reality that we all loved to ignore: none of them could keep their children. Any of them.
So I began to wonder; how do we keep our children in the faith? Why did 95%+ of the kids in my youth group either deconstruct, become hardcore disciples of the left, or kiss religion goodbye, as we sent group after group on missions trips to Africa and Jamaica? Is it even possible to keep our children?
Well, yes it is. Turns out I was just looking in the wrong places. I now see almost every family at our church doing just that. The kids aren’t perfect, and they face the same issues that all kids do; but they know where they come from and what they believe. When they come home from college or deployment or wherever, they come sit in the same pew as their great grandfather and loudly sing the hymns and Psalms that he did along with God’s people. They are not spiritual orphans.
How do we keep our children?
Treat them as members of the church. But to do that, we have to know them, and to be known by them; this is not possible in an impersonal, technologically driven, social media perfect, consumer-focused congregation where the children are treated simply as tallies for next year’s pizza and water balloon budget.
Let them see old people who have fought the good fight, finished the race, kept the faith, and whose children and grandchildren are following in their footsteps. No matter how much we treat the elderly with an “out of sight, out of mind” mentality, death is inevitable! It will come for us all. Show your children what it means to finish strong. There’s no better way to do this than to afford them other parents and grandparents in the faith.
Most importantly: help them develop relationships with adults who are not you. Mom and Dad have key roles to play, but so do other grown people in the church. Let your children see that the faith does not consist simply of Mom and Dad annoying them to go to church every week, but that it is a lively body of believers who love each other and help one another to live and die well.
This is what I want for my children. Rootedness.
(As an aside, I forget the exact survey, but this was one of the primary indicators of whether a Christian teenager would remain in the faith after leaving home, whether or not there were other faithful Christian adults to whom they could turn for guidance, wisdom, mentorship, etc., aside from Mom and Dad).
And finally, old people are awesome. There’s a Vietnam Vet Marine at my church who wears a Combat Action Ribbon lapel pin on his jacket the week of Veteran’s Day. He loves to chat about anything related to the Corps, and I love listening. Another guy is a lifelong farmer who is known throughout the county for his incredible ability to read the weather and plan his yearly harvest accordingly. Others come from families that bought land in the area for 30 cents an acre 200 years ago and still live on it; they will probably die in the homes they were born in. And still others have post-graduate degrees from Westminster. They are legitimately the most interesting people I’ve ever met.
The family of faith includes people of all ages and stages of the Christian life. Do not limit your fellowship to people your own age who have all the same problems as you; find the ones who have successfully navigated the difficulties of career, marriage, and parenthood, and let them pour into you the way God intended.
Reject age-curated, consumer Christianity; embrace the whole body of Christ. It will change your family forever.
Blessed Lord’s Day,
LC