The older women are to be reverent in behaviour, training the younger women. The older men are to be sober, reverent, temperate. The young men are to be exhorted to be sober-minded.
cf. Titus 2:2–6 (paraphrase)
Paul's instruction to Titus presupposes a community where older and younger are in regular, organic proximity — not sorted into separate rooms, but woven into the same fabric of shared life. When we separate the generations, we don't just lose convenience. We make the inter-generational formation the New Testament treats as normal into something exceptional — something that now requires a programme to recreate.
THE FAMILY TABLE
Imagine a household where the children eat in one room, the teenagers in another, and the adults in the dining room — every week, for years. Everyone is fed. But formation doesn't happen. Children never hear the real conversations. They never see how the older ones handle conflict, gratitude, grief. Then at eighteen they're handed a seat at the adult table and have no idea how to be there.
The family table is where you become family — not just where you eat.
Why do teenagers leave the church at eighteen?
Tap to expand
Often because they were never part of the ekklesia itself. They were in the youth group — a parallel institution with its own culture, its own leaders, its own style. When the youth group ends, there's nothing to transition into, because they were never integrated into the body they're being asked to join. They didn't leave the ekklesia. They were never given a seat at the table.
Why do children find "real" church boring?
Tap to expand
Often because they've only ever known a version designed for their age bracket — high-energy, activity-driven, shaped to hold their attention. The actual gathering, where adults worship, wrestle, repent, and share life, can look dull by comparison. But it looks dull partly because they've never been part of it. A child who grows up watching adults encounter Christ learns that faith is not performance — it is reality. That formation runs deeper than entertainment.
Why is there no Titus 2 in your community?
Tap to expand
Because older and younger are seldom in the same room long enough for this to become normal. Older women can't train younger women if they meet in separate programmes. Fathers in the faith — those who have "known Him who is from the beginning" — have no access to the children and young men who need them most. The generations that Paul assumed would share daily life now share only a building — at different times, in different rooms.
Why does spiritual maturity seem so rare?
Tap to expand
Because maturity is caught, not just taught. You don't become a father in the faith by attending a class about fatherhood. You become one by being around fathers — watching how they respond, how they pray, how they handle suffering, how they see God's purpose in everything. When the generations are separated, the younger never see maturity modelled. They only hear about it secondhand, pre-digested, in a curriculum.