The Generational Disconnect

I do apologize for the long delay in posting-there's been a lot going on in my life! Getting engaged to moving into a different state...it's been a bit hectic. However, I'm back on it this week!

We've been talking about music and worship and I've mentioned what I call the "generational disconnect." I thought we could explore that a little further this week.

First, let's define it: It is the difference in virtually all aspects of church-related activities between older and younger generations. This includes music styles, meeting facility, age of the speaker, seating arrangement, meeting time, etc.

I'm not entirely sure why such a huge gap exists, other than we have people on both sides that do not want to change anything about how they worship. The younger generations don't like the stiffness and formality of the traditional worship service, and the older generations don't like the disrespectful and loud music and style of the contemporary service.

A lot of churches have attempted to blend these two styles into one; some with reasonable success, and others with dismal failure. The ultimate deciding factors are what the congregation will support and how well the elements are blended. Most churches, however, will have two distinct services that are meant to draw as large an audience as possible. One traditional to appeal to the older generation, one contemporary to draw the younger audience.

Here is my question-if a church is trying to reach as many people as possible (which should be in the mission statement of every church as far as I'm concerned), then why WOULDN'T they offer both services? My experience at a traditional church is that the older generation will NOT allow a contemporary service for two reasons: 1) they feel they got burned when the church DID have a praise service back in the mid-90's, and 2) they do not respect and accept that the contemporary service is a viable worship style.

This attitude has GOT to stop-I know far more people in the contemporary world that accept and readily admit that the traditional worship style is valid and useful-just not for them-than the other way around. The unfortunate truth is the generational disconnect seems to have the detrimental effect of souring people's opinion of anything different than what they know. And too often this attitude leads to impressions of stodginess, coldness, and a lack of acceptance of other worship styles and people who like those styles.

This disconnect is bridgeable, but it requires both sides to work together for a common goal-unfortunately, I don't see the older generations in any hurry to assist in bridging that gap and it saddens me as so much more could be done if we just worked together.