Bob Mayfield

Are We Unifying or Dividing the Church?

I read JD Payne's blog today about all of the adjectives that we have in front of our church's today and it just made me stop and reflect about the author's topic. (Some of his humor was pretty good too: "Will there come a day when we speak of “Baptist, post-modern, seeker-sensitive, gen-X, cowboy, house churches”?  How’s that for your business card?")

Check the blog out here: http://bit.ly/aMH5vH

The basic context of the post in my view is this: do all of the adjectives we put in front of the church help spread the Gospel or discourage it? JD says it well:

"Do we teach our Japanese churches that they are just as responsible for reaching African-Americans as the African-American churches?  Do we teach our cowboy churches that they are to evangelize and plant churches among the hip-hop subcultures?"

I'm even wondering the same thing regarding our small groups and Sunday Schools? Do our groups understand that even though they may be a young adult group, they are also responsible to reach senior adults? Preschoolers? Students?

Multi-Generational Churches

My wife and I are attending Northwest Baptist Church in Oklahoma City, where I am serving as the Interim Discipleship Director.  (The pic at right is the Northwest steeple at dusk) One of the things I truly appreciate about Northwest is that it is truly a multi-generational and multi-ethnic church. Seven ethnic congregations worship through Northwest's ministry in five languages.

But I also appreciate the presence of Northwest's multiple generations. The best I can figure, there are at least five, and maybe six generations present at Northwest. At Northwest, our children sit in "big church" with their parents and the student group is all up front. It has been a refreshing experience at Northwest to have 8 year olds darting around after worship and see the approving nods of saints in their 80's who relish having the exuberance and life these kids bring to our church family.

Christianity Today has an excellent article about the importance of multi-generational churches. Here's an excerpt:

Each of us learns and benefits from caring for the old, the sick, the suffering, and the dying, just as we benefit from the vitality that children, teens, and young adults bring. We all have vastly different experiences in life. By existing together in one community, we all benefit. Some of us experienced World War II in the trenches, and others experienced it by playing Call of Duty on our Xbox.

I find it refreshing that the youth group at Northwest is not an appendage to the church, and that the children aren't tucked away in a wing of the church during worship so that they don't bother the "old folks". I love seeing the respect of middle-aged adults for senior saints who have walked the walk that the boomer group is now going through. And I also enjoy seeing the grade-schoolers sitting with their parents in worship, learning how to worship from mom, dad, and the other adults around them. It may not be a cool "McChurch" experience for them, but it's authentic... and cool in its own right.

Click here to read the Christianity Today article in its entirety.