Transcript

ANNOUNCER: Worship styles and younger generations. What are the trends right now and why? Let’s talk about it. This is Grace in Focus from the Grace Evangelical Society. Please have a look at our website, faithalone.org, find out about our conference ministry, articles we have for you, our books, and our online seminary offering an MDiv degree. All about us at faithalone.org. 

Now with today’s question and answer discussion here are Ken Yates and Kathryn Wright. 

KEN: We’re going to discuss a topic here that’s not really a question that was sent in, but more of just an observation that we’ve seen going on in our culture and maybe in some conversations with some folks in our different Bible studies and things like that. And it’s this issue of you hear that there is a swing back to church traditions. 

KATHRYN: Right, a cultural shift happening in specifically in the Christian community and when we say Christian, we mean big, big tent, right? 

KEN: The big C. Christendom is what we’re talking about. And what’s interesting is that a lot of times when you hear about this shift, it’s talking about the young people. Now I don’t know which is generation XYZ, PX, Y, or whatever, but the young folks. And even in secular organizations, you’ll hear it said that a fairly good size percentage of people in the younger generation are seeking more, a more firm foundation. 

KATHRYN: More traditional services. And in many cases, they’re going more toward, if they are brought up in the Protestant church, for example, they’re going towards Catholicism or Hebrew Roots. For those of you that are familiar with that. So…

KEN: The law, in that case it would be the law. 

KATHRYN: Or yeah, just a more towards church history. 

KEN:  And I think this is strange for older people like me, because when we, like an old guy like me who walked to school five miles uphill both ways, you know, when we look at the younger generation, we see more flighty, you know, more like because of postmodernism. Postmodernism is that, and that has heavily influenced our culture for the last couple decades, right, where there are no absolutes. Your truth is your truth and my truth is my truth and never the two shall meet and things like that. 

And so when we hear that, you know, younger people are turning away from that, or at least some of them are, that’s like, wow, that doesn’t, that doesn’t compute, you know, that, that they’re rejecting this philosophy, this worldview that says there is no absolute truth to, no, we want to go back to where there is this strong tradition that we can stand upon. 

And I’ve even heard that some of them are even going back to the Latin mass. You know, they don’t even understand the words, but this has an ancient history. It has an ancient tradition. This is something that has stood the test of time, and this is where we’re gravitating to. 

KATHRYN: Yeah, I think obviously it’s true we are still dealing with postmodernism within our churches and in our culture, but the pendulum, it just seems like it’s very reactionary. And so the Church swung towards, or, and again, I’m using the word Church here very broadly, big C. Christendom, that as it’s being influenced by our culture, the pendulum swung very much towards seeker-friendly churches. And yeah, like you said, postmodernism and there is no absolute truth. 

KEN: And doctrine doesn’t matter. 

KATHRYN: And inerrancy is not important. 

KEN: Yes, nothing. 

KATHRYN: And, you know, Genesis is a poem. It’s not literal, you know, these things are not meant to be taken in a very literal way. That, that very much took a hold. But in time, what that did, at least in part, is it created, there’s no stability. There’s no foundation. And so this younger generation is feeling very loosey-goosey, if you will. They’re feeling unstable. 

KEN: And I would think, too, that, I mean, I have no idea what the statistics are. But I would think that if you’re a young family, for example, you, okay, let’s say you’re a young couple and you grew up and that everything goes, things change when you start having kids. 

KATHRYN: Yeah, what are we supposed to teach our kids, right? And so these, they’re just looking for concrete answers in a very abstract culture, right? 

KEN: Now, I will say that in my experiences, like, for example, in the military, I would have people come to me, and I’m thinking of a few couples just in my head right now, who did come and say, you know, I didn’t grow up Catholic, but my wife and I, you know, we have kids and we’re going to join the Catholic Church because, and this isn’t the young people today, this is, we want something that’s stable. 

KATHRYN: But stability, we want to give our kids structure. 

KEN: And there’s even a very evangelical Protestant seminary in Charlotte, North Carolina, Southern evangelical seminary, and they had a movement with the students and even some of the professors who converted to Catholicism because of the, well, that’s, that’s the ancient, old church—

KATHRYN: It’s the ancient traditions.  And that is comforting. Traditions are powerful. 

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KATHRYN: Traditions are powerful, and they bring a certain level of comfort and stability when the world does not feel very stable. And let’s be honest, the world does not feel very stable right now. And so I think that’s another factor.

KEN: I mean, imagine being a young parent, for example, and you know, in the schools, they’re saying a man could become a woman, a woman could become a man. I mean, that’s just one example. It’s like, how crazy is it, you know, it’s like you’re on one of those swinging bridges. 

