Across the United States we see a generational crisis in our churches. Older and younger Christians often don’t understand each other and their differing priorities and perspectives. It’s understandable since in only one generation, our culture has dropped from 90 percent identifying as Christian to less than half belonging to church and only 3 percent participating in weekly worship.

Bryan Chapell has written a new book, The Multigenerational Church Crisis: Why We Don’t Understand Each Other and How to Unite in Mission, that demonstrates remarkable breadth and depth of understanding of these issues. Published by Baker, The Multigenerational Church Crisis sketches a way forward that can keep the church on mission during our turbulent times.

Chapell, a Council member for The Gospel Coalition, has seen how monogenerational churches die with the generation that dominates them. And he wants our churches to maintain faithfulness across many generations. That’s hard to do today when so many evangelicals feel a sense of cultural loss and direct their anger toward fellow Christians they fault for failing to resist liberalism and secularism with sufficient zeal.

Bryan joined me on Gospelbound to discuss the causes and solutions for the multigenerational church crisis. I hope this interview and book will encourage and equip many to support younger Christians. Chapell told me, “If you are a Christian high schooler today who believes that Jesus is the only way of salvation, that same-sex marriage is wrong, that sexual intimacy before marriage is wrong—if you are willing to say that pornography should not be normalized—you may be the only Christian you know who believes those things. . . . The young people who are staying in the church trying to be faithful are the heroes of the church today. And the church should at least be able to unite around its young for their faithfulness and for their future.”