Stinking Thinking
I went to a training event on “Leadership” the other day sponsored by a church organization. During the class the instructor made this comment. “I grew up listening to the old songs of the church and The Gaithers. I still love the music very much, but when you listen to this old style of music and it brings a tear to your eyes it is more nostalgia than anything else.” I don’t desire to misled here, I love the newer worship songs and I believe we must stay up-to-date when it comes to worship styles, but my friends this is not worship wars; this is postmodern stinking thinking at its very worst. In the postmodern church there isn’t any room for those over fifty because the over fifty are too melancholy to feel the very presence of God.
Graham Johnston says this in describing the postmodern person, “In the end, ten distinctives would emerge as the hallmark of postmodern people: they’re reacting to modernity and all its tenets, they reject objective truth, they’re skeptical and suspicious of authority, they’re like missing persons in search of a self and identity, they’ve blurred morality and are into whatever’s expedient, they continue to search for the transcendent, they’re living in a media world unlike any other, they’ll engage in the knowing smirk, they’re on a quest for community, and they live in a very material world.”[1]
I find it very interesting that there is such a push in the modern church to give over control to those who are under forty, even when they don’t have a good understanding of clear biblical doctrine. Is it because leadership is afraid these younger folks will leave the church? I think so! When we should be encouraging the younger generation to repent from their stinking thinking, we are giving them the keys to the building. At a time in our church world when we are losing strong voices we need the mature voices that are still with us to stand and correct the foolishness that is so prevalent in the church today.
[1] Graham Johnston, Preaching to a Postmodern World: A Guide to Reaching Twenty-First Century Listeners (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2001), 26.
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