I was reading in Exodus 1 yesterday about the time following the death of Joseph. The Egyptian King who loved Joseph dies and the "new king, who did not know about Joseph, came to power in Egypt." (v.8) This new king saw that the Israelite people had become very numerous and feared that they would join with a waring nation to take them over (v.9-10). This began the days of slavery for the nation of Israel. Instead of working alongside the Egyptians as friends, they now feared, resented and despised what Egypt had done to them. This change in their relationship was initiated by fear.

This may be a stretch, but I started thinking about the relationships we experience in church. Let's place the older generation (not meaning age... but more experienced and traditional backgrounds) as the Egyptians in our story, and the relatively unchurched or younger generation as the people of Israel.

The fear of losing something is one of the greatest causes of conflict in our world... and therefore in the church. We voice it in our opinions of things like musical style, Hymn or Chorus, pews or chairs and even King James or another version of God's word.

The Israel people were content in Egypt. They worked alongside, everyone lived and were sustained by the fruit of the co-operative. But insert Fear... and you get chaos and bitterness.

I consider myself to be in the cusp of the generational battlefield that rages in churches. I grew up in a very traditional baptist environment and love much of this history. But I also have the inquisitive, investigative, dislike for cliched answers and "just the way it is" attitude I see and feel much of the time.

I fear, that fear, has done much to hurt the cause of Christ. "No weapon formed against us shall prosper..." but what about ourselves?