Do not move the ancient landmark that your fathers have set. Proverbs 22:28
It is my belief that one of the most significant battles in the church today (perhaps second only to the Calvinism wars), is the divergence in attitude, outlook and approach to ministry between us old fogeys and you young whippersnappers. The older, more traditional, more established folks tend to view the youngsters as half-cocked, wild-eyed radicals and the youngsters tend to view us as hidebound, tradition-mired, stick-in-the-muds.
Perhaps it has always been this way. It has been a long time (32 years) since this 23-year-old kid walked the aisle to receive my M.Div from Southwestern Seminary. I was brimming with self-confidence and though I would have never admitted it out loud, I wondered deep inside how the Christian world had survived 1950 years prior to my arrival on the scene. I often disdained my elders, except for those I venerated – probably in an unhealthy way – and saw myself as God’s spiritual mechanic to fix the mistakes the previous generations had made.
I am exaggerating a little to make my point, but I think that young people have always tended to view their elders in a negative light and in their youthful idealism they come on the scene with passion and power to fix what is broken, to repair the damage done by previous generations.
But things have changed today and blogging has a lot to do with that. Blogging allows the more idealistic, even strident youthful voices to have a greater prominence. In the 80s, those young voices did not really have a platform to air their opinions, but now they can be heard nationally. That is a good thing in some ways, but it can also be a problem.
I am so glad blogging did not exist when I was 25. I’d have opened my big, fat mouth and said some things that would make ol’ fogey Dave cringe today. I recently went back through some old posts and old conversations and saw some of what I said a few years ago – and that was when I was around 50! I think back to some of the obnoxious arguments I had in my college years and I am glad they are not permanently available in cache somewhere. I’d have to change my name and move to Zimbabwe in shame!
I do not want to disdain youngsters as I once disdained my elders. And it is not my purpose to say that we old codgers are always right and you young whippersnappers should shut up and follow our lead. I don’t believe that. In fact, I admire much that you do. I am impressed by your zeal and conviction. I envy your energy and passion. In many ways, I think the young Baptist pastors of today are better grounded theologically, more committed to expositional preaching, more intentional about integrating the gospel into everything we do, that the average pastor was in my day.
I am not anti-whippersnapper!
But I do wish to request that you youngsters think through some truths and perhaps inculcate the admonition of Proverbs 22:28, that you learn to respect the ancient landmarks that your elders have left.
Respecting the Ancient Markers (Proverbs 22:28)
This verse is not a call to mindless traditionalism, though it has been interpreted that way. In fact, I’ve spent my ministry in traditional churches telling them not to be mindlessly traditional. This verse is not a demand that we resist change. In fact, last night in my sermon from Acts 11 and 12 I pointed out the changes in the early church – radical changes. It went from being an all-Jewish church to a largely Gentile church, from a Jerusalem enclave to a worldwide enterprise – all in the space of about 35 years. Change was quick and forceful, and every change brought an increase in the proclamation of the gospel. Churches must change or they will die. It is inevitable.
And the passion of you youngsters reminds us that change is not bad. We do get stuck in our ways, digging our ruts deeper and deeper as we fulfill our call to ministry. I cannot tell you how often I have heard a variation of the “If we just did things the way we did them in the 50s and 60s, we would see the results that we saw in the 50s and 60s.” I have heard that from pastors, from bloggers, and from members of my churches. It is a decidedly unwise attitude, in my opinion. I am not saying that things used to be good and now they are bad and all we have to do to go forward is to go backward.
I do not believe that Proverbs 22:28 is saying that we cannot change, though it is often used to buttress that kind of traditionalism. The meaning can best be understood as you look at the landmark principle in the OT. When God did something powerful, the people of God would raise some kind of memorial or landmark so that the great deeds of God would be remembered in Israel. God did some magnificent things and God’s people built monuments to remember them.
The proverb is advocating that we remember the wondrous works of God in the past, even as we embrace the changes necessary in the future.
