Sons Without Fathers, Fathers Without Sons
A 30-year-old asked the question my generation should have answered years ago.
I was listening to an episode of Brenna Blain’s podcast Can I Say That? called “A New Vision for Church Planting.”
The burden was this. We have dying churches on one side and church plants on the other, and we treat them like two different species. The unspoken message to the old is “make way for the new.” And this young leader looked at that arrangement and said, in effect, I do not see this in my Bible.
I do not either. So let me answer as someone a little further down the road.
I have traveled and ministered for years, and I have sat with a lot of leaders. Young church plants tend to share the same problem: plenty of energy, few resources and no wisdom from the generation before them. On the other side are churches that have dwindled for years under men who refuse to pass the baton. It was their vision first, and they feel they still have more to do. But you will always do more with the next generation than you can do alone.
Here is the truth: the church will never be healthy until the generations come together.
It is happening to me right now
I am not writing this from a distance. I am in the middle of it.
When I came back to Covington, I was invited onto a podcast with three young men. One of them is the son of a pastor here. Then his father felt led by the Holy Spirit to connect with me, and we sat down to talk.
I shared a little of the vision God has given me. He did not ask for a business plan or a five-year projection. He said, “Come do it in my building.”
Think about who is talking. A man who has served this city for decades, speaking to a man who has been back for a few months. He told me he was not here to compete. He knew we were starting something new, he had a building, and he did not want to charge us a dime.
That is an anomaly in the church today. It should not be.
We are still walking it out, and we are learning as we go. But it has already become a two-way street. We pour into their congregation on Sundays. I have had the privilege of speaking there a couple of times and helping him carry what God has called him to carry. He makes room for us. We serve alongside him. Honor moves in both directions.
That is this whole article in one relationship. Not the old making way for the new. The old making room for the new, and the new honoring the old.
We built a replacement model and called it a movement
Replacement thinking says the old thing has to die so the new thing can live. It sounds bold. It preaches well at a conference.
It is also how consumer culture treats phones. Last year’s model goes in a drawer and nobody mourns it.
The church was never meant to run on an upgrade cycle. When we treat congregations like product generations, the young lose their memory and the old lose their future. Both walk away poorer and both call it faithfulness.
Notice who benefits from the divide. Not the plant, which now has to learn every lesson at full price. Not the aging church, which now holds a deed, a building and decades of prayer with nobody to hand them to.
Scripture shows inheritance, not replacement
God introduces Himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Three generations in one name. He does not rebrand every forty years.
Look at how the baton moves in the text:
- Moses and Joshua. Joshua did not plant a new Israel. He carried the same people across a river Moses could only see.
- Elijah and Elisha. The mantle was picked up, not redesigned. The double portion is the language of a firstborn son, not a competitor.
- Paul and Timothy. “The things you have heard me say, entrust to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others” (2 Timothy 2:2). That one verse holds four generations.
- Psalm 145:4. “One generation commends your works to another.” Commends. Hands over. Tells the story.
And then Joel, quoted by Peter on the day the church was born: sons and daughters prophesy, young men see visions, old men dream dreams (Acts 2:17). The Spirit fell on a room with all of them in it.
The warning is in the text too. Judges 2:10 describes a generation that grew up knowing neither the Lord nor what He had done for Israel. Scripture does not blame only the young for that. Somebody stopped telling the story.
Malachi closes the Old Testament with the hearts of fathers turning to children and children to fathers. That is not sentiment. That is the last word before four hundred years of silence.
One wound, two sides
Plants without fathers and churches without sons are not two problems. They are one wound seen from two sides.
| Aging church | Church plant | |
|---|---|---|
| Has in abundance | Memory, endurance, property, people who have buried spouses and still worship | Energy, risk tolerance, cultural fluency, people who have never been bored by church |
| Starving for | A future, a reason to keep the lights on, someone to bless | Wisdom, covering, stability, someone to call on a bad Monday |
| Besetting temptation | Protecting what was | Despising what was |
Read the table across and you will see it. Each one is holding the other’s answer.
The plant thinks it needs a launch budget. It needs a grandmother who has prayed through three recessions. The old church thinks it needs a younger worship leader. It needs to become somebody’s inheritance.
What this asks of Kingdom leaders
Honor that never costs anything is only nostalgia. Here is where it starts to cost.
If you lead something new:
- Find a father before you find a venue. Church authority is not found in a logo on your website. It is someone who can tell you no. And sometimes a father comes with the venue. One of mine did.
- Put gray hair at your table, not just in your seats. Give the older saints a voice in the room where decisions get made.
- Tell the story of who came before you. If your people think the Kingdom started with your launch Sunday, you have planted an orphanage.
If you lead something old:
- Bless before you evaluate. The young do not need another audit of their methods. They need your hands on their shoulders.
- Open the building, the books and the pulpit. An inheritance that is never released is just a museum.
- Decide now what you want to outlive you. A congregation can close with grief, or it can close as a seed in someone else’s ground.
For both: eat together. Not a joint service with a banner. A table. Most of what gets handed from one generation to the next gets handed over food.
Stop holding funerals for churches that should be having family dinners
That young podcaster said out loud that they lack wisdom and lived experience. That is the most hopeful sentence I have heard in a while, because it is a son asking for a father.
So here is my answer. You are right. Scripture is on your side. And my generation owes yours more than a seat. We owe you the story, the scars and the keys.
The new does not replace the old in the Kingdom. The old is fulfilled in the new, and the new is rooted in the old. Jesus said the teacher trained for the Kingdom brings out of the storeroom treasures new and old (Matthew 13:52). Both. Same storeroom.
If you are planting, go find an elder this week and ask one question: “What do you wish someone had told you?” If you have been at this for forty years, go find a planter and say one sentence: “How can I help you win?”
Then set the table.
— Mark Casto
If this stirred something in you, you are welcome at the table. The Shepherd’s Tent is carried by monthly partners — people who decided the tent should stay open for the next weary person. If that’s ever you, the door is at markcasto.co/donate. No pressure, no timer.