Demographic Darwinism and the Church

By Robert Hull

I was born in 1943. Demographers are eager to put me in my place, but I”m not sure exactly where that is. They tell me if we stretch the boundaries a little, I”m considered a Baby Boomer (or just a “Boomer”).

From the reading I have done lately, I think that”s bad news.

Any day now Generation X is going to wrest power from me and my decrepit fellow Boomers, throw us all under the church bus (uh, van), reinvent the church we have loved and served with our idealism, strength, time, and money, and replace it with a pragmatic, anti-institutional paradigm that is unpredictable, authentic, and edgy. Oh, and if we really have the best interests of the church at heart, we should collude in, rather than resist, our own demise, because, apparently, demography is destiny.1

 

Generational Change Is Inevitable

Of course it is. It would be foolish to deny that how we “do church” has changed over the centuries.2 Few of us walk down the street on Sundays and join with a handful of fellow-believers to worship in somebody”s living room or dining room, as was the case in ancient Corinth. Not only do we not sing the songs they sang, we do not even know the songs they sang (except for the Psalms).

From a cappella singing, the church has gone on to embrace sequentially the organ, the piano, brass, strings, including guitar, and finally percussion. In my lifetime, we have gone from a “worship leader” to multiple singers up front, backed up by any number of different musical ensembles. Ancient church music, old hymns, and gospel songs have disappeared altogether from many congregations. PowerPoint technology has replaced the hymnal, and even the worship bulletin in many congregations.

From family worship, we have shifted into “graded worship,” with children segregated from their parents. We have moved from strictly male leadership to shared male/female leadership in many of the congregations within our fellowship of churches. Expectations in dress have steadily trended downward, even for congregational leaders. In gross numbers, probably more of us now worship in megachurches of 2,000 or more than in the small chapels of 100 persons in which Boomers grew up.

Where the name Christian Church or Church of Christ used to be jealously guarded, now the typical “brands” include Journey, Cross, Life, Tree, Bridge, or Point(e), in various combinations, whether with or without Christian Church. Indeed, Community Church is not uncommon.

We can argue about the wisdom of some of these innovations, but it seems to me beyond argument that many””perhaps most of them””have been driven by generational change, particularly in recent decades, as churches have adapted to technological and lifestyle preferences of various demographic groups.

Not all these changes have come easily, and this is all to the good. Worship, Christian education, and the ways the church presents itself to its nonbelieving neighbors are far too important to be treated as no more than marketing decisions. It is right that we study, discuss, air our disagreements, and strive for consensus before we “reinvent” the church every few years.

But this is just where the fear factor grips me, as a Boomer with a lifelong commitment to the church, specifically within the Stone-Campbell Restoration tradition, and more particularly to the same congregation for 35 years. I am afraid that, sometimes, really significant decisions are made without consideration of their theological and pastoral ramifications, but only because of a belief in demographic determinism.

 

Demographic Determinism

Do we really think the future of the church ought to be determined by a kind of “survival of the fittest” approach, fittest here meaning the demographically most influential? I know enough about popular culture to realize we Boomers are vast in number, but are not really “where it”s at.”

Nobody makes movies or television shows with us in mind (they assume we”ll be satisfied with old reruns of The Bob Newhart Show). Apple isn”t rushing out the latest generation of the iPhone or iPad to satisfy the unquenchable thirst of Boomers for the fastest, most powerful mobile devices on the planet. If a car ad features a 70-year-old, it is likely to be a little blue-haired lady in a “75 Plymouth being blown off the highway by a thirtysomething man driving a new Camaro. The truth is, culturally, we don”t matter.

The question is, do we matter to the church? For the last two decades or so, market-driven church planters and innovators seem to have dealt with the sensibilities and preferences of older church members in one of two ways: Either they have used the “Burger King” approach of designing multiple worship programs, with one of them being labeled “traditional,” meaning, roughly, “You wouldn”t want to be caught dead in there if you”re under 60,” or they have simply thrown out all tradition, “reinvented” church, and said, in effect, “adapt or leave.”

A few years ago I was shown a mass-mailed postcard for a new church plant. It read, “This Isn”t Your Grandmother”s Church.” Apparently, the church planting team didn”t realize that the subtext of the announcement was “and we don”t want your grandmother here.” I guess Granny was just supposed to shuffle off to the nearest retirement facility and go to chapel there.

Is there a better way? I”m convinced there is.

 

The Church and Culture

The relationship of church to culture is ambivalent. The church always and inevitably reflects its culture, whether in Cairo, Egypt, in the sixth century or Cairo, Illinois, in the 21st. The question is whether culture totally determines how the church is shaped in every context, or whether there are cultural assumptions and practices so contrary to the gospel of Jesus Christ that they need to be challenged.

The apostle Paul was deferential to some aspects of the first-century Roman shame/honor code (e.g., dress and hair style; see 1 Corinthians 11:3-16), but other aspects he fought head-on. For example, in a culture that encouraged males to outdo their peers in competing for honor and glory, Paul told the Romans to “outdo one another in showing [not in gaining] honor” (author emphasis, Romans 12:10)3. In a culture where one often gained power only if another person lost it, Paul taught that power was not in short supply in the church, so that it had to be forcibly taken from one generation by another; all the saints had been filled with the Holy Spirit and given gifts to use to serve the whole body (1 Corinthians 14:4-31). Far from seeking always to have one”s own way, Paul taught, “Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, to edify him” (Romans 15:2).

At the center of the gospel Paul preached and Jesus lived was a cross. Whatever else it may mean for each of us to bear the cross (Luke 9:23, 24), it surely means we don”t always get to have it our way. It never seemed to occur to Paul to suggest that the tongues-speaking believers in Corinth ought to meet in one house church, and the non-tongues-speakers in another, so that neither would have to be inconvenienced.

Pure pragmatists know to ask only one question: “Will it work?” But there”s a more important question we need to ask if we are serious about fostering mature discipleship in our congregations: “Is it right?” Meaning, is it congruent with the cross-centered gospel? Does it pander only to our wants? Does it value the gifts and needs of the whole congregation? Do the various generations get to have a say in decisions that will affect them most directly? Does it pull us apart or draw us together? Will it enable the church better to accomplish the whole mission of Christ in the world?

In my opinion, these are far more important questions than “What do we have to do to attract unchurched Gen-Xers and Millennials?” and “When do we get to run the show?”

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1See Rick Chromey, “Gen X Rising (Part 2): What Tomorrow”s Leaders Will Do,” CHRISTIAN STANDARD, 1 April 2012, 8-10.

3See the summary of changes from the 1970s to the present in Rick Chromey, “Gen X Rising (Part 1): A Generation Born to Lead in Crisis,” CHRISTIAN STANDARD, 25 March 2012, 4, 5, 13.

3Scripture quotations are from the Revised Standard Version.

 

Robert Hull is professor emeritus of New Testament at Emmanuel School of Religion in Johnson City, Tennessee.