I do not believe that the solution to our current ills is to simply go back to the way things were in the 50s and 60s or to hold on to the past. But I want you young whippersnappers to realize something – God did some marvelous things in the 50s and 60s. There were some great things going on in Baptist churches in the 50s and 60s. There gospel-centered people doing gospel-centered ministry in gospel-centered churches. We didn’t articulate these things the same as we do now, but people were gospel-centered nonetheless. It is not fair or right when people (perhaps inadvertently) act as if the churches I grew up in were gospel deserts full of Pharisaical Christianity. It just ain’t so!
A Comment by a Friend
A month or so ago, I saw a comment by a young friend of mine. I can’t remember the exact topic of debate, but I remember the tone and force of his comment very clearly. This is Living Bible version of his comment – a paraphrase, not a quote.
“Back in the previous generation, the gospel was muddled and legalism ruled the day, but now we are restoring the gospel, rooting out legalism, and building a church that is superior to the one you guys grew up in. We are fixing what you broke.”
He seemed to believe that his generation was sent by God to correct the inadequacies, inefficiencies, and errors of my generation. I do not believe he meant his comment to be nearly as offensive and arrogant as it came out – I think it just represented his heart. He viewed the church of my youth with gospel disdain and believed that it was the duty of his generation to repair what we broke.
That comment bothered me a little, but it also reminded me of my arrogant attitude at his age! In 35 years, I imagine that this friend will be hearing from a young whippersnapper whose parents have not even met today who will be telling him that his generation is here to correct the failures of my friend’s generation. It is a natural cycle.
Some Ancient Markers
There were some really good things, admirable and noble thing, that marked the church of my youth. There are some things worth emulating today.
1) Loyalty and faithfulness.
That was just part of the time. People got a job and worked for 40 years for one company, then retired. They lived in a house and a city. It was a stable time. And there was a fidelity among those people, an institutional loyalty. They had the opposite of the consumeristic outlook that so often rtoday. They devoted themselves to God, to the church and served it faithfully.
I notice something in Iowa in those 9 months a year when the weather is bad. Very often, on bad weather days, our younger families stay home. But the elderly folks – those who probably ought not be out in ice and snow – they still show up. Sunday morning is church time and that is what you do! For many of our younger families, church is what you do when there is no family visiting or sports tournaments or weekend getaways.
I understand that there are downsides to this loyalty – a rigidity of mind, a trust in institutions and not God’s Spirit, etc – but there is a sense of loyalty and fidelity in my father’s generation that is not often present in my children’s generation.
2) A Sense of Christian Propriety
Again, this positive can often become a negative, but the Christians of my childhood had a sense that there was a lifestyle incumbent on those who were saved by God’s grace. I am well aware that the pendulum swung too far and some of the legalistic rules of the church of 50s just seem silly today. But we understood that we couldn’t live like the world.
Again, it is a fair criticism that at times this sense of holiness devolved into adherence to extrabiblical rules. But among some of the younger Christians today I see an almost total disregard for standards of holiness; a fear that holiness is contrary to grace or that it leads necessarily to legalism. Perhaps we need to redefine the Christian lifestyle along biblical lines, but it must not be abandoned.
3) A Commitment to Biblical Truth
No generation has ever been perfect in its obedience to Scripture, but the churches I grew up in were absolutely and unequivocally committed to the absolutely truthfulness and trustworthiness of the Bible.
4) A Love for the Gospel and Evangelism
The idea my friend expressed – that the older generation did not understand or live out the gospel – is simply not true. They loved the gospel.
My point is not that the church of yesterday was better than the church of today. I’m arguing against the assumption many younger folks make that the church of today is so much superior to the church of yesterday. The churches I grew up in had some real problems, but there was real Christianity being practiced by real Christians. The world has changed and the church has to change with it.
But, my young friends, show some respect for the ancient markers. The church of Baptists past did some pretty good things in the cause of Christ. It made some mistakes as well – some big ones. The church of Baptists present is doing some things well and is also making some big mistakes. The church of Baptists future will (hopefully) do some things well and will also fail to be perfect.
Honor the past and build on it, young whippersnapper!
Dave,
Having ministered in both era’s, do you find it easier or more difficult to minister in the age of electricity? How has the invention of the wheel changed the way you do ministry? Just curious..
