All About GOD - Growing Relationships with Jesus and Others
Church Division
James 4 What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? 2 You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. 3 When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.
I'm trying to review this verse in light of some issues that have been ongoing in my church and some conversations I have had with some members and so I'd like some input on some questions.
A bit of background is that our pastor is trying to build our church, attract younger members. Before he came, we were a dead church of about 40 to 60 members, lifeless, doing no good in the community, but helping one another, visiting each other in the hospitals, etc. So this goes to something I mentioned elsewhere about where's the love in the church.
Yet now we are a church of about 250 to 300 members, doing coat drives to give coats the poor, operating a food pantry and feeding local families, doing community projects meant to bring awareness of our church and food pantry to the community and reach the lost.
So, is there a happy medium? Now some in the church are feeling no love because we're focusing so much on the community and yet the community didn't know we existed and got NOTHING from us previously.
It is becoming a battle of over 60 vs. under 60 basically. So here are some complaints.
- No one visits at the hospitals. Yet the leadership designed Lifegroups so that we break out of the large church setting and get into smaller groups where we can make closer ties with a smaller portion of the membership, pray for one another and go and visit one another in our times of need. Yet many don't join Lifegroups. Out of a 250-300 membership, perhaps 60 - 100 attend regular Lifegroup sessions.
- Disrespect. There is a clash of wills going on. You have the younger people who like their loud music. They carry coffee into the sanctuary and hide it under the pew to get awake in the morning. The older crowd who says the loud music hurts their ears and they think coffee in the sanctuary is disrespectful to God. Yet the younger folks are typically the ones cleaning up the sanctuary and spending massive hours there working on the sound system, setting up and tearing down chairs for events, building and designing sets for Bible School and so on.
Currently we have 3 Lifegroups going on simultaneously on Sunday night. Two are Bible studies, where most are over 60. One of them are the older generation type and they feel the loud video playing in the gym for the Zumba class is disrespectful to the ones in the non-soundproofed classrooms holding a Bible study. If they go to the sanctuary to hold it, they won't have tables to put their books on and they can't have their snacks. If they stay where they are, 31 people in the gym for Zumba and volleball need to figure out how to exercise and play a game without noise. I attribute part to a poorly designed church building, yet what can be done? Perhaps hold Zumba and volleyball on another night and yet their are other functions the gym is used for those nights.
Now there is also a second Lifegroup, also over 60, with only 3 to 5 members, and I've heard no complaints from them. Those are the younger at heart elderly people who always have a smile and seem to get along with the younger crowd.
So IS there some happy medium? Is this a church that has stopped walking in love or a difference in generational cultures? Is it disrespect from the young, complaining from the elderly or a mixture of the two? There should be unity in the church and if there is not, what can be done other than find another church. But if you like that church and the people there, and yet you seem assaulted from both sides about it, what do you do?
I've had several elderly people bring up to me the absence of chairs in the atrium. They feel that's disrespectful, that old people can't walk that far without sitting down to rest. Ummm, they walk from their car to the doctor's office? So I'm told, but someone would help them in...I've not seen that happen at a doctor's office, and yet our greeters at the church help them into the church. I've been pecked and asked to ask people beside me to take their coffee cups out of the sanctuary. Pecked during worship and asked to tell someone to stop talking. Been told that we're being disrespectful and disruptive of the classes with the Zumba and volleyball. I am enjoying those yet I am not the leader of those and do not control the volume, though I did pass it along to the one who does that we might need to keep the volume down. I feel sometimes I want to erect a wall around me at church so that no one can peck me and disrupt my worship or offer a complaint...and then wonder where my negativity stems from. Isn't that negativity as well?
Anyone see the solutions? What goes on in your churches? How do you combine youth and elderly in unity? And if you have no control over it, how do you respond to those bringing it at you constantly? How do you not feel bad trying to enjoy Zumba and volleyball with a group of church family having just gone through a 5 minute devotional and prayer, and worry whether or not you're disturbing another hour long class?
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Leonard T on
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All people are pliable ... to a degree. Some more than others ... way more than others. Thus, some will accpet things that are not to their liking, but are within a tolerable level. The older folk are not wrong if they go to gather with people of similar taste to worship Jesus. I know it is all about Jesus, but the how we do it on a weekly basis does make a difference. to some people more than others. Thus, I have no problem with people gathering with those of the same persuasion.
Flip the coin for a minute. What if the church of the loud and open started changing toward a more traditional church with a quite sanctuary with no drinks in the sanctuary and older hymns being played. Would that group take it well or would they grumble and/or bolt? It is interesting to note that if the Lord shall tarry long enough the young generation of today will one day be the old grumpy generation that will watch the younger generation of that future day insist on change that is not to their liking ... and the cycle continues as it has for centruries.
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Permalink Reply by Seek on
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Well in all honesty, many of the newest would bolt. But a bunch of them (us) were raised on the older traditional church with no drinks and older hymns. I know those old hymns by heart. I sit through them or through the more current version. I must admit I PREFER the current. But sometimes I still like an oldie.
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Thus there is a group of younger ones who would stay and a bunch who would bolt. Probably about the same percentage as the older ones who would stay and those who would bolt (eventually).
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I guess it's a people issue. I know some in the older age range who watch the volleyball and have no issue with it, they sing and sway to the new loud music. They seem to enjoy their experience while others grumble.
And there's some younger who grumble about the older people and older songs and traditions and are disrespectful.
Makes ya almost wanna smack all of em upside the head and knock some sense into em don't it? Ok, not really, but I'm trying to make myself laugh.
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For clarity I am a bit weird. I like it all. I can worship in a stoic church or a full blown rock band. I can worship in a untra-traditional church with litergy or in a full blown pentecostal church. Does not matter to me if it is in a church building, house or rented store front.
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I've been in a lot of situations to know, but I do know if the praise team is playing a song I don't like, or if someone is having a conversation next to me during worship, I close my eyes and start talking to God, just asking Him to help me to focus on just Him. Before long, I'm not hearing the talking, or they stop talking, and the song I didn't like is growing on me, and I find tears streaming.
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I agree. You can do that through a song or set, a conversation or two, but could you do it week in and week out? Especially when there is church ABC down the street that aligns with your preferences.
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I do it quite often, sometimes through much of a service rather than just a portion, but not every service. I'd still worry with going to church ABC and finding something there I didn't like either...then I'm hopping and more out of place.
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I wanted to clarify that I don't always do it because of something going on around me like that, not because of outward disruptions. Sometimes the disruption is internal, and my mind tries to focus on what is going on around me. So I do this "tuning out" to get my focus on God and off of whatever is trying to steal my attention.
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