One point made by the two delegates of the Gereformeerde Kerken (Bakker & Schippers) on their tour through North America is that their church is concerned about keeping the youth. And that is supposed to explain some of the deviations in that church communion: If we don’t accommodate a bit, we’ll lose the youth.

I have never been able to understand such argumentation, and am totally unimpressed with it. Examples of churches who have done that very thing (accommodated) and lost more of their youth are legion. One need only look around at some of the mainline churches, and see what has happened to the1r young people. They simply aren’t there! The church consists mainly of old ladies. A friend and colleague of m10e in the Presbyterian Church of Canada used to worship with us once in a while in my first charge. He said to me: “What a joy to see families in church, including husbands and young people. All we have is old Ladies.” Why? Because, as he readily admitted, the church had nothing to offer the young people. The gospel had been watered down so much that what they heard on Sundays was the same thing they could read and hear in the daily news during the week.

Young people are not as stupid as we sometimes think they are. They readily see through phoniness. They don’t want a church that bends with the winds of the secular age in which we live. No, they want to hear the gospel straight. As Popma says somewhere in his work on the Catechism: they may have a big mouth and appear a bit indifferent at times, but they still want to hear a good sermon on Sundays.

You don’t attract young people by introducing all kinds of nonsense into the worship services. Time and again when we have visitors, we are told: You have a lot of young people in your services. Thank God for that! And it belies what the gentlemen from the Gereformeerde Kerken are telling us. One would think they could see it themselves, for, 1f I am correctly informed, the youth are not exactly flocking to and sticking with those churches. The gentlemen ought to investigate the reasons for their absence. 

J. Tuininga, Lethbridge, Alta.