This needs to be a podcast discussion.
How does a pastor learn culture shifts in the congregation? How does a pastor stay ahead (as much as possible), without losing the sheep that straggle along behind? How does a pastor help a church change culture to meet and new and rising or changing demand?
How do pastors learn to really see, to perceive?
Reviewing Skidelsky’s, “Mindless: The Human Condition in the Age of Artificial Intelligence.”
“the subtle shift in what it means to be human when the architecture of daily life—how we work, relate, remember, even grieve—is increasingly determined by technical systems indifferent to context or value. We no longer simply use machines; we inhabit them.” Mindless Machines, Mindless Myths | Los Angeles Review of Books
Audio now available
"He declared all authority had been given to Him, but you know, authority is as authority does.
“Have we now come to the point where we are empathizing with the disciples? Where Jesus’ declaration of authority has restored to it the dissonance the disciples would have heard? Where we, too, are able to enter into their questioning and sense of joy intermixed with dread?”
I had a conversation with a friend (laymen, both of us) who goes to a large multi-campus church. They have a “traditional” service that they agreed to take on with a real estate deal 10 or so years ago, following a decision by the elders of the prior church 10 or so years prior.
The church is starting to feel like this traditional service is kind of a boat anchor at this point—these are my words not his or his elders’—and they want to cut it loose. But how do you do that?
Answering questions like these aren’t easy. The elders of the prior church took what looked like an easy step, but in retrospect, it was a two-decade long church split process, not a clever solution to a difficult problem.
But the problem remains: How do you lead a church through massive cultural shifts between grandparents and their own grandchildren? Or situations where the neighborhood changes so drastically, including possibly the language spoken in the streets? Or a combination of the two, as when ethnic churches who have always worshiped and preached in the source country’s language (e.g. Korean) deal with grandchildren who don’t even understand the source country’s language?
Sex (male or female) is most fundamental category of man’s existence. God made woman to be man’s helper. Not man to be woman’s helper, or each to be each other’s helper. Woman to be man’s helper.
Christians say “yes.”
Non-Christians say “no.”
Which are you?
Dear John, years ago, I wanted to consider having a service that would meet on the other side of town and have no vulgar tongue/vernacular instruments, It’s the IU, educated, rich side of town. The music itself would be largely the same words since our worship had never deviated from Psalms and objective and doctrinal content. Never any HIllsong or Gaither or grace mantras.
I worked with Dave Curell and he vetoed the idea, explaining that it would ruin our unity. As he saw it, good things had happened by forcing everyone to sacrifice their preferences equally, and if we had another worship service for the classicists (what some might call prigs), pride would set in, and jealousy and competition. In other words, it’s good for elders to force everyone to love each other, and what better way to do so than to make everyone sing the same songs accompanied by the same instruments.
Haven’t put much time into this explanation, so it’s rough. Still, it did work and my bad idea never got past Dave Curell into any session meeting. So yes, I think your friend is right. This second service is undoubtedly an anchor, and so my next question is what the church got in exchange for their promise to leave them alone in their ghetto? Love,
I don’t have answers to these specific issues; just to say we should be comforted that our fathers in the faith faced similar issues. Back in the time of the early church, the center of gravity of the church started out being among the Jews, and based on how the Apostle Paul speaks to his fellow Jews in various places, it sounds to me like a lot of them more or less continued to keep parts of the ceremonial law where they could: they were already circumcised, they already had their established patterns of living — the kinds of material in the clothes they wore, what kind of meat they ate at family gathering times, etc. It was no longer forbidden to associate with Gentiles, but for the middle aged for example after half a lifetime of avoiding such association there surely would have been difficulty establishing such associations and friendships, if only because the lion’s share of these kinds of relationships are developed when you’re young. So for the older generation there must have been many habits and customs that persisted.
Yet with this twist: the older generation could not teach that these customs were any longer important, or necessary, because God had brought a new freedom! The younger generation would be venturing out into that freedom. The older generation would be fighting feelings that something was wrong, that something was lost. The younger generation would immediately begin stumbling into sins of misusing their new freedoms and would need the wisdom and guidance of the older generation in these matters, even as the older generation were fighting their own hearts to love God’s new covenant. What a bittersweet time for those older ones. What sanctification through suffering there must have been. And the kingdom of heaven advanced.
The issues are different for us but we should take comfort from the suffering of our fathers in times of change and the good fruit God brought out of it.
