The Inside of Aging: Disappointment with Church

This is #17 in a series of essays on aging.

Young people run hot and cold, and that shows in the way they relate to church. They are rarely neutral. They either love it or hate it. At least, that’s my memory. I remember my fellow college students being fiercely loyal to a local church, loyal to the point of blindness. The pastor could do no wrong, and very bright students took his word for things without blinking.

At the other extreme were students who blamed church for half the evils of the world. They were intolerant of the church’s intolerance, and they expressed it vehemently.

It doesn’t look as though anything has changed. Blind loyalty or angry rejection: those seem to be the choices for young people.

You can find those attitudes in older people, but not as frequently. As we age we settle into ourselves, and don’t stray far out of our regular habits. Church, or non-church, is one of those. Maybe at one time, not attending church was an act of conscious rebellion. Not any more. By the time they are old, it wouldn’t occur to non-attenders to go to church on Sunday morning any more than to a strip club.

It’s not terribly different with those who attend church regularly. Are they loyal? Yes, but it’s rarely a fighting loyalty. It’s what they do. They know what to expect, and they like it.

That’s the context within which disappointment with church sets in. It usually begins with change. Music seems to be the most volatile subject: whatever is new or different, whatever displaces the familiar, will certainly upset some people, usually older people.

Any change rankles. The time of service—my goodness, it seems that some people think it was written on Moses’s stone tablets that church must start at 10:00. (Or 11:00, or 9:30. It doesn’t matter, as soon as you establish a time, it’s sacred.)

How about a new pastor? How about a new color of paint? Some people will fight and protest, but most just grumble. Or even less: they say nothing but suffer disappointment. Church just isn’t the same for them.

Old people lose control of the church. Largely, that’s because they don’t want to be in charge any longer. They don’t feel up to attending night board meetings. Tasks like organizing a luncheon or leading a Bible study demand more than they care to manage. In their younger years, they were eager to take things on. Now they want the comfort of church to continue to flow, just as it always has, without their leadership.

They miss the respect they got from leading, however; and they miss the sense of control. For aging people lots of life begins to feel beyond control.

Most carry on. They’ve weathered worse crises in life. Nonetheless, it’s a sorry reality when going to church becomes a bore or a chore. Not quite what you wanted it to be. Not quite what you remember.

Church is meant to be deeply optimistic. It’s based on idealism: that people can gather to love each other and adore God. Love, joy and peace are its aims. Community is its form. Family is its constitution. You should never feel disappointment with church. People do, however. Older people do. Yet they keep going. It’s a habit.

Going to Church

My friends Dean and Mindy took us along on their excellent adventure visiting churches all over California. (They are warming up for a 2016 odyssey visiting 50 churches and 50 bars in 50 states.) Since they are doing urban churches right now, we went to an Oakland church (ACTS Full Gospel Church of God in Christ) that just happened to be within walking distance of the Oakland Coliseum. It turned out that the A’s were playing, so after church we attended the game, which the A’s sadly lost in extras. Here’s Dean and Mindy’s blog, in case you are interested in the church. They forgot to write about the game.

New Music

During my five-month trip I attended a number of different churches on three continents. Based on a limited sample size, I concluded that a new liturgy of worship has emerged globally. The form has become as comfortable to a new generation as the Latin mass was to Christians a thousand years ago.
The basic framework goes like this:
–Pastor greets and welcomes
–Congregation stands to sing 3-5 numbers of “contemporary” band-led music
–Prayers
–Announcements
–Sermon
–One more song and go home.
The music is the key innovation—it’s “worship” directed to God. (Who was “Heavenly Sunshine” directed to?) It’s led by a band, not an organ.
Two facts about the music stood out to me as I experienced it in a dozen churches. First, a lot of it is bad. The words are often awkwardly written, and most tunes are forgettable and predictable. I take it that this is related to my second observation: it’s constantly changing.
I can’t think of a single “contemporary” song that has lasted ten years. Rather, there’s a constant renewal. New songs sweep around the globe on a yearly basis and replace the last round. Today, nobody sings “Majesty.” Fifteen years ago, nobody didn’t.
There must be a million song-writers strumming their guitars and groping for words even as I type this. A few of their songs will make it onto the global merry-go-round. Then they will fall off.
But isn’t it a good thing that the church is making new music? I’d rather be part of something experiencing awkward growth spurts, than something that stands dead still. The church today can’t help itself, it has to write new songs. On the whole, that’s a good thing.