David:         I have a feeling Karen that this topic of our podcast is going to be painful for some of our listeners.

Karen:         And if the truth be known, it’s not going to be all that easy for us to talk about either.

Intro:            Welcome to the Before We Go Podcast featuring Dr. David Mains and his wife, noted author Karen Mains. Here’s David and Karen Mains.

David:         We had four children, all married and with their own families. Most of our listeners know our youngest son died at age 42 with lymphoma. We now have nine grandchildren but no great grandchildren.

Karen:         And to get right to our point, all in our family love the Lord but only one third of our children or grandchildren attend church regularly.

David:         We wonder how typical our family is and my guess is that this is a real problem. In fact, in many places across the country, the local churches dying. Six of our children or grandchildren are in church every Sunday, 12 or not. Do you think this is difficult, Karen?

Karen:         I think it’s very difficult. The younger generation seems not to be gravitating toward a regular church attendance. And those numbers they’ve been examined and published and reported and credentialed research.

David:         And the church is losing people all the time. The numbers keep going down.

Karen:         Churches are closing, pastors are leaving.

David:         But most of the people they are missing are the younger generation.

Karen:         Right.

David:         The older generations, it’s not that we’re great, but they are very much practiced church attenders. But when you come to the new generation, they’re not as patient. Let me put into a sentence what it is we’re saying. So right up front, people know where we’re headed, okay? Passing the faith in its various essential elements from one generation to the next needs to be seen as a Christian family priority.

I’ll say it again. And when I say various essential elements, I’m talking about church attendance as being one of those. Passing the faith and its various essential elements from one generation to the next needs to be seen as a Christian family priority.

Karen:         And this is complicated even more so coming out of the COVID restrictions for the pandemic. But people don’t stay in the same community that they grew up with. So, they have all of those networks that they have, your high school classmates, parents, you know. And so, with that movement, and then there’s something about the nature of the traditional church that is not attractive to this younger generation. And we’re talking about young adults.

David:         I would say one of the things is that the world has changed in many, many ways. And one of those is that lecture is not nearly as dominant a means of communication as it wants. What? Who’s somebody in your mind who’s a really good speaker, Karen?

Karen:         Well, we just watched Obama on television, and we were watching the election reporting. He spoke, and I’d forgotten what a really good speaker he is in the platform. And all the commentators were remarking on how good it was to hear Obama speaking. And of course, he’s traveling for the Democratic Party trying to raise votes.

David:         You’d say if you’re Republican, Donald Trump is a… he’s a captivating speakers. Its amazing.

Karen:         To keep that large of a crowd for an hour and a half.

David:         And they’re paying to come in and hear him. Absolutely. I’ll talk about the one you said, okay, would you go to somewhere, say it took you 15 minutes to get there to hear Obama speak?

Karen:         I might do that if I knew he was coming and then I had time on my schedule.

David:         Would you go twice a year?

Karen:         I probably wouldn’t just because your schedules get so busy and your agendas are busy and once I heard him, and then we’re getting a lot of clips of him right now.

David:         What about if you had to go to hear him once a month?

Karen:         No, probably wouldn’t.

David:         What if you had to listen to him…

Karen:         Every week?

David:         That’s what the church is dealing with. You’re having people listen to the same person primarily…

Karen:         Or a team of speakers.

David:         Well, Sunday after Sunday after Sunday, and this is not a lecture culture anymore. The church hasn’t dealt with that problem, but I don’t care how good a speaker you are. Most churches have one voice that is heard regularly over and over and over again. And after a while, people tune it out.

Karen:         Well, and we have a culture now that is driven by our social medias. If I’m doing research, I just go on to my computer and go on to the internet. So, I think that information is instantaneous. We have to do some mental work to make sure what we’re getting is factual, but it’s so instantaneous that in times past, church and preaching was an event.

David:         Well, lecture was an event.

Karen:         And lecture was an event.

David:         I mean, this Lincoln, Stephen Douglas debates.

Karen:         Yeah.

David:         Talk for a long time.