KATHRYN: When everything feels out of control, what is it that you want? It’s like, you know what it reminds me of, it reminds me during the pandemic when everything, everything was just crazy and people didn’t know what to do, what did they do? They just went to the stores and bought up all the toilet paper.  And they said, like, I remember 

KEN: They had control over that. 

KATHRYN: It was one thing that they could control was I could, I know that this is a necessity and this is a need and it’s something I can do. I can go to the supermarket and buy 50 packs of toilet paper. And so that’s what they did. And it was crazy, but it made people feel like, okay, I’ve done something. And in a way, I think of it, like that, it’s a form of, I feel like there’s no control, I feel very unstable, things are so abstract. We’re looking for something that we can control and stability. Well, what does that look like? Okay, I can go to a Latin Mass and sit there and hold my rosary and say this prayer and hum these things. 

KEN: Knowing that people have been doing this for, what, you know, 1500 years, even longer than that.

KATHRYN: And that makes me feel like, it makes me feel like I have a form of stability in a very unstable situation. We’re not psychiatrist, but I think that we’re in the ballpark when we say that. 

KEN: Yeah, and I think we can say, obviously, the answer is it’s not church tradition that we go back to. It’s the Scriptures. What has God said. And people are seeking that, and that’s our message. Our message is, no, it’s not in these, you know, these traditions that go back, you know, 1500 years or however long they go back, it’s what does the Word of God say? 

And you were talking before we started this particular issue about something you saw in a recent, what would be an article? 

KATHRYN: Yeah, I saw there was a Lifetime article that came out in the 1950s about this little, little town in northern Italy. I think it was the name of it was [unintelligible], but I may be butchering that. Please, nobody, nobody test me on this. But regardless, it was this, it was this town in a reporter from the Life magazine when it did, you know, photography took pictures of this town. And what had happened was there, there were mummies found in the cathedral of this local city. 

KEN: A very Catholic area. 

KATHRYN: I meant to say Italy, heartland of Catholicism, and scientists think that there probably just was the mixture of the soil and, and who knows some, some natural cause, mummified about, I think they said 42 bodies that had been going back as dated as back even as far as I think the 1400s, like the black plague.

In response to this, the Catholic priests there, and there’s pictures of them said that this was an omen of God’s blessing on their town and it became customary for them to bring out these mummies and during festivals and feasts, and I’ll use the word parade, parade them around and, and they were revered, they were seen as the, the elders of the town, the mummies and that. 

KEN: Because they go back, if they go back to 1400, so that’s what, 600 years, 

KATHRYN: And it’s such a bizarre, I mean trigger warning, if you look up the pictures, it’s very, very disconcerting because it’s housewives and sun dresses and aprons and men and wearing their suits and ties, but they’re walking around with mummies. And they see this as God’s blessing upon their town and that was their tradition. That’s what they saw. 

And by the way, I think that’s an extreme example, but that’s not that far off from what you see traditionally in the churches in Italy. I’ve been to quite a few of the cathedrals there and you will see bones and a severed arm. I’ve seen many supposed martyrs, the bodies of martyrs. 

KEN: We went to the big cathedral in Milan in Italy and it’s the same thing, I mean you, you’ve got literal caskets in there and then you’ve also got statues of martyrs, you know, what is it Bartholomew that supposedly was skinned alive, yeah, so they’ve got this statue of him with his pieces of flesh carved out. I mean, it’s a statue. 

KATHRYN: Yeah. Same thing with they have a St. Lucy, whose eyeballs had, according to lore, had been gouged out and she was 

KEN: So all these traditions. And obviously this is another example of where these traditions can go. And oh yeah, that’s an ancient tradition, it goes back here and you’ve got these mummies and it goes back to ancient traditions, but that’s not the answer.

And I’m sure that, you know, someone might look at that and say, oh, but that gives me stability, you know, they could go to that cathedral in Milan and see this thing. I forgot how long it had been there, been there a long, long time and look at it and say it goes up hundreds and hundreds of feet and they can think of all the people that have been going there for centuries and find tradition. But of course, the answer for the young generation, for the old generation, for all the generations in between, it’s the Scriptures. We don’t go back to church additions. 

And of course, I think of the traditional things that Jesus had to fight. You know, the Jews in his day found so much comfort in the tradition of the elders. And no, what does the word of God say? 

And so for those who might be looking for stability, that’s what we would recommend. Go to the Scriptures and for if you’re an unbeliever, remember this, Jesus said, I give you eternal life to anyone who believes in Me for it. That’s what you can stake your life upon. So we hope that’s what you do. 

Well we hope that helps with this discussion and until next time, remember, keep grace in focus. 

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