Author SCOTT BROWN
Publisher MERCHANT ADVENTURES LLC
ISBN 0982056745
Some of the basic terms used in this book may be unfamiliar to readers not from the USA but anyone affected by Western style Christianity will immediately recognize what they mean. Age segregated church is all around us and its dire results emerging after the sixty or eighty year old experiment. Age integrated church is the scriptural way. Scott Brown unfolds this fact in a very clear and systematic manner. The culture of youth meetings and youth pastors has been and is a cause for great concern.
The young people oriented ‘contemporary worship services’ along with the so called ‘worship concerts’ geared to keep the young of the churches entertained are not bearing the fruit of twenty something younger people who love the Bible, embrace Christ and His ways and who recognize with increasing clarity that they are a peculiar people separated unto God. The split between young and old as it is now rampant in churches is a phenomenon probably unthinkable one hundred and fifty years ago. That it plays into the breakdown of family life and the erosion of the mutual respect that ought to be present between the young and old is quite manifest in many churches. So many young that populate the churches up until the ages of about twenty-five disappear, as they get older. The love of the Bible and the gospel of Jesus Christ have not been their food and drink. The spirit of the world has invaded the churches in permitting this decline to occur. Pragmatism underlies what is now allowed as the norm. The thesis of this author is that radical action should be taken, a return to the primacy of what the Bible teaches as to church life and family is the only way back. A ruthless jettisoning of the separation of children, youth, young married’s, etc, etc, must take place. The church is the place of family where fathers take responsibility and teach and lead their little flock and do not offload it on to a non scriptural role, that of ‘youth pastor’ or ‘youth leader.’ This age segregated model has made its dubious entrance almost everywhere and the author of this book analyzes its effects and regards it as almost number one culprit for the superficiality of many. I would suggest that this is only partly correct, just as important a matter is the often times absence of clear and fearless expositing of the word of God. This book is pretty thorough. It looks at the reasons this unscriptural model has been accepted and looks just as honestly at the objections raised when it is even suggested that things should change and a return to church as family and the family itself should take place. Not everyone agrees that there really is a crisis of much magnitude but Scott Brown will challenge every reader to think again. From our own perspective, we have observed what he writes about with increasing alarm and agree that there needs to be much courage to challenge what is now regarded as thoroughly acceptable.
