Lost or Let Go – It’s not about guitars and drums

The teaser on the news page first caught my attention, “The last generation to go to church on a regular basis…” The story (told just slightly differently here) reported an address given to a large gathering of Presbyterians by the vice-moderator of our General Assembly, Pastor Byron Wade.  I have been impressed with Byron since his election. He has been a winsome, candid and faithful voice during his almost completed two years of service; refreshingly honest and orthodox in situations often controlled by the bureaucratic spin doctors.
 
So Wade is talking to the assembled Presbyterians and asks for a show of hands for those born prior to 1970. That’s when he told them, “You are the last generation to go to church on a regular basis.” I wish the news stories, or Byron himself, had provided a reference or a footnote to offer some data or research to verify his contention, but we really don’t need it. It makes sense. It’s intuitively and experientially apparent. And if you’re wondering, here’s a good starting point: Mark Roberts at Beliefnet summarizes what we’ve been hearing increasingly clearly for the past decade or so. The church has lost the younger generation – and this is about much more than kids “taking a break from church” during college and for a few years afterwards.  “They’ll come back when they start having kids,” we try to kid ourselves into believing.  But they don’t and they won’t. And, by the way, it is not just those in the Millennial Generation – our own studies show that LPC people are almost exactly typical of those in a huge national survey, attending worship 23-28 times per year. Half-time is the new full-time. Continue reading →

A long and faithful life – Happy 100!

Later today Becky and I will drive nearly the full length of the Pennsylvania Turnpike as we head west to Beaver, the town near Pittsburgh where we lived for ten years prior to coming to Langhorne two years or so ago.  We’ll be gone for no more than thirty hours and back in plenty of time for Sunday worship. A lot of miles in a short time to be sure, but well worth it.  It’s Ruth’s one hundredth birthday party and we wouldn’t miss it.  Oh, Ruth may have slowed down some, but she’ll still be the life of the party with her quick wit and flirtatious ways.  
Ruth is a member of Park Presbyterian Church and an amazing person. Someone at the party is sure to mention the fact that she was astronaut John Glenn’s Sunday School teacher during his growing up years in Ohio, and she was. That was sometime in the late 1920’s or early 1930’s.  She was still teaching Sunday School, the women’s class at Park Church, into the Twenty-first Century.  And providing transportation to some of the “old ladies” in that big old Oldsmobile she’d drive around town. Rarely under the speed limit. Continue reading →

A Thanksgiving Day Run

This edition of the E-pistle arrives early as I am on my way to California for a few days of family time and then my annual trek to the West Coast Presbyterian Pastors Conference. I'm looking forward to both halves of the trip. And, yes, this is the conference where we have to come up with one word, just one word, to describe the year since eight days after Easter a year ago. No decision yet.

Yesterday afternoon around five I set out on a warm weather run through the streets of Langhorne. It was a thanksgiving day run. Today, April 7, marks seven years since I received a cancer diagnosis that shook my world and changed my life. And so as I ran along, I gave thanks to God for seven years as a cancer survivor. Specifically, I thanked God for: Continue reading →

The Story
 
As we gathered last night in the Upper Room and then at the foot of the beautiful terrible cross, we were reminded of the power of the old but new every year story of God’s incredible love for us. 
 
In our noisy world it is sometimes hard to hear the story. In fact, there are voices, loud voices, in our world that will do their best to drown out the story as it is told. The voices of materialism and unbridled consumption, self-concern and self-protection, greed and fear, a thousand isms and a million ideologies, addiction and abuse, self-pride and self-degradation, busy schedules and over-programmed kids, financial concern and the politics of hate – they all shout for our attention hoping that we will forget, perhaps never hear, the story of God’s love. Continue reading →