All jokes aside, thanks for this article, Dave. Maybe I’m turning into an old man myself, but I’m learning more and more every day to appreciate those that have gone before me. (And I don’t mean just the Puritans). I mean the elderly men in our church that were here when it was planted in the 50’s. Thanks for your gentle rebuke, here.
Smart aleck!
Actually, I would say that ministry today is tougher in one sense, because the world is much less appreciative and more hostile to biblical thought.
My dad once said that I deal with stuff regularly that were once in a lifetime issues for him. Sin has broken lives more severely than was true in my youth.
Pros and cons on both sides of that one. Contrast makes things show up better. Remember the contrast knob on the TV, before they became all digital? It helped sharpen the picture.
There are some ways in which the eras immediately prior did not have enough contrast between Christianity and the world around us. That’s changed–the world has gotten worse–which should allow us to stand out more clearly as God’s people.
Very good, Dave, and very interesting. Being a few years older, approximately 17 years, I have to agree that the younger generation are folks who disregard the older generation. I feel like Rodney Dangerfield, “I get no respect.” The truth is, I think, otherwise. An article in our state paper telling about the growing hostility to the Christian Faith in the military and in society spells out the future for all of us. We are not going to be having it so easy, if we ever did. We are now facing the toughest challenge, I believe, that the church has ever faced, namely, a determined effort backed by money, power, and education, to rid the public of religion, especially the Christian view of it, the view, which by the way, created this free land. What many ignore and even do not know is that the Baptists were the first advocates of religious liberty, a fact that even the Political Philosopher noted, and they were the first to put it into law and practice. These modern folks who seem to advocate tolerance are worst than the folks who whistle Dixie, by a long shot. They tolerate private practice with no public expression of one’s faith. That means we have our work cut out for us.
We are facing an intellectual challenge in this Postmodern Age which by way of evolution has spelled out plainly and forcefully that there is no room for the Creator God of the Bible. You all need to read what some of these modern advocates have written by way of contempt for the biblical faith. And then there is an even greater wave coming in, a wave of suppression, perhaps, even of persecution. And now more than ever, we need people from every walk of life and every age group, and we need to pull together to deal with the problems which we all face. Part of the growing unrest is indicated by the rising interest in Apologetics. Our young people to the number of about 80% are leaving the church due to much of what they struggle with in college. In fact, the whole educational system from bottom to top, from kindergarten to the final doctorate, whatever that might be, is riven with an antisupernatural bias, one that is bent on shutting the biblical viewpoint out of public education and out of the public arena. It is but a short step from repression to suppression and that by educational incarceration in institutions devoted to re-education of believers. If the leading ethicist of evolutionary views at Princeton who advocates the possibility of ending a child’s life up to age two can freely disseminate his views without repercussions, think what a quick step it is from that of advocating the repression of those whose religious views do not fit the naturalistic norms of a society showing all the signs of insanity that were displayed in Germany during the Nazi era.
The political philosopher was John Locke.
Dictionary.com defines whippersnapper as “an unimportant but offensively presumptuous person, especially a young one.” While I wouldn’t place all young SBC saints in that box, there’s no doubt that a multi-generational balance is needed in some churches. We need the young guys to speed things up, the old guys to slow things down … the energy of youth balanced by the wisdom of age. Just as not all young folks are offensively presumptuous, not all geezers have wisdom – but age helps.
It’s sad to behold certain SBC church plants and splits in my area striking off with pastors and “elders” in their 20s-30s … knowing that a few seasoned veterans of life in their 60s-70s could steer these ministries clear of some been-there-done-that heart ache. It didn’t turn out well for Rehoboam or Israel when he rejected the wisdom of the elders who had served Solomon for the advice of the young men who had grown up with him.
I was young and now am old … a son of God who prayed the sinner’s prayer in the red hot fire of a 1958 church revival when the SBC carried a denominational gifting of evangelism. I’ve observed a lot in my Christian journey, but never witnessed a generation of ministers so set on changing the form and substance of doing church to the point of ignoring the ancient markers set before them. A dose of honoring the past and building upon it is desperately needed in our ranks. (At least that’s the scene from my porch – I hope things are better in your neck of the woods)
For the record, I just use whippersnapper as a playful insult toward youngsters. I call myself an old fogey and them young whippersnappers.
