According to the Pew Research Center, Christians in America are older than non-Christians, a chasm that is likely to grow as fewer young people join churches and decline to affiliate with any religion.

Whereas the average follower of Jesus Christ in the United States is 43, the average unaffiliated citizen is 33. The older someone is, the more likely they are to be Christian – a nod to earlier eras when a family’s life often revolved around a Christian church. More than 70% of people over the age of 50 are Christian, an association that grows to nearly 90% for those in their late 80s and 90s.

This reality highlights the desperate need to evangelize younger people, a convictional truth that also begs a revealing question: Are we burdened for the rising generation to the point of taking sacrificial action? After all, it was Charles Spurgeon who once observed, “A winner of souls must first be a weeper of souls.”

But this growing age disparity also highlights a serious concern, a development with significant consequences.

For the Body of Christ to thrive and evangelize, we must cultivate and normalize multi-generational churches – congregations that worship side by side, arm-in-arm.

In a deeply thoughtful and practical message delivered at the Southern Baptist Convention’s Bridge Builder’s Conference in 2003, beloved pastor and teacher Dr. Warren Wiersbe hinted at this challenge facing Christians.

“The history of progress in this world is the sad story of the conflict between open doors and closed minds,” he said.

Multi-generational churches need to be full of believers with open minds – worshipers of all ages who are willing to learn from those whose life experiences may be very different from what they’re accustomed to.

The “Worship Wars” in the late 1970s and 1980s splintered countless churches. Even today, debate over style of music divides congregations. In many of these churches, the decision has been made to offer two or even three types of services. The hymns are usually featured at the early service and the more contemporary music follows later on. Some churches offer a third option of maybe bluegrass or even jazz.

This accommodation is offered to address the frustrations of those who think contemporary music is loud and repetitive – and those who think hymns are old and stodgy.

Major issue: When you separate worship styles, you create multiple churches within one, thereby alienating the old from the young and the young from the old.

While both are harmed by such division, it’s the younger Christians who suffer the greatest and risk losing the most.

It was the apostle Paul who urged Titus:

Teach what accords with sound doctrine. Older men are to be sober-minded, dignified, self-controlled, sound in faith, in love, and in steadfastness. Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled. Likewise, urge the younger men to be self-controlled. Show yourself in all respects to be a model of good works, and in your teaching show integrity, dignity, and sound speech that cannot be condemned, so that an opponent may be put to shame, having nothing evil to say about us (Timothy 2:1-8).

How are older Christians supposed to teach younger believers if pastors and church communities are not deliberately and actively investing in a multi-generational worship environment?

Older Christians also stand to learn from younger believers. The Lord uses people at all ages and stages to do His work. Proximity to one another, though, is critical.

“The ages are colliding,” acknowledged Dr. Wiersbe. “The new has not yet been born, and the old has not yet been buried. It’s a difficult time to serve.”

“Serve” is the operative word. Are we leaning into the church worship debate with a heart geared toward service to others – or a selfishness revolving around what will best satisfy our tastes?

Once more, Paul’s words are instructive: “Be devoted to one another in love,” he wrote to the Romans. “Honor one another above yourselves” (Romans 12:10).

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