BY BILL KNOTT
he pastor manages a wan smile as he surveys the thinly scattered congregation.
"The Lord has promised He will be wherever two or three are gathered in His name. And there are more than two or three of us here today.
"The youth group is away today, attending the conference youth rally at the Civic Center. For the next two weeks they'll be holding their own worship services in the gym.
"You may have also noticed that a lot of our grade school kids are gone today too. The Pathfinders and all the adult staff are downtown this morning, distributing food to the homeless."
The litany of absence is interrupted as he searches for a rumpled handwritten note.
"I've also been asked to remind you that the young adults are on a retreat this weekend at Flowing Streams State Park. They'll be having a special contemporary worship service at Frank and Lisa Gilbert's house next Sabbath as well.
"And, of course, many of you dropped your younger kids off in the Fellowship Hall this morning for our monthly Children's Church worship, where they are enjoying a wonderful program of puppets, skits, and singing."
Something like a sigh escapes as the pastor adjusts his wire-rimmed glasses and continues bravely with the words he does not mean.
"But we can still worship our Lord with undiminished vigor and vibrancy this morning," he says. "Let's begin our praise with hymn number 348, 'The Church Has One Foundation.'"
You smile, ruefully perhaps, remembering the Sabbaths when you also wondered where the church had gone.
If you are 30 years of age or older and a North American Adventist, chances are that you are worshiping more frequently with just the older half of the church these days. Youth retreats and teen worship services, young adult seminars and prayer conferences, puppet ministries and children's churches proliferate, and the obvious if unspoken message reminds you that there is a penalty for Christian maturity in contemporary Adventism: Grow up in Jesus, and you will probably be worshiping only with those of your own age. Someone else will hear your child's sung confession of her faith. Someone else will know your teen's first halting try at public prayer. Someone else will feel the deep, impassioned pleading of college students, pouring out their hearts to God for revival and resurrection. Worse yet, you will be told that these are all good things, that you should cheerfully accept your life sentence for having committed the crime of adulthood.
Age segmentation in worship, like many other things we have imported from our evangelical friends, is proving a lasting blessing to almost no one. Note these particulars of the indictment:
It obscures a crucial fact: The goal of all genuine youth ministry is the promotion of Christian maturity and the successful integration of children and youth as fully functioning members of the adult church.
It deprives the church of nearly half its number--and seven eighths of its passion. God save us from the day when we are indifferent to the physical presence of other believers, especially younger ones.
It relieves those planning adult services of their God-given responsibility to ensure that biblically sanctioned worship be simple, musical, delightful, and powerfully affecting.
It inculcates consumerism and narcissism all along the age spectrum, communicating disdain for those styles of worship and groups of worshipers that do not "meet my needs."
It introduces a starkly political approach to the Body of Christ. "Rights," "demands," "constituencies," and "agendas" multiply. Converts and discipleship do not.
This is no call to burn the puppet stage or cancel next month's youth-led worship service. If these things be worthy of the name of worship, then they are suitable for all of us--in the sanctuary, the gym, or the Fellowship Hall--and we may all learn from them and grow by them. It is too easy to hide from the God--given age diversity of the church by sending various segments to their respective corners to celebrate their visions of God unchecked and unaware of each other.
God gave us to each other, and calls us to each other. Let's do the difficult, the risky thing--and worship more together. He who blessed both the aged and the children with His presence will certainly do so again.
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Bill Knott is an associate editor of the Adventist Review.
