Comments on: On The Older Teaching The Younger: From Commenter Becky

By: Purify Your Bride » Blog Archive » Old Teaching Young

Purify Your Bride » Blog Archive » Old Teaching Young — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 23:30:48 +0000

[...] internet monk has an interesting series of post on modern worship. The whole idea of how liturgy gets deep into your psyche and continues to touch [...]

By: Mike M

Mike M — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 00:47:36 +0000

This is my first time making a comment on your blog. All the comments on this subject are great,
and I will try and not make myself sound like a total mushroom. First let me say this blog rocks( Is that still a cool word?). I thought of my mom, who will be 72 or 73 this Sunday. She is a lay eucharist minister at the Episcopal Church in Annapolis, Maryland where I grew up. I thank God everyday for her continued good health (even after the car crash five years ago). When I visit no son could be prouder to look up at the altar and along with the priest watch my mom give communion.I also pray that at that age, I am 55 now, that I can still be an effective witness of God’s grace and love. You all have hit the nail on the head because I am in an evangelical church now, my prayers and worship even though it is different from my Episcopal Church days, my mind echos the Nicence Creed , the Apostles Creed and the confession. My mind automatically converts to the Book of Common Prayer. Maybe my years as an acolyte.

By: MR

MR — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 16:26:40 +0000

That was an excellent comment by Becky. I have been to many evangelical churches where truly hurting people (and old people) are clearly not welcome – it is difficult to shake hands and give the “how are you – everything’s fine” pleasantries.
My wife has bipolar disorder. She has no significant problems with her current medicine. But I am still amazed to hear Christians and pastors who look at us funny, or even make some comments about demon oppression (my doctor actually suggested that she come in for deliverance, or perhaps she has mercury tooth fillings that are causing it!).
So this is a dirty secret at church. We don’t talk about it and hope that no one finds out. It’s sad.

By: Heidi

Heidi — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 04:37:41 +0000

Read Nouwen. He’ll blow your mind. He spent years working as the chaplain at a home for mentally handicapped adults, and years beyond that in deeply compassionate ministry borne out of his own loneliness and depression (he died in 1996). I’ve never read anyone who understands the struggles of the marginalized better than he does. I understand your concern, and recognize much of myself in that dangerous line of thought. Nouwen inspires me to try harder.

By: Becky

Becky — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 00:57:30 +0000

“When our loneliness can be redeemed into solitude, it opens us up for a deep and transforming relationship with God, no matter what our age.”

(I’m not directing this comment/rant at you, specifically, Heidi. Just bouncing off what you said. There are are couple of other comments further up that are similar, and it just kind of accumulated by the time you said anything.) I think there is a dangerous fine line here. If someone wants to talk about how loneliness and solitude and transformed relationship with God has played out in their own life, I’m fine with that. But I get really uncomfortable when the non-lonely or non-isolated or non-sick or non-frail or non-whatever start prescribing it as the normal course for the lonely, isolated, sick, frail, whatever. It seems way too easy to use that line of thought to make ourselves feel better about ignoring someone else’s (or a whole group of someone else’s … like the elderly or those who struggle with mental illness or other chronic illness or whatever) difficult situation that would be difficult, uncomfortable, frustrating, and time consuming to get involved in.

By: Heidi

Heidi — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 00:08:50 +0000

Henri Nouwen referred to this in his interview (and transcript) called “Beloved”. He talks about redeeming loneliness, particularly for those who are alone unwillingly – the elderly, widowed, etc. – and the ministry that they can have through prayer and mentoring. When our loneliness can be redeemed into solitude, it opens us up for a deep and transforming relationship with God, no matter what our age.

I have recently started attending another church’s women’s Bible study; our church demographics skew to mid-thirties, new Christians, professionals. This other church includes a sizable number of retired Christian workers (missionaries, seminary leadership, etc.) who have an incredible wealth of experience in studying the Scriptures, prayer, and deep, deep faith borne from a lifetime of working it out. The church as a whole is a poster child for the coming Evangelical collapse and I couldn’t see myself attending on a weekly basis, but these dear women inspire me to self-discipline and devotions in a way that my peers cannot.

