THE CHURCH WILL NEVER BE THE SAME

According to the April 5, 1993 issue of Time magazine the church will never be the same - because the baby boomers, the generation that forgot God, is going back to church.

But it's not going to be business as usual. These returnees are described as "traveling from church to church or faith to faith, sampling creeds, shopping for a custom-made God." While most say that they believe in God; "One third also believes in reincarnation, ghosts and astrology. The God of their understanding is not necessarily the personal, all-powerful and all-knowing deity of orthodoxy. Nor is the Jesus affirmed by boomers necessarily the Son of God and unique Saviour of humanity."

In an effort to attract, more and more churches are becoming "customer oriented". As an example of this, one church was cited as having songs one Sunday morning ranging from "Oh, What a Beautiful Morning" to "Danny Boy". The meeting climaxed in hugging with the preacher raising his arms high and booming, "Hey, God, make my day! Go for it!"

In the Time article mention is made of the book, The Churching of America 1776-1990 by sociologists Roger Finke and Rodney Stark. Martin E. Marty, the historian summarized their interpretation: "No God or religion or spirituality, no issue of truth or beauty or goodness, no faith or hope or love, no justice or mercy; only winning and losing in the churching game matters." Marty remarked that it is "lethal" to reshape churches around the claims of these returnees.

Your reaction? Is it anything like the response in Time, April 26, 1993?

As a baby boomer, I am fascinated by my generation's apparent return to religion. Unfortunately, it seems that the philosophy of the Me generation has carried over to the quest for spiritual wealth. We appear to be searching not for a moral code, but for a justification of our lifestyle. While it is true that Jesus never turned people away for asking too many questions, there is no mention in the New Testament of packaging the answers to meet the wishes of the audiences or to fill pews, and no one said the way to heaven was easy.

Forgive me if I can't get too excited about baby boomers returning to religion. Until we learn submission to the will of God we may be something, but Christian we are not.

-Selected

By John Gipson, Keynoter