Churches Becoming Ancient of Days

Martin Luther once said that the church is forever one generation away from dying out. By that he meant to stress the importance of training children to love the Lord with all their heart, mind and strength.

But we are seeing today a generation rise up that "did not know the Lord or the work that he has done." (Judges 2:10) The National Congregations Study has found that one out of every three members is over 60 years of age. This is up from one in four in previous years.

Sociology professor Mark Chaves of Duke University School of Divinity attributes the flux to people now living longer and fewer young families joining churches.

Certainly it is great to see the life span of so many being extended. But that the church is aging also means that the church is dying out.

So why are fewer younger families joining the church? I suspect the following:

One reason we have fewer younger people populating the pews is because there are fewer younger people being produced. The American church, along with the rest of the nation, is seeing a birth implosion. With a national average child per household at 1.7, it is obvious that we are not heeding God's command to "be fruitful and multiply." Certainly we cannot sustain a youthful church with such a deep depression in our family size. It is not even at replacement levels!

But in this statistic we also see the failure of parents to pass on the faith. The Bible commands parents to diligently train their children--to teach their children the doctrines of our holy faith, to teach them to read the Bible on their own, and to pray with and for their children. While there is always the exception, the regular pattern is that children who have been trained up in the way they are to go, do not depart from it.

Evidently children are growing up not knowing or caring about the faith of their fathers. And we can only suppose that it is because their parents don't know or don't care enough to pass it on.

If the church is going to survive in America she needs to take seriously God's commands regarding parenting.

One of the most essential disciplines the church needs to recapture is the practice of family worship. God appointed fathers as the leaders of the home. As such they are "resident pastors." Since he has the place of authority the father has the responsibility to gather his wife and children and see to it that they are nurtured in the faith . How is it done? By simply taking some time everyday to read and reflect upon the Bible, to pray and praise God as a mini congregation.

The church's survival in this nation also hinges greatly upon the way we educate our children too. That is to say the church needs to seriously embrace a distinctly Christian form of education. Why are our children not found in the church when they grow up? It is because they they are being indoctrinated in humanistic principles of the public school system for 8 hours a day 5 days a week for 13-14 years! How can an hour or two of church on Sunday compete with that?

It is no secret that God is not allowed in the public schools. And if we hustle off our little lambs to a secularized school everyday, certainly they will never learn to fear the Lord and keep his commands. What parents need to do is bring their children up in an environment that is more conducive to the faith, be it home school or Christian school. They need an atmosphere where their faith will be integrated into every disciple, rather than excommunicated from it.

Finally, if we are going to replenish our dwindling supply of youth, we need to bring our children back into our worship services. Since the advent of youth groups in the 1970's, we have seen more and more a segregation of the church. It is as if the old Jim Crow laws were changed from black only/white only to young/old only. But many churches are like this. We don't let the little children come unto Jesus, but hinder them by shuffling them off to nurseries, children's church, alternative youth services and the like while we go to the grown up service.

And we cannot blame them if they abandon the faith when they are older, can we? If they never felt welcome in the church as children, why should they feel that they would be welcome as adults?

Certainly there will be times when a squirmy little one will need to be taken out and allowed to move (or be disciplined!). But we must not abort them altogether. We must allow them to sit through and learn to participate in our services. For familiarity with the worship of God breeds familiarity with the God of the worship.

These principles are the tree of eternal youthfulness for the church. If we would heed them, those over 60 would be vastly outnumbered.

How do I know? Because the Bible tells me so. Remember what happened to Israel: 70 people went down into Egypt, 2-5 million came out just 400 years later. We don't have the statistics, but we can be assured that it was a lively young bunch making that trek across the wilderness.