By: RonP

RonP — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 22:50:37 +0000

Greetings in Christ, Joey,
You mentioned that your church’s seniors said that they hate drums. Part of the reason for that may be that the drums are actually overbearing, and not just for older ears. If you have an acoustic drum set, you might want to consider investing in an electronic set. Acoustic drums tend to be overpowering in anything but the largest of enclosed spaces, especially if your drummer is a bit overzealous in his playing. With electronic drums, the sound man can control the volume level and create a more balanced sound.
And it might not be such a “sad” or bad thing that your church is nonliturgical. It gives you room to manuever and make modifications when it comes to your services and programs in ways that (hopefully) might please more people from different age groups.
One way that my church fellowship found to make traditional hymns more relevant to young people is to preface the singing of the hymn with either the historical back story behind it or a discussion of the scriptural truths related by the hymn. By the way, “It Is Well With My Soul” has an amazing back story, if you care to research it. And some contemporary worship songs do have really cool stories behind how and why they were written, and some even have some theological depth that can be explored.
On a relational level, you might consider organizing some activities or programs pairing up the seniors with the youth — if you can find something they both enjoy or are interested in — or you might even have some kind of senior/youth retreat or anything that woud encourage the devlopment of real, person-to-person relationships between old and young members. It’s easy for those at both ends of the generational spectrum to seperate into antagonistic camps, viewing each other as old fogeys or young whipper snappers. Cross-generational relationships make that a lot less likely to happen.
First and foremost, I advise you and your fellow church leaders not to just sweep this matter under the rug and hope that the problem will go away. It won’t, and, if not addressed, it’s likely to get worse. I’ve seen churches split wide open over much less. If your church is open enough, you might go so far as holding a full congregational meeting where everyone is given a chance to discuss the issue and put their two cents in in an open format — rather than just complaining in private to church leaders or each other. I know it sounds scary, but I’ve seen it work and actually resolve issues — or at least clear the air and relieve the tension enough to where the church can start working toward a resolution.
God bless you, Joey, as well as your church family. I hope that something I”ve said here might help.

By: Joey

Joey — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 16:40:46 +0000

I struggle here. I’m a 26 year old associate in a Church of God, Anderson who has been pretty intimately involved in the music ministry of our church. I was the interim music leader for a time and have been a member of the music team for my entire time here. Before I arrived the church voted and decided to move towards a more contemporary style of music with the hope of being more “attractional”.

This was about three and a half years ago. The older Christians of our church have began to rise up in force recently and in some moments have gotten hostile. They hate drums, they want hymns. And by hymns I don’t mean contemporary versions of hymns – they want full on organ driven hymns – they want to hold the hymnals in their hands.

I’m young and wans’t raised in the church. I’m not at all sold on the idea that the style of music we have is that important and I’m mostly convinced growth due to music is superficial and not anything I’m interested in.

I want to share in the faith of these older saints, but I also want them to be able to find joy in the way that younger people experience praise and worship through music. Our church is almost anti-liturgical (which is really sad to me) so the music is vitally important to the faith of this older generation. As a musician I understand how powerful music can be in shaping people’s spirituality and religious experience.

How can our church be faithful to those who have come before us without sacrificing what has been deemed important to our staff and leadership team?

By: RonP

RonP — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 05:44:41 +0000

Thanks Becky, I think you’ve addressed a very important issue for evangelical-style churches (and probably for churches of any brand or variety). As far as whether the grass is greener in highly liturgical churches, I couldn’t say. I was raised Southern Baptist, drifted away (far, far away) from the church and God in my early 20’s, then rediscovered faith in my late 20’s. Since then, I’ve been involved in an ever-transforming church fellowship that would make even most non-denoms seem highly liturgical.
But even with all the loud worship music and crazy church experiments we’ve subjected people to through the last 15 or so years, we’ve managed to maintain a sizable, extemely active, and highly dedicated group of elderly persons (believe it or not). Certainly, when it came to music and the way we conducted services (back when we had a building and and what one might call services), we definitely catered to a young demographic. But relationally we embraced our elderly as spiritual grandparents, and they embraced this motley group of young religious rebels as their spiritual grandchildren. We showed them love and respect. Their lawns got mowed, and their needs were met. In cases when one of them was dealing with longterm illness and unable to attend services, we often brought the church (or a sizable chunk of it) to them and held a little mini-service in their home. We went out of our way to make sure that they had a voice in the church and that their contributions and involvement were both needed and appreciated, and we gave them full permission and support in organizing and conducting activities and programs more geared toward their age group — which were priviliges and freedoms many of them admitted that they didn’t have in the religious traditions they grew up in. And in return, they put up with our faddish, “cutting edge,” highly disorganized and untraditional way of doing things (and, for the most part, without complaint). I think some of them even came to like our style of worship music, and they would occasionally teach us some old hymns — though the worship team usually found a way to rock them out.
I guess all that is to say that I don’t think the primary cause of isolaton and neglect of the elderly in many churches is new-fangled worship styles or a departure from traditional forms — though these may certainly be contributing to the problem. I think the main culprit is a lack of real, loving, Christ-centered relationships, both between the generations and among church members in general.

By: Scott Miller

Scott Miller — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 03:03:22 +0000