The term is meant inoffensively.
“We are fixing what you broke.”
might well be followed by "and then we'll break it a different way".
C. S. Lewis, in an essay on reading old books, notes that each generation has its blind spots and goes on to note that you can't spot your generation's blind spots by reading only your generation's books. Since we don't have access to the future's books, that leaves reading old books to get a perspective that'll show our own blind spots.
In the church, that argues for the newer generation listening to the older generation. But since the older generation *does* have access to the newer generation, it also argues for the older generation listening to the newer generation. Given that each generation has blind spots, we have a choice. We can either focus on pointing out the other generation's blind spots (and grumbling because *they* *just* *won't* *see* *them*), or we can note that our own generation has its own blind spots, and that we have the opportunity , if we'll bother to listen to the other generation, of discovering what those blind spots are, and perhaps learn to be a bit less blind. Of the two, I think the latter is more likely to be productive.
Sigh. Leave off one ending bracket, and the whole post goes plaid…er, italic.
I fixed it for your sake, and mine!
Thank you. I don’t have my belt buckled, so going into plaid could be harmful.
You might look like one of the “YW’s.”
I get told I look younger than I am, but at 57 I don’t think I qualify for at least the Y part of YW.
Preaching to the old dude choir.
A thousand ‘amens’ and i join yourmstatement that you are glad blogging wasn’t around when you were younger. At least my sermons and pontificating of my youth are not zooming around where thy can still be read.
My problem was, the y/w problem is, there isn’t a knowledge and experience base sufficient to grasp what they do not know and have not begun to think about. I see it here regularly.
But…all one can do is offer a plaintive sigh for the old days of youth when we knew it all.
Puts me in mind of a statement James Dobson made about his basketball skills.
“The older I get, the better I used to be.”
Not sure how that fits in, but…
How true!
Sort of off topic but in the spirit of the post.
At my church, my pastor (late 50-s early 60’s not sure) uses an iPad for his sermon notes. My Music minister (early 60’s) uses an iPad for the music. My Youth Minister (early 30’s) uses an iPad when he preaches on average of once a week. Just this past week, I (30yo) was asked to give the Wednesday night message. I used 3 pieces of paper for my sermon notes. And to be honest, I dont even know if I would use an iPad even if I had one. Does that make me weird?
I have notes and stuff projected onto the screen, but I like preaching from my notes. I have too much problem with technology to trust it. What if I’m up in the pulpit and the gremlins attack?
What means this “projected onto the screen” stuff?
I use my tablet for notes, but usually that’s part of the last few minutes before church: check tablet, if it’s not doing right, print the notes and preach from paper.
I’m convinced that demons inhabit our electronics, so I don’t trust ’em.
If I used more than a very compacted outline for preaching, I would have hard copy.
This is why I’m strongly in favor of bringing your Bible and using a hymnal. I have some folks that want to move to screen and digitize everything, but they’ve only seen how nice it can look. They’ve never dealt with how much trouble it can be!
Of course, the congregation may very well be going heavily digital. In my church (particularly if you’re sitting in the balcony), you can see plenty of tablets and phones in use during Bible reading and the sermon (which makes me feel much better about my own Olive Tree-equipped phone, and hopefully makes it much less likely that someone will accuse me of texting during the sermon). I’m not sure how the pastor feels knowing that there are people in the congregation with enough digital resources in their hands to thoroughly double-check his sermon. Hopefully he’ll regard us as Berean.
I’m okay with the tablets, but I also know that there’s not much signal out here.
And when someone can give me the up-to-the-minute sports scores right after church, I know he’s been using his phone for more than a Bible. When your head’s down the whole time, it’s hard to believe an individual is actually listening and double-checking.
“I also know that there’s not much signal out here.”
A lot then, depends on whether they’re using resources in the cloud or actually on the machine. If you’re using resources in the cloud, if the congregation is large enough, and enough are using cloud resources, it might threaten to overwhelm the local network. One reason I like the Olive Tree software (other than them not requiring you to re-buy books when you switch platforms – I’ve been using Olive Tree since the days when I carried around a Palm PDA, and haven’t had to re-buy bibles and books as I’ve upgraded platforms) is that the Bibles and e-books I’ve bought and downloaded (Olive Tree makes a lot of public-domain Bible versions and old standard books available for free) are stored on the device itself, not out in the cloud, so I’m not dependent on a network connection to use it.
