Training the Next Generation to Hope in God, Not Us

"We don't want the future generations to put their hope in our musical preferences or our way of doing things. Or our structures. Or our band arrangements. Or our communications methods. We want them to hope in God. We want them to hope in Jesus Christ. It's important that we're not the object of someone's hope."

I love hearing that from someone who's in the generation ahead of me, because it's the opposite message from what we normally hear. The message older generations communication, mostly implicitly, is that what we prefer is most important; what we like, what we do, what we know, the way we worship, the music we enjoy, that's what's important and your role is to learn to appreciate what we like so that it will live on when we're gone. All of those messages tell younger generations to hope in the older generations - they will lead us and show us the way, but only as long as we do it their way. That's not Jesus and that's not the gospel.

I'm amazed when I hear some talking of "traditional worship music" has if it is anything but preference - it's not. And I'm often tempted to point out to those folks that John Calvin, whose theology they love, was appalled by the pipe organ being used in worship services. In fact he called it an idol. But fortunately they don't have to worship God in the same way that John Calvin did, and future generations don't need to worship God the same way they do. It's the gospel that matters - not us, not our likes and dislikes, and that's the message we need to communicate to the children and youth we are mentoring and teaching.

HT: Worship Matters