A GENERATION AWAY FROM EXTINCTION?

THE BIBLICAL STORY OF GENERATIONS

TONY NGUYEN

What if?

In 2013, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey, warned that Christianity in Britain was just a “generation away from extinction”.

With all the different stories from the media, we are led to believe that Christianity here is also in decline. That is why many argue that Christianity needs to adapt and evolve in order to minimise the number of people leaving churches.

What if Christianity in Australia is also at risk of being one generation away from extinction?

Should we change what we have been doing in order to preserve what we have left?

The reality is that Christianity has always been a generation away from extinction.

What if the apostles had not recorded their Gospels and Epistles? What if the early church leaders had failed to appoint appropriate teachers to train the next generation?

Fast forward to the generation before us — what if no one had taught and trained our Sunday school teachers, our Scripture teachers, our Youth Group leaders, our growth group leaders, our theological college lecturers, our church leaders and pastors?

It’s in our DNA

Teaching and training the next generation, or more simply: passing on the knowledge of who God is and what he has done has always been a part of the DNA for God’s people. But this idea is not a new one only to the New Testament people of God — teaching and training the next generation goes back all the way to Abraham.

When God entered into a covenant relationship with Abraham in Genesis 12, this covenant was further established by circumcision — not just for Abraham, but also for all the offspring after him (Gen 17:7-13). It would be a permanent physical reminder of God’s covenant with Abraham for all those who came after him.

In the lead up to the Exodus, God revealed himself to Moses as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and revealed his personal name, “I AM WHO I AM” — this was how he was to be remembered throughout all generations (Exod 3:14-15).

Prior to the final plague, God gave commandments regarding the Passover. All Israel was commanded to celebrate the Passover Feast annually in the generations to come, as a reminder that God saved them from slavery in Egypt (Exod 17:7-12).

After the Exodus, they were given the Law and commanded to make known what they had experienced to their children and children’s children (Deut 4:9-10). Teaching the children how to live as God’s holy people permeated ed all aspects of life — even household objects like doorposts and gates (Deut 6:4-9)!

Once in the land, parents taught their children to sing psalms that recounted all that he had done for their descendants.

Psalm 78 puts it like this:

4 We will not hide them from their children, but tell to the coming generation the glorious deeds of the Lord, and his might, and the wonders that he has done. 5 He established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers to teach to their children, 6 that the next generation might know them, the children yet unborn, and arise and tell them to their children, 7 so that they should set their hope in God and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments.

Notably, all of this was centred around the biological family — the parents (the father in particular) had the role to ensure that the children were taught about God and trained to live God’s way.

When we get to the New Testament, this instruction for parents to teach children the discipline and instruction of the Lord does not change (Eph 6:4). We see this at work in the case of Timothy, in which his grandmother r Lois and mother Eunice passed on their faith to him (2 Tim 1:5). Christian families would have adapted Old Testament practices to teach the next generation and this now included the person and works of Jesus Christ.

Beyond biological

However, the concept of ‘family’ is expanded beyond the biological family in the New Testament. Through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the church is now the new family, which is made up of different members and generations.

How does this new family change the idea of teaching and training the next generation?

Starting with the Great Commission, Jesus told the disciples to make disciples of all nations and to teach them to observe his commandments (Matt 28:18-20). They were to pass on the knowledge of who Jesus is and what he had done, so that a new generation of disciples would follow him. Thus, the responsibility to teach and train the next generation was no longer solely about the next generation of biological children, but the next generation of believers.

Paul instructed the early church to appoint ‘fathers’ — teachers and elders — to teach and train the next generation of believers so that they would pass it onto others (2 Tim 1:8-14; Titus 1:5-9). Paul himself modelled what it looked like to be a spiritual father, so that ‘his children’ could imitate his ways in Christ as he taught this to every church (1 Cor 4:14-17).

And this continues today.Those who came before us were taught the knowledge of who God is and what he has done, and they were trained to pass it on to the next generation, up until it has reached us today.

The real threat

Christianity will always be one generation away from extinction. Cultural irrelevance or low church attendance is not the driving force of this extinction — the real threat is our own failure to pass on what we have heard, read, learned and believed to those who come after us.

We have the responsibility of teaching and training the next generation, so that they will not only remember what God has done for them, but as the Psalmist yearns:

“that the next generation might know them, the children yet unborn, and arise and tell them to their children, so that they should set their hope in God and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments.”