Church Generations

“The secret of change is to focus all your energy not on fighting the old but building the new.”  -Socrates

The style of church service changes with every generation. Newer and greater ideas come about to improve or modify the way the community of the church worships.

You can tell from the different ways generations act or dress in church that they have different ideas of how church services should be structured. In my family there are the three layers of generations, my parents, my grandparents, and I. Whenever we go to church with my grandparents, I always “have” to wear either a dress or nice pants and a nice shirt. I almost never would wear something like jeans. With my parents, it’s a little more laid back. The big rule we have is that you can’t wear words on the shirt and have to look decent. If I were to go to church on my own I would probably follow those rules but there are times that I will wear words to church though they are church related shirts. The idea of having different dress codes is weird in the fact that over time these generations were taught different dress etiquette and the formality of clothing in the church has changed a great deal.

Today many churches have service on Saturday along with Sunday. In recent years the number of churches having Saturday service has grown immensely. Saturday service came about because not everyone could make church Sunday morning. People’s lives were getting really busy so they had to add additional times to have church service.

Also churches are starting to have more contemporary services. These contemporary services are a lot more to the point and usually have more fun upbeat music that is sung. The music includes more instruments then just an organ. In today’s world people don’t want a long explanation, they just want fast.  In these more contemporary services the sermons are usually shorter and more to the point. They have topics that correlate more to today’s world and everyday life. Many churches will have multiple services; some being contemporary and other services being more traditional. This accommodates the needs of more generations within the congregation.

I believe these changes and other changes over time aren’t a big deal and are fine for the church. Contemporizing happens everywhere in the world. The church is a place to praise God and to learn more about Him. As long as I get to do those two things I feel that any church service, either contemporary or traditional is acceptable.