What do you think?
Rate this book
Ageless Faith: A Conversation between Generations about Church
A new generation invigorates the Church with fresh perspective and relevance while the other generation enriches us with their wisdom and experience. Pull up a chair and participate in real dialogue between leaders from both sides of the church generation gap. The issues in their denomination will shine a light on the same widening chasm within the whole body of Christ...and within your own fellowship. Father and son authors Keith and David Drury seek to bring all generations to the table for respectful and fruitful dialogue about some of the most controversial concerns facing the Church today. Dealing with timely issues such as worship, community, race, alcohol, and women in leadership, Keith and David model the kind of dialogue that empowers generations to define their differences, while still respecting on another and remaining united in Christ. In addition to offering probing questions for reflection, Ageless Faith provides teaching tips that help leaders guide discussion. Engage in the dialogue, and discover the common ground of our faith!
192 pages, Perfect Paperback
First published March 1, 2010
5 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
February 8, 2021
I really liked the concept of this book, but the book itself does not live up to its potential, in my opinion. The dialogues do not feel authentic, and the positions presented seem like caricatures of real positions. To be fair, the authors do say at the beginning that they are going to paint with very broad generational brushes that are more extreme than most actual real people who populate those cohorts. But as an early millennial myself, I find this book (regrettably) confirms many of my own latent suspicions about post-gen-x generations. Put simply, I am unimpressed with their character, their ideas, and their worldview (and now I'm the one painting with broad strokes). But I feel like I have more legitimacy to say so, since I'm not a cranky "get-off-my-lawn" boomer scolding the younger generation who are clearly going to hell wholesale. I belong to this younger cohort, and I generally find them to be whiny, entitled, lazy, unwise, averse to any discomfort, dismissive, arrogant, and disrespectful. And I don't trust people like that to make wise decisions about the future of the church.
There are references to Biblical principles within the covers of this book. But by and large, I found a conspicuous lack of Scriptural references to anchor the arguments made in this book. Again, great concept, but did not meet my expectations of the book.
Furthermore, it is a highly parochial argument, in the sense that it is very Wesleyan in its scope. I get it, written by Wesleyans predominantly for Wesleyans, with the understanding that others may be listening in. But I feel like it is hard to relate to these arguments as a member of a more conservative holiness denomination. Conversations about disco lights and ordination of females for ministry are a few years down the road for my church (I hope). And that's one point that really concerns me. The Pilgrim Holiness church used to be what my church is now. And to see how liberal the Wesleyan church is today compared to what it once was is a lesson in itself, one that appears to be largely absent from the conversation of these two apparently thorough-going Wesleyans! How is it that these two thoughtful people (which they obviously are, or they wouldn't care enough to have this conversation, much less publish it) can have a conversation about the future of the church without a clear focus on, and a thorough evaluation of, how the church has changed in the last two generations?
There are some points made in the book that I find myself vigorously agreeing with, including the point David makes in the final chapter that the "content" of the book is less valuable than the model it proposes of respectful dialog.
But having said that, the cohort David is speaking for evinces a myopic insensibility of the propensity for young people to lack wisdom. Up and coming young leaders who have a passion for correcting the errors of their predecessors seem to lack humility in their efforts to do so.
G.K. Chesterton astutely observed in 1922, “I believe what really happens in history is this: the old man is always wrong; and the young people are always wrong about what is wrong with him. The practical form it takes is this: that, while the old man may stand by some stupid custom, the young man always attacks it with some theory that turns out to be equally stupid.”
All generations would be well-advised to keenly attend to these words of wisdom.
There are references to Biblical principles within the covers of this book. But by and large, I found a conspicuous lack of Scriptural references to anchor the arguments made in this book. Again, great concept, but did not meet my expectations of the book.
Furthermore, it is a highly parochial argument, in the sense that it is very Wesleyan in its scope. I get it, written by Wesleyans predominantly for Wesleyans, with the understanding that others may be listening in. But I feel like it is hard to relate to these arguments as a member of a more conservative holiness denomination. Conversations about disco lights and ordination of females for ministry are a few years down the road for my church (I hope). And that's one point that really concerns me. The Pilgrim Holiness church used to be what my church is now. And to see how liberal the Wesleyan church is today compared to what it once was is a lesson in itself, one that appears to be largely absent from the conversation of these two apparently thorough-going Wesleyans! How is it that these two thoughtful people (which they obviously are, or they wouldn't care enough to have this conversation, much less publish it) can have a conversation about the future of the church without a clear focus on, and a thorough evaluation of, how the church has changed in the last two generations?
There are some points made in the book that I find myself vigorously agreeing with, including the point David makes in the final chapter that the "content" of the book is less valuable than the model it proposes of respectful dialog.
But having said that, the cohort David is speaking for evinces a myopic insensibility of the propensity for young people to lack wisdom. Up and coming young leaders who have a passion for correcting the errors of their predecessors seem to lack humility in their efforts to do so.
G.K. Chesterton astutely observed in 1922, “I believe what really happens in history is this: the old man is always wrong; and the young people are always wrong about what is wrong with him. The practical form it takes is this: that, while the old man may stand by some stupid custom, the young man always attacks it with some theory that turns out to be equally stupid.”
All generations would be well-advised to keenly attend to these words of wisdom.
Displaying 1 of 1 review