The Next Generation

 As our churches age I see certain attitudes forming. I see older saints who were there in the early days; who remember the initial thrust of revival, who were young and zealous, who saw Jesus as the the focal point of life, and who felt like the rapture would happen before we grew up.

Today those early saints have indeed grown up. Or at least grown older. We're still here, we didn't leave or backslide. We contend for the faith that was committed to us, and we are doing none of the things that we used to do.

Then I see another generation of mostly young people now in our churches. They grew up in our Fellowship. They grew up without television or movies or secular music. They also by reason of exposure became bored with the sameness of what we hold dear. And they do things and say things that make us elder brother saints cringe.

I see things that church folks do for fun outside of Prescott and I wonder why we were not allowed to have any fun. I hear of what church kids in Prescott find satisfying and fulfilling and I wonder where we dropped the ball. 

No one can live on the front lines. People get tired of marching and fighting. High alert gets us out of immediate trouble, but it is impossible to live with that amount of internal stress. So people with no reference points like ours will dress and speak and act different than we used to at their young age.

Our children and grandchildren are not unsaved or heathen. They are normal Christian kids who think more about college and career than about the fields white unto harvest. 

My question revolves around; do we try to force this generation into an old, archaic pattern, or do we find what works today? Will we work with kids as they are? Or will we lose them to churches who understand them? The country is full of dying churches who are holding fast to a standard that they do not fulfill but that they will not let go of.