Karen:         So, but that’s because you didn’t have all this other stuff going on. So, we are in a very different kind of culture. And when young people say church doesn’t meet their needs or it’s not relevant to them, then we as people who are of our generation and those who are leaders in the church need to say, “Okay, why is this happening and what has to change so that young people will feel at home and want to come to church again.”

David:         Well, they’re comfortable with what is going on. In fact, in learning, it used to be you go to college and you listen to a lot of lectures.

Karen:         Lecture after lecture after lecture.

David:         You graduate from college in 1958. That’s what I think of. In those classes, you went and listened. It didn’t matter whether the guy was talking about geology or history. You listened to them talk and then you reproduced what they said. But that’s not where it is anymore.

Karen:         No, the higher education is changing to the model of participatory learning. Now that means you have a cohort of students on the college level, college-age students, who have a topic that they are going to research. They’re going to do their own learning and exposure to. And then your prof or your teacher becomes the advisor to that learning process. Now, what’s learned at that level where you are digging it out yourself and you’re going to use your research to find the sources. That kind of learning is probably going to stick with you much longer than classroom lecture learning. Because for classroom lecture learning, you listened, and you took notes to take the test to get a good grade on the test. So, this whole thing is shifting, and it is impacting then our younger generation and their relationship to the local church.

David:         It’s not shifting in terms of the church because instead of lecture we call it preaching. Now all of a sudden it becomes sacrosanct. If we would open up just a little bit to participatory learning in the church, it would be say… the minister is preaching and then someone in the congregation puts up his hand and says, “You know what, I’m confused what you just said. Could you go back and just explain?” Well, that would cause a huge reaction. The ushers may say, “We’ve got to get that guy out of here.” You know, but it’s a different world for younger people coming to church. They aren’t enamored with the person who talks for 25, 30 minutes nonstop.

Karen:         And the truth is someone like that is doing that pastor or that preacher a favor. I mean, it feels very disruptive, but it means that that person in the pew and probably representative of a lot of other people in those pews is saying to that speaker who’s using the lecture format, “I don’t understand what you’re talking about.” And that interaction, that kind of dialogue, if it can be programmed into the Sunday morning experience or the church experience will change the entire learning dynamic and participatory dynamic of a local church congregation.

David:         I would say another just critique that younger people bring up regarding the church is that it’s irrelevant. The issues that we’re dealing with say as a country are never mentioned in regard to the church, and I’ll give an illustration. Okay, I would say that America is wrestling whether the democracy is even a good form of government anymore. I mean, it was a wonderful gift of God to the world that you are not just beholden to a king or to all these nobles, but everyone has a voice in this. That’s being questioned now. Is it workable? Are the people smart enough to know who is good for them and who isn’t? You know, the whole country is pulling apart, but it’s like when you go into the church and some people may see this as good. That’s your safe place because we don’t talk about those matters here in the church. Does that make sense?

Karen:         Yeah, and I do think that the scripture has a lot to say with the very issues that even as far as the whole world, but America is part of that world is dealing with these days. What is truth?

David:         Who’s telling lies?

Karen:         Yeah.

David:         How do we figure out who is not telling the truth because you’re getting opposite viewpoints from various political parties? How do you figure it out? Say that’s a lie. People don’t even know what to believe anymore. It’s a huge issue in the church, for the most part, has not addressed that. Civil discourse, when is that legitimate? When is it gun violence?

Karen, I’ve been in a church all my life. Nobody’s ever mentioned gun violence, although you hear it all the time in regard to the news. And on top of that, Karen, you hear these incredibly sad stories of little children being shot, people going down the street and shooting indiscriminately.

Chicago, I used to drive into Chicago a lot. I’m careful now about going into Chicago because the gun violence is so much a part of it, but it’s like the church isn’t touched by any of this.

The black church, yes, I have to be very careful when I make those grandiose statements because the black church addresses it, calls out and help our people are being shot. You know, in fact, some of the shootings stay places in the churches. But in a large measure, it’s like the church is not relevant to what is going on in terms of the world.

So, I hear that, and I understand why younger people say, “I go to the church and it’s like a different world all of a sudden. It’s not the same world I’m living in, and I can’t connect the two.” So where do we go with all of this?

