Sunday, June 26, 2005

Reflections on Church

On Saturdays, on our local public radio station, there's a program called Whad'ya Know? (at which the correct response is supposed to be, "not much, you?"). It's a variety, "Garrison Keilor" type show with trivia, humor, and a jazz trio. They travel all over the United States, so a lot of the humor is regional, depending on where they are (this week they were in Trenton, NJ.) Anyway...there IS a point coming soon...Michael Feldman, the host, was joking about some youngsters (from what I gathered, young teenagers) in his audience. Understand that this show is definitely geared towards adults and probably mid-life to older adults at that. (I understand that the fact that I like this show paints me as rather lame, but I'm okay with it.) Anyway, Feldman was joking about how these kids were obviously forced to come to the show and didn't look like they were having much fun. And then Feldman said something like this: "It would be great if we could draw in a younger demographic. Of course, we aren't going to change our format or anything, but it would be nice if they would just start showing up." Of course this got a big laugh from the audience because of the obvious absurdity. But sadly, this is the mantra of many dying churches in America today...."we won't change anything, but it sure would be nice if the next generation would come out anyway!"

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