Some time ago, one of the great thinkers and theologians of the Episcopal Church, John Westerhoff, brought out a book called, provocatively, Will our Children have Faith? I can answer it like (snap). Absolutely. But ... what will our children have faith in, where will they put their trust, what will they believe and revere and honor and uphold?

A second question for me, inseparable from the first, would be: Will our children worship? To me, faith without worship is dead, pointless, drifting, indulgent, so vague as to belittle the word faith in any real or discernable meaning.

Peter Schafer - in his play Equus, not a renowned Episcopal Theologian, but amidst all the great psychological insights of that play was a very deep theological comment - the doctor cries out decisively - "Unless you worship, you shrink!"

Will our children have faith? Doubtless. Will they worship - I wonder. And if they don't worship or feel they cannot or do not wish to, then they will be less than they could be, not as large, not in the Army recruiting slogan - "be all that they can be."

And will it be their fault? I think not. Hard as it is for me to say, I think it will be the fault of the worship itself, a worship they might well one day find has become off-putting, unhelpful, uninteresting and remote - to distant and odd to be anything they can admire and enjoy.

And so we have a Mass like today's. It is our Church trying its best to come up with compelling new worship. Now you may be scandalized by this thought, I surprise myself, but I think you will find this Mass today not so radical, not so different, not so innovative that it would inarguably appeal to a new generation with very different insights and interests than the older ones of us have.

The Rev. Travis du Priest - that's really his name, you know, came up with a list in the book A New Conversation that is well-considered and helpful, I think.

To attract and involve and enlist the young people in the next generation,

Fr. du Priest feels that the Episcopal Church must do many things, change much, and revise still more things. He is convinced, and has convinced me, that the Episcopal Church in the 21st century must become a Church that will:

- live out its life unafraid that Christianity now overlaps with other faiths almost everywhere...certainly in our cities

- it must commit to bridging the past, the present, and the future in a spirit of generous Catholicism

- it will need to teach and form, not so much religion, as a living spirituality

- practice prayer in a wide variety of forms and functions

- guide children from the earliest ages to awaken to their inner lives

- produce theologians and spiritual leaders open to the centrality of literature and the arts and the importance of new music

- foster not only remembrances of things past but also the spirit-to-spirit connectedness of the present moment

- equip more and more people to speak honestly and lovingly out of their own lives' experiences, of times lived with - and times lived without - faith

- teach its people that faith is doubt negotiated rather than intelligence ignored

- plant more and more communal experiments which seek to express the life of God's Kingdom on earth

- teach and preach the hidden life, and fosters and explore the mysteries of our lives hidden in Christ with God

- it will need to fully appreciate spiritual dryness and assist peoples' incorporation of barrenness into their personal spiritual journeys

- it must find the courage and honesty to address the sense of the absence of God as well as the sense of God's presence

- assist each member in finding personal metaphors which express well for them the meaning in the universe

- train its members to witness to the we of the catholic faith and not the I of personal salvation

- preach gratitude for life, and for God's renewing Spirit as its primary theological tenet.

And lest you be too alarmed at the list, he finishes it thus: (and I am not making this up either) "The Church must make a better, finer effort to hold up for honor and respect the Mother of our Lord, the Blessed Virgin Mary"

Doing this, some of it, much of it, does seem to me to answer resoundingly the two great questions: Will our children have faith? and, Will our children worship? The answer for me, is yes - unquestionably. They will have faith, and that faith - their faith - will lead them to worship, if we all just help a little bit, and make room.