I’ve seen it several times recently. “We are following the old
paths!” I got an invitation to an “Old-Fashioned” tent revival. As the
modern world rushes headlong in new, strange and frightening ways, there
is a tendency for us to try to hold on to what is old, what is
comfortable – that which we have known. We look back to the middle of
the 20th Century as a golden age for the church (well, white Americans
do – blacks probably don’t remember that era of church-approved racism,
discrimination and segregation quite so fondly!).
I’ve known people (lots of them) who think that everything that is
wrong with the church today is because we have abandoned the “old ways”
of the mid-20th Century. The solution, then, is to simply go back to how
we did them back. If we just did today what we did then, what happened
then would happen now!
I think every church ought to, in some ways, be “old-fashioned.” My
quarrel with the phrase is that when we talk about the old ways, we miss
it by about 1900 years. For most, old-fashioned means, “the way we did
things back in my day.” We ought to seek to pattern our churches after
the New Testament church as much as we can. Our doctrine ought to be old
doctrine, built directly from the scriptures. Our practices ought to be
biblical practices translated into modern situations. But I fail to see
the value in trying to take the modern church (as messed-up as it is)
back to the 1950s and 1960s. Suits and ties. Hymns with a piano and
organ. Spring and Fall Revivals. Continue at Dave Miller
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