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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 Seek on
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Something else I thought of. My mom used to lead choir. The only reason she quit and we now have a praise team is only the elderly would sing in the choir but none of them could show up to practice and Mom got discouraged with it. It dropped from like 20 to 10 members all out of key.
If they want the old choir and hymns they have to be willing to do it but they weren't.
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Permalink Reply by Leonard T on
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I will add too that often through this change we see the older generation feel that the church they have invested in (supported) for years is leaving them behind. We tend to take ownership of that which we invest in and now some newer people who have not invested, or invested very little, are taking it away from them. Right or wrong that is in human nature.
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Uhhh that's exactly the sentiment. I've heard it quite a few times...THEY pay the majority of the tithes. And I have countered that argument with....but in 10, 20 years, who is going to be paying the majority if you're gone and we ran off the younger generation?
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I understand and acknowldged that the view was human nature, right or wrong. Let me add something here. I have seen churches change from the old supporting crowd to the young crowd and then close because it could not meet budget. Generally speaking the older crowd gives and the younger crowd .... not so much. Again, generally speaking.
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Yeah and I hope that doesn't happen here. That's why I wish there was a middle ground, to keep both camps happy. I'm kinda looking for ideas on ways to diminish grumbling and complaining, ways that can appeal to both and fit both into the schedule.
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It is rare to find that middle ground. Let me add that we can find churches with a mixture but that church is almost assuredly made up of the most pliable young and old people. Therefore it is not a good example of how to find middle ground, because it is made up of middle ground people to begin with. Sorry I cannot be more helpful on the issue, but it is one that will not go away and will repeat in the next generation, at least to some degree.
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Ok, so what it boils down to then....would you stick it out or if these things keep bothering you, would you try and find another church? I dread looking for another. But I also have so much stress that this stuff adds to my stress. So it has me in a stalemate.
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No church is without issues even if you change churches. In fact if I worshipped alone I would probably complain about the song selection and the text chosen for that day :-)
To stay or go can only be answered by you and the Holy Spirit.
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I agree with turning off the phones, because it is certainly rude to have a phone go off while the pastor is speaking. But I feel differently about the drink issue. I guess if it's overboard and in a disrespectful manner, but sometimes people need a drink of water, or someone who has had very little sleep seeking the caffeine. They may feel it's disrespectful to walk in and out of the service repeatedly to get a drink or to be nodding off during the service, etc.
The sanctuary is wherever we go to worship though. I can worship God sitting in my livingroom or in the church pew. But I take drinks to my livingroom. And in fact, I won't be disturbed by someone talking or poking me in my livingroom. ;-) I've seen people with drinks hide them under the pews and keep them low key and some who act like it's no big deal and even bring a milkshake in. I know I had a bad case of a dry mouth one day and got a soda for class. During service it was in my purse, and I needed to take a pain pill for a headache, so I bent down in the pew to snatch a drink and take those two pills. Or I could've walked out and disrupted the entire church as I was sitting about the third row back at the time. I'm trying to think is it really disrespect or just what we've been taught?
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Permalink Reply by Tammy on
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Yea, I don't find it disrespectful about the drinking myself. The pastors are up there with their water. Now, my home church has a sign that says no eating or drinking in the sanctuary but they're not wanting the new building messed up. Like I said earlier, the ones here, have drink machines, coffee houses & everything at the door so don't think I'm not getting me a Coke. :) I think it's more about how we were brought up, not disrespectful.
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Have you ever heard the story behind Matt Redman's song "Heart of Worship"? It's pretty cool & can go along with this.
The song dates back to the late 1990s, born from a period of apathy within Matt’s home church, Soul Survivor, in Watford, England. Despite the country’s overall contribution to the current worship revival, Redman’s congregation was struggling to find meaning in its musical outpouring at the time.
“There was a dynamic missing, so the pastor did a pretty brave thing,” he recalls. “He decided to get rid of the sound system and band for a season, and we gathered together with just our voices. His point was that we’d lost our way in worship, and the way to get back to the heart would be to strip everything away.”
Reminding his church family to be producers in worship, not just consumers, the pastor, Mike Pilavachi, asked, “When you come through the doors on a Sunday, what are you bringing as your offering to God?”
Matt says the question initially led to some embarrassing silence, but eventually people broke into a cappella songs and heartfelt prayers, encountering God in a fresh way.
“Before long, we reintroduced the musicians and sound system, as we’d gained a new perspective that worship is all about Jesus, and He commands a response in the depths of our souls no matter what the circumstance and setting. ‘The Heart of Worship’ simply describes what occurred.”
When the music fades, all is stripped away, and I simply come / Longing just to bring something that’s of worth that will bless your heart… / I’m coming back to the heart of worship, and it’s all about You, Jesus
Redman remembers writing the song quickly in his bedroom soon after the church’s journey together, with no grand intentions, by any means, for it to become an international anthem. He viewed the words simply as his personal, subjective response to what he was learning about worship.
But when Matt shared “The Heart of Worship” with Pilavachi, the pastor suggested making a few small adjustments to the lyrics so any member of the church could relate to it as well.
Amazed by how God has since taken the song around the world for His purposes, the songwriter smiles in regard to his own lack of foresight. “It nearly didn’t go any further than my bedroom. But I love that…”
The trademark tune soon became the title track for Matt Redman’s 1999 album, The Heart of Worship. The recording process was consistent with the artist’s sensitive approach to being in the studio.
“We decided to not get all complicated, and just let the song ‘breathe.’ We’re always trying to create more of a church atmosphere in the studio rather than just a technical musical gathering. Something happens when the people of God gather together and play out the praises of God in the presence of God. Hopefully something of that passion and purpose transcends beyond that studio room onto the recordings themselves.”
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