Generations Style Now with Ryan Gaffney

Since the world seems very upside down these days, let us begin
with an upside down story. Many people do not realize that most
prestigious universities were begun with one of their primary
emphasis being to train ministers. Harvard and Yale were Puritan
schools. Harvard was named after a Christian minister. Yale was
started by a clergyman. Princeton defined Presbyterianism for a
long time finding its roots in The Log College designed
specifically to train ministers. One only has to check out the
old crests and latin slogans of many schools to discover the
truth of this.


There certainly is an irony to the fact that most of these
schools morphed into institutions overtly hostile to any version
of classical Christianity. By the early 1900’s farmers having
saved for a lifetime to send one of their children to college got
back a confident faithless adult child. Soon Bible Colleges
started to pop up, assuring parents this faithless transition
wouldn’t occur there.


But now the story gets even weirder. Churches themselves started
to imitate what happened in the colleges & universities. More
and more traditional beliefs were falling away as sophisticated
thinkers assured people that no one with a brain really believes
many of the things in the Bible any more. 19th Century
Philosophical Liberalism was turning into the story of 20th
Century mainstream churches. Intelligence was being measured not
by what one believed but by what they didn’t believe. Gone were
the Sunday School stories of a Creation mandated by God, Moses
and the burning bush, Jonah and the whale, Noah and the Arc let
alone Jesus walking on water and a gravestone rolled away. We
knew better now. 2000 years after the time of Christ we had it
figured out. Those poor ignorant people who for 1900 years
believed in a God who created something out of nothing and sent
his son to redeem mankind just didn’t get the truth.


By the time the 1970’s rolled around churches were pretty well
divided between those who were more “Bible believing” and those
more what we will call “Progressive”. For many, these issues just
weren’t doing anything for them spiritually, emotionally, or in
any way really, and the decline of church attendance got
momentum. It was boring, irrelevant, faithless and passé. 


But… then some young baby boomer church leaders decided that the
issues weren’t so much intellectual ones as they were stylistic.
Princetonian sermons with three alliterated points and a poem
weren’t relevant to real life. Hymns and responsive readings were
boring. Creeds in unison seemed meaningless. But what would
happen if we took a biblically based message with relevant
application for real life and combined it with music we actually
listened to and dropped out the boring liturgy, maybe even throw
in a drama or multi media show?


Orange County California had some of the first churches developed
with many of these thoughts. The Chrystal Cathedral was a
precursor of sorts to the movement and Robert Schuller a mentor
to a few. Calvary Chapel certainly comes to mind. South Coast
Community, now Mariners was another. Later on Saddleback took the
lead. That’s the kind of church many Millennials saw as typical
church. Let’s talk to one of them today.


Ryan Gaffney, Woodbridge High School Grad in Irvine and then
Concordia University in Irvine and then Austin Presbyterian
Theological Seminary. He now pastors College Park Presbyterian
Church in Orlando, Florida.