Subscribe to “Them Before US” substack. Here’s excellent horrible article (HT Andrew Dionne)
“Force everyone to love each other”
This is the thing, isn’t it? It’s so natural for Christians living in community to find innumerable ways to hate, bite, and devour one another.
It’s kinda like when I’d make my sons “hug it out”, but on a corporate scale.
My understanding is the answer to this question is “Real Estate”. Two churches actually made these decisions. One church had been around for decades and decided to start the “traditional service”, presumably for the usual reasons.
That church was winding up operations (I don’t know why) and another church was looking for additional campuses for their multi-site model. As a part of that real estate deal the closing church asked the multi-site church to continue the traditional service at that property. (Bear in mind you guys are getting this third or fourth-hand by now.)
I appreciate all of your thoughts on this topic. “Force everyone to love each other” seems to me like the shorthand for better answers here. I think a lot of these decisions were grounded in, basically, selfishness.
Dividing up a church into traditional and contemporary congregations is damaging to both groups (ie the whole church). And, for what it’s worth, I think it’s also a sign that whatever else is happening in that church, real pastoral care isn’t.
A slightly different take on things, if I may.
When I turned up in my first Anglican church, it had the usual ‘family’ service at one time in the morning, an earlier ‘traditional’ service; and then in the evening, a students & singles service. I wondered why the traditional service was in place, given that the youngest regular attender there was about 50, and I was then 28. I was of the view that it would likely die out in time. But actually, it didn’t; a few years later, it was still going and the youngest person there was still about 50.
What I eventually came to realise that what kept that service going was a distinct age-and-stage thing. The evening service also had an age-and-stage thing about it, so was quite distinct again (and included a lot of people ‘moonlighting’ from their home churches, but that is a story for another day).
On a related note, I concur with the comments above about ethnic churches. For the first generation of arrivals, they’re essential; but the grandchildren of those arrivals don’t see the need. Example: in New Zealand, we had a lot of Samoans and other Pacific Islanders arrive as guestworkers in the post-war period, and both the Presbyterians and one Pentecostal movement worked to plant churches for them. The grandchildren, however, are less and less interested; they would far rather worship in the standard churches, which they see as not bogged down in the ‘traditions of the elders’.
Can’t help but think that churches with different styles of liturgies and music separated by the scheduling of the sanctuary/meeting place are not churches with 95% participation over many years of congregational household fellowships every Lord’s Day afternoon or evening. In other words, I would expect churches providing separate and distinct food menus don’t eat at the same table, and so are not one body in the way churches with one menu are.
Concerning ethnicity, I agree about generational separation of immigrant communities. Seen it. But the goal should always be for shepherds to mediate that conflict and do their best to discipline the oldsters and youngsters equally to have love and empathy for each other, and remain united. Love,
This is one of my main concerns. The very last thing newly married and young families need is to be segregated with people only like themselves. Same for university students. Same for the empty-nesters, the widowed, and the elderly. Same for single brothers and sisters. Same for all of us. That’s not the model we see in the New Testament.
And if separating people based on worship or stylistic preferences keeps the peace, how shallow is our theology of worship, of body life, of the congregation, of what actually produces peace?
Aaron - I do get your point here … and I think we would also all agree that it is easier said than done. I was once in a church where at the time it seemed that singles were only on the pastoral radar when they were preparing to get married! 
Or they and the married couples without children are only valued as free babysitting.
A tribute
Audio now available Warhorn Blog Posts | Jim Dobson, 1936-2025.
Here’s a horror story of the feds’ ability to destroy a family farm, but it ends with some sort of vindication:
“Four years later, after almost a decade-long legal nightmare, Joe received the news of the Third Circuit’s vindication via a phone call from IJ. Struggling to process the victory, he fell to his knees under a flood of tears—and let go of nine years of pain.”
Audio now available
https://warhornmedia.com/2025/08/18/may-god-bless-the-people-of-england-and-america-once-more/
England has long been an explicitly Christian state. England is under the authority of their monarch who is the supreme governor of the Church of England (Anglican Church). The Church of England is Christian. The Church of England is Trinitarian and Protestant, and its confession, the Thirty-nine Articles, is not Baptist or Lutheran or Methodist, but Reformed Protestantism. Finally, up to 26 peers of the House of Lords are appointed from the Bishops and Archbishops of the Church of England, explicitly named “Lords Spiritual.”