My Thoughts on the GenGap in the Church of God

My desire for the gengap in the Church of God to diminish…

As a member in the Church of God – I can truthfully say we are in need of, as my friend Tommy Madden so thoughtfully stated, a “facelift” in the Church of God. Our Presiding Bishop, Dr. Mark Williams, stated that we were missing a great deal of our young men and women at the General Assembly. Less than 25% of those in attendance this year were under 50 years of age. We need a facelift!

There is, to reintroduce an old phrase, a generation gap in those who are attending and those who are absent from the General Assembly. This year for a variety of reasons of which only one is age, our attendance incredibly low. I am grieved over this “gengap” for several reasons and do not have an answer for eliminating it. Not having an answer and having a passion to see it eliminated are two different things. Yes! We need a facelift!

I spoke with several young men today as I walked to and from the General Council sessions and asked them their opinion on this issue. I was also privileged to share lunch with a couple of young guys I highly respect for their candid comments and sincere maturity in Christ. Across the board the sense is that the General Assembly is not “relevant” to a succeeding generation. We have in some ways created this monster ourselves. I don’t believe we did it intentionally but over time it evolved right in front of us. We have given seed to what we are now trying solve – a real gengap in our denomination. By default of who we are as an organization and our lack of desire to change how we process our methods, minutia and polity has brought us to where we are today. We need a facelift!

Here is my take on this gengap issue. I lean to the Word for support because no matter what generation we are living in, succeeding or preceding – the Word is always relevant. I see two issues here that we need to address. One is practical and business oriented and the other is spiritual and progressive in nature. Let me try to explain.

In Acts chapters one and two we can find a model for church structure that hasn’t changed for two-thousand years and it never will. In Acts chapter one Simon Peter stops a prayer meeting and holds a business meeting and leads the upper room constituents into an election. That election was to replace Judas who had fallen. The church couldn’t go any further until this balance of structure was satisfied with Old Testament prophecy’s that effected the apocalyptic end of the church as we know it. Twelve was the number God Himself fixed for the church to survive for a future kingdom of structure. In other words there was a “structure” that God ordained and it had to be followed – even if it meant having a “boring” business meeting. The business at hand had to be dealt with. Once the business at hand was dealt with the church could move into the next phase of existence – the visionary phrase.

In Acts chapter two there is a powerful statement brought to the church that indicates that the church’s young men would be visionary leaders and the old men would be dreamers. Dreams are something that may not ever come to tangible fruition. That’s why the church needs visionary leaders. Visions come to fruition much quicker than dreams. There is no “either or” issue here. We cannot exist as a church without both. We need the often times boring and necessary business meetings and we need the challenging and awakening visionary leadership found in Acts chapter two. We need a facelift!

We need the practical business side that a succeeding generation deems unnecessary, boring and not very practical at all. We also need the spiritual and visionary driven platforms for the church to exist. We need both. There is within the confines of the Church of God an older generation that sees the vital need for the structure and business of the church – even it means wrangling over a few words in a motion for an hour – as absolutely necessary. There is a succeeding generation that all but wants to ignore the business side and have already dismissed themselves from the formation of it. Again, this is not an either or issue. We can’t exist without both. The task at hand is convincing a succeeding generation of the absolute need of structure that involves polity. Notice I didn’t say politics. There is a a difference that can be debated on anohter blog at another time. We need polity to strucutre any visionary/dreamer leadershiip that God provides for us. We need a facelift!

I’m not sure what the answer for this gengap is but I am confident of one thing – we need both the business and the spiritual side of structure to complete a platform for the church to continue to exist as a vital part of a changing culture. Life and church are not what they used to be in relationship to the church, a post-modern culture that ignores the reality and need of a personal Savior and a succeeding generation of preachers of the gospel. While we may not condone a changing culture but we have an obligation to serve it as called men and women of the gospel. Denominational culture is changing – or at least trying. If we don’t stop this denominational machine called the Church of God and examine ourselves for future relevancy – we are doing ourselves an injustice. We need a facelift!

• I don’t know what the answers are to fix this gengap. But what I know is this:
  a gengap exists and we cannot ignore it
• we have a Biblical model for church structure simplified in Acts 1 and 2
• we need business (Acts 1) because it gives structure to the path of visionary and dreamer leadership (Acts 2)
• we cannot choose either or
• visionary leadership without structure is chaos and can lean toward dictatorship
• structure without visionary and dreamer leadership can lead to legalistic and binding strategies that are absent of life
• we must call leadership summits that address this issue in order to give a succeeding generation the confidence the Church of God belongs in part to them and not merely an aging generation that ignores their interests
• we don’t have a lot of time to see this issue minimized

I believe in the Church of God. I believe our future is as full of potential as we want it to be. But potentiality is engaged by intentionality.  If we are not intentional with our efforts to solve this issue – we will crush our potentiality. As someone much wiser than I said one time…”Our potentiality lives or dies with our intentionality.”