Partnering Across the Generations

By David Hobbs

Jesus said to “occupy” until He returned. Unfortunately, for most American churches, “occupy” means keep everyone busy going to church meetings. Many pastors’ philosophy seems to be: “keep them as busy in church activities as possible in order to keep them out of the honky-tonks, running around chasing women, etc.” I go to 3 churches, and there is no way I could keep up with all the meetings at even one of them unless that was all I did. So how does one find time to participate in other worthwhile cultural, political, or family activities, or even other Christian activities outside the local church? They can’t! I think it’s part of an unspoken, pastoral plot to hold on to their flocks. (Don't take me too seriously on this; that's just the way it seems sometimes.) Therefore, if there is work that needs to be done before Jesus can return that doesn’t fit into typical church categories (worship, preaching, Bible study, prayer, men’s/women’s groups, and perhaps evangelism) it’s not being done. “But Brother Hobbs, Brother Hobbs, isn’t that everything? What more could there be?” See, you’ve been stuck in church too long. You can’t think “outside the [church] box.”

I believe God has shown me some things that need to be done before Jesus returns. The most obvious one is for Christians to come together in the “unity of the faith” (Eph. 4:13). For that to happen, our current denominational pattern of churches will have to be abandoned! Right now, we are unifying around our denominations and their belief structures. We will never come to the unity of the faith that way. The very word denomination means “to divide by doctrine.”

But I’ll leave that for another time. What I want to focus on in this post is generational reconciliation from Malachi 4:5-6 (the last verses in the Old Testament): “See, I will send you the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes. He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers; or else I will come and strike the land with a curse.”

Wouldn’t it be great if we could see that happen? Right now there is a huge divide in most churches between the adults’ and the young peoples’ ministries. I went to an evening service at our Winter Youth Camp this year and felt intimidated by all the craziness going on. How could I ever enter in and participate in that?

But then last week my businessmen’s group, the Christian Business Alliance, was invited to a meeting of the student Christian club at our public high school. This was different; we were meeting on more neutral ground. We got to eat pizza together and each group shared what they were about. Afterwards we circled up on the basketball court, held hands (adult-youth, adult-youth), and took turns praying. Wow!

With the students separated from their peers (where they like to hang out because it’s safe) I could sense more where they were really at—insecure and fearful, yet brave enough to join a Christian club at an overwhelmingly secular public high school. I also got the sense of a tremendous amount of giftings and abilities from God residing within the group that only needed to be encouraged and given opportunity to develop and be used. I saw how much we each needed the other. Many of them probably didn’t have both parents in the home, or maybe had unbelieving parents who ignored them or at least didn’t encourage them. There was so much potential for speaking into their lives and building them up. And isn’t that what we are supposed to be doing for the next generation? Here we adults had made it in the world (to one extent or another) and they were facing the daunting task of finding their own way—deciding about college, picking a career, getting a job, finding a mate, in addition to hanging onto their faith and being a witness in a hostile environment.

They needed us more desperately than they knew. But we also needed them. They have the energy and the zeal and the unclouded vision we lack (they haven’t been dumbed down by 30 years of church meetings). The wave of my generation is nearly spent. We need the next generation to succeed where we have failed—to stand on our shoulders and go beyond. The need was so obvious in both cases that I wondered, “Why isn’t this being done? Why aren’t we already working together—partnering across the generations to see great things done for Christ?” Why indeed? Because we’re all too busy going to church meetings, and “partnering across the generations” is not part of the church-meeting template?