Karen:         This is a very current conversation for us. because we were part of the church renewal movement in the 60s. And so, a lot of these questions were things we wrestled with during those days as far as how do you make church relevant to a society that’s changing. And many of the things that we did in the church that we planted in the west side of the city in Chicago in the 60s came out of direct conversations with lay people. And they critiqued and then we said, “Well, what’s the solution for this?” And so there was this extraordinary dynamic. So, we’ve experienced that in the past.

David:         Okay. Here we are in our own situation.

Karen:         Two old people.

David:         Yeah, two old people who serve the Lord faithfully. And I would say two thirds of our offspring don’t go to church. Do they love the Lord? Yeah, I think they do. I think that’s legitimate. But going to church is essential. Once you take that away, you set up a situation where I can see Karen go another generation, another generation after we’re gone. And many of the people, the offspring are no longer followers of Jesus because once you take away church involvement, to me, that’s an essential. It’s just very, very important. And now we’re having to deal with this.

What do we say? Well, our younger people, our kids and their kids, they still think that we are special. They still value who we are. They love being with us. Give us another four or five years and they’re going to say, you know…

Karen:         …those doddering two.

David:          Those guys tell those same stories all the time. Sometimes the very same day. They don’t understand. Did you notice that rep is getting very frail? He doesn’t catch everything you say. Pretty spiles.

Karen:         So, this is a contemporary conversation that you and I are having right now. So, let’s just say here’s some things we’ve come up with as far as things that we, the two of us need to do with our own kids, the generation that we gave birth to and then their offspring.

David:         I can get through this conversation without crying. I can recall many conversations of parents who have said to me, “You know, our kids are not in church at all. Some of them are not following the Lord.” They get talking and if you ask a couple of questions, the tears come very, very quickly. We’re not at that place, but I can see us being at that place. And I think our children and our grandchildren love us. I’m very grateful for that. But somehow, we need to hone in on this now. What are we going to do about it?

Karen:         Well, one of the things that we decided we should be doing is having a monthly phone conversation using one of the platforms, zoom for instance, where we have a monthly agreed-upon time when we talk with all of our grandchildren. That’s including the little guys too, because they’re living in different places as well. They’re not all in the same geographic area. We want to make sure they don’t lose touch with each other and that we don’t lose touch with them.

In these last few years, the Lord has given us to be here on this earth. So that we can say, “How are you doing?” Now you used to take our kids out every single Saturday. One kid per Saturday.

David:         Until they got into college.

Karen:         Until they got into college. We’re leaving home.

David:          So, Saturday they could go to the restaurant, or their choice and we would just talk and I use the same format all the time. I don’t know why I did it and you didn’t join us, but that was kind of a daddy thing. I guess I’d say scripture talks about Jesus has he’s growing in stature, favor with God, favor with man and so on. That hits four areas, mental, physical, social, spiritual. So, I’d say, “How are you doing mentally? You think you’re growing mentally? How are you doing physically? How are you doing spiritually? How are you doing socially? Who are your friends?”

And we use that over and over again. I wouldn’t mind doing it. They’d probably say, “Yeah, we used to do that.”

Karen:          Yeah, I think that’s a questioning that during these phone conversations that we’re planning to set up with our kids and our grandkids that we might begin to say we want to make sure we are passing on some of the things that we’ve learned, but mostly we want to make sure we’re very connected with you. But we want you also to be connected with one another. So in between our phone calls that we have our group zoom sessions, we want you to be thinking about these categories. These how are you doing spiritually, mentally…

David:          Still reading books?

Karen:          Yeah, are you growing or you’re just eating mental junk food? And so those four categories to begin to examine it. We also want them to hear each other share those things. So, it’s when we go, they have developed this context of connections with one another and that’s the legacy we’d like to leave behind.

David:         Yeah, probably need to do it with the younger children and a separate group from the older children because quite a difference age wise.

Karen:          Yeah,

David:         But that needs to be done. I think that is fair. There’s this increased in wisdom, stature, favor with God…

Karen:          Favor with men.

