Since it has been brought up already here on online and it was a part of the Critical Concerns Course lets' talk about Inter-generational ministry. I think it is imperative for the genrations to be connected with each other and the one-eared mickey mouse approach really isn't working so what does inter-generational ministry look like beyond just having a group of adult volunteers but a truly inter-generational ministry.
Love to here your thoughts!
mark helsel
5 comments:
Intergenerational Ministry.... hmmm... In many ways it has the feeling of a family. In my opinion the question is about creating family. Only in my family do I find my cousins, interacting with my grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, and everyone of all ages are welcome. How does that work though? How do we bring those teens into those settings?
At this point, the only thing that I keep thinking about is going back to the early church practice of love meals. The church family would have Sunday night meals together in which they would celebrate communion and each others company. The image I keep getting is one of our families coming together and giving the teens and adults a platform to share about God, what He's been doing in their lives, and giving whole families the ability to pray for each other. Then we all could worship together, and celebrate communion as one big family.
Personally, I think make that bridge from 'teenager' to 'integrated community' is going to take A LOT of time, pushes, and focus on the 'flywheel' of ministry. In other words, for us at least it's going to be steps in that direction that gradually results in a family community.
Make any sense? any thoughts?
btw, thanks again Mark and Brock!!!!
My thoughts echo yours Uth... In the family unit, all generations come together around the meal. To me, it seems that the problem lies in the traditions of the church. The main one being Sunday School. In this main stay of the traditional church, generations younger than 18, and in some cases even those unmarried or young adult, are separated out according to their age, etc.
We need to get these generations into church. We need to find a way to convince our leaders that the body is supposed to be together on Sundays and not in various classrooms until they mature and are ready for "big church" (pardon the sarcasm).
Ok, there is, IMHO, the crux of the issue. Now for the dilemma, how do we convince our leadership (when they are less savy or supportive of student ministry) that we need to make a change for the greater good, that will likely stifle some numbers?
Any thoughts?
-E
These are both excellent comments. I couldn't agree more with the need for our students to participate in corporate worship. For decades at my church, youth did not attend a corporate worship gathering, but were successfully age segregated into Sunday School classes that haven't proved to be fruitful.
These kids traditionally walk away from the church and some away from the faith alltogether after they graduate from our youth minirty programs. This is of course tragic and pushes us to rethink and make changes.
In the last three years I have had great success with worship, but I confess that I had to start a new worship gathering to do it. My Senior Pastor actually helped me start it and preaches it regularly!!! It is a all ages worship service incorporating little kids to grandparents in leadership. On communion Sunday's we too share a meal and although not huge, just yesterday we have about 50 people (kids, youth and adults) worship, partake in the sacrament of Communion, and eat together. I am persoanlly very excited about this!
I am seeing this slowly push and reshape our church culture which has been up to recent times a more traditional Presbyterian Church. I am also beginning to see these students remain active in the life of the church and parachurch in college, which is new for us.
In my case, I had to work hard at convincing my leadership that a new multi-generational worship gathering was needed. It took me three years from my initial efforts to the start date for the service. So plan on a slow and sometimes painful process. But I am in this thing for the long haul, so it was well worth the wait and the effort.
I feel as if I have a lot to learn on this stuff, but am fortunate to be in a church that allows me to experiement with worship and youth ministry. I welcome more comments or critiques on these matters as well.
Any thoughts out there on inter-generational mission opportunities or on multi-generational fellowship activities?
Peace.
The challenge in my church and I imagine others is that our youth ministry operates essentially as a "micro-church" within the church. We have our own worship, teaching, discipleship, drama, welcoming, and outreach ministries (among others) that are totally separate from their adult counterparts. Something I have been gently pushing in my setting is to have youth integrated into various ministries of the main church. We have had much success with this in our sound, video, and web ministries. We're seeing progress in worship with a couple of student musicians being asked to participate occasionally (although still only when an adult has canceled). However, we've made no progress in other ministries.
My dream - as I have said it to the rest of the church staff - is to reach a day when having a "youth service" would seem redundant to our congregation because the students are already involved every week anyway.
Jeremy's dream is a good one. I agree and am currently working on very similar things with worship in particular. "Youth Sunday" should be every Sunday, not once a year! I am having success with this in my context but it took me taking resposnsability for a worship service to make it happen. I have not had success in removing "Youth Sunday" from our vocabulary; YET!!
Post a Comment