The 50s and 60s were (in my area) the time when the fire-and-brimstone preaching was seeing its greatest decline. I’m just 30 minutes from SEBTS and it was by far the greatest supplier for churches…still is.
Church records (at my old home church) show that the greatest evangelistic message was back in the 30s when 67 were saved and baptised in the creek back of my house. Sermon: “Weighed in the Balance and Found Wanting”.
I saw some of that in Southside VA when I pastored there. The effects of liberal theological education could be seen in churches there. Interesting observation.
I was converted Dec.7, 1957 and joined Calvary Baptist Church in St. Louis which was still in the midst of its greatest events. From about 1948-1959 that church sent more boys and girls into the ministry and the mission field, and it continued on into the sixties but I was not much of a witness to that after I was ordained in ’62, being gone from the area. Toward the end of the sixties and into the seventies, I was aware of the church’s decline. It continued to decline into the eighties and nineties, finally uniting with another church and having a name change. I think it is the Oak Hill Baptist Church now. My ordaining pastor was a fellow who had preached revivals. One in Georgia had 100 conversions. About 40 years later I preached there without any converts, though I did have a deacon from FBC of Augusta come out to that church for homecoming and tell me he had been converted under Dr. Ernest R. Campbell. The pastor of FBC of Augusta then was one of Dr. Campbell’s preacher boys from FBC Hialeah, Fla. At Dr. Campbell’s funeral in 2004, one of the participants was a preacher boy of his who had been called while he served as interim of FBC Kingstree, SC. He was a lawyer, and he went to SWBTS and was pastoring a church in Columbia, SC. When I went off to college from Calvary in St. Louis, 20+ students went to prepare for the ministry and the mission field, six of us went to East Texas Baptist College, Marshall, Texas. Out of that six, me and one other fellow continued active in the ministry as we had opportunities, usually bi-vocational, until we retired. I had heard of preaching where every one comes forward and had that experience once in a church in Jamaica in Jan., 1980. It was a one time service, and I was flabbergasted to see every last person get up and come to the front. I had read of Bob Jones, Sr., have every one come forward, straight forward, where they climbed over the benches and/or seats to get to the altar as they called it then.
However, like everything else you learn not to accept things at face value, especially as you see those who came fall away due to tribulation and persecutions. You learn instead to look for those who stay committed through ups and downs. You try to help those who don’t, but generally they do not want to continue and so they won’t and don’t. A grief to me as to any compassionate pastor.
I was a recipient of the Keysee (sp?) Fund while a student at SEBTS, when it was at its most liberal. One of the later chairmen’s of the dept of ministerial referral told me that he had come from the area where the Keysees had made their wealth and he knew the family. He said they would have turned over in their graves at their money being used for liberal institutions…especially after the trustees voted to extend the gifts to those schools that broke away with the Cooperative Baptists.
I met a preacher and his wife, and the wife was a relative of a man who had financed the education of Duke McCall. She said her relative was as conservative as could be. McCall was President of Southern, of course, during the early part of the liberal era.
God bless, I have to get up and help my wife and prepare our breakfast, etc. Looking forward to watching the film Lincoln with our son tonight after VBS.
I meant to say that Calvary sent forth more boys and girls to the ministry and mission field than any other church in the SBC during that 11 year period. That was what I heard back then, but I do not know how true it was. I just know there were about 125 ministers that came from that church.
In my travels among the blogosphere, and having thought about it for a while, I have come to a conclusion (anecdotal mind you) on this very topic of generations:
Our generation (Dave) predominantly embraced our ancestors and the greats of yesteryear and determined to continue the path that they have plowed behind us, and our prayer has been to make it better than they – and you know what? They prayed that we would.
The current generation predominantly has disowned us as well as the greats in order to make a “better” road: yet they have also forsaken the tools that would help them pave it well preferring only to do so with their hands and feet (and arrogance).
I pray that in time wisdom will return before we see our home-going or His return.
Rob