David:         I look back at caring on our lives. We were deeply involved in the inner city for 10 years, planning that church. And then over a period of decades, we were involved in different churches, but you were traveling all the time.

Karen:          Yeah,

David:          You were speaking, and I was out all the time.

Karen:         You had conferences all over the place.

David:         Yeah, and that hurt us in terms of we weren’t nearly as involved with a given local church as we would have liked. I think probably the most influential of those, for six years, we were in a black church. We’d come out of the inner city, moved out to the suburbs where the broadcast was.

Karen:          And you had a close relationship with that black pastor.

David:         Yes, I did.

Karen:         One on one with Andre.

David:         That was probably the biggest involvement I was involved in. But when you’re gone a lot and you’re preaching a lot, it’s very difficult to maintain the continuity that normal people would have going Sunday after Sunday after Sunday. And I think that hurt us in ways. I look back and with the kids as they grew up, I think that I was gone. I was gone a lot. And I’m sad about that. I can’t do anything about that now. But I am in a place where I can say, “Okay, how do I start to correct that?” I’m not going to come at the kids. I’m not going to, in some way say,

Karen:         To guilt them?

David:          Well, that’s a good way to put it. I don’t want to guilt them.

Karen:          Yeah,

David:          I want them to know that this is very important to us. I don’t think it’s wrong to say “I’m praying that you’ll find a church that is just meeting the needs that you have in a marvelous way.” That would be a wonderful applause, prayer to God. I’m clapping God. I started clapping two weeks ago and I’m still clapping.

Karen:         We’re just starting to go to a local church here. We wanted to make sure we were involved in a local church we live in, as we’ve said before, in a little town of 27,000 people, 58% of it is non-white or Hispanic.

One of the things that we feel like we need to do is to establish a small group of people who meet regularly, at least twice a month, men and women, and just a small group of friends.

David:          Could be after church on Sundays.

Karen:         Could be after church on Sundays. What time is convenient for them? Where we do get together and share regularly our faith journeys, our personal journeys, the things we’re feeling good about, the things we’re struggling to overcome or to achieve. So that’s another area in our lives that we have to put together.

David:         This is Hebrews chapter 10 verse 25. “Let us not give up meeting together as some are in the habit of doing.” So there apparently were dropouts back then. “But let us encourage one another and all the more as you see the day approaching.”

It’s relevant, isn’t it?

Let’s go back to that sentence that I was saying it may make more sense now to people. Passing the faith and its various essential elements from one generation to the next needs to be seen as a Christian family priority. I’m talking about our family. I’m being quite open. I don’t see anyone in our family saying, “I don’t want to follow Jesus anymore.” That’s not where they are. But I’m seeing a danger because the church is very important. I don’t think churches are perfect. I look at the situation where the church is and there have to come huge changes. Maybe that will come because of persecution. Maybe that will become necessary because of the way the world is going. We don’t know. The world changes in drastic ways sometimes. But now is the time for us to begin to say, “Okay, let’s give more attention to the family while we are still of a good mind and pull this back in and say, the church is very important.               Let’s make sure we don’t give that up just without thinking about it.” And how can we be of help in a very special way to all who are listening to us now? I would say probably as this gets incorporated more into my prayer life, the tears are going to start to come because I feel intensely about it. And probably we’re going to be walking off a mountain that is steeper than what we had anticipated. It’s very difficult when you have established a habit of not going to church.

Your weekends to revolve in a different way than when you have established a habit of being part of a local church in a way that you’re not just absorbing, but you’re giving as well. So, we’re talking about a major problem here and part of the problem is of our own making. So, it’s not wrong for us to say, “Let us help somehow solve this as well.”

Outro:         You’ve been listening to the Before We Go podcast. And if you would like to write to us, please send us an email at the following address, hosts@beforewego.show. That’s all-lower-case letters. hosts@beforewego.show.

If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please remember to rate, review, and share on whatever platform you listen. This podcast is copyright 2022 by Mainstay Ministries, Post Office Box 30, Wheaton, Illinois 60187.