Serving as an overseer of urban congregations, a church raised a concern as to what they needed to do with the growing number of youths in the church and noisy children who were distracting regular worship. After much consultation they made a deliberation to have all the children and youth attend youth church, but before implementing, they proposed to inquire some “wisdom.” Burdened by their concern I asked the elders several questions:
- Do you perceive members with children as a blessing or a bother, how would you want them to participate in worship with peace of mind?
- When the children and youth get separated from the main church service, when and how will they learn, to sing, pray, worship with the rest of the congregation members?
- What avenues can the church incorporate these groups as part of the worship service so that they benefit from one another?
In the current station of service, there are people of all ages, stages and generations made of citizens and immigrants. The concept of intergenerational worship is God ordained and timely. During the main service, the youths, adults, and seniors all congregate in the sanctuary and help with different aspects of the church service. Ushering, worship music, media operations. The young adults’ ladies and women of the church help with making tea and snacks for fellowship time. The men come with the younger men, their sons for men’s breakfast events. As the sermon is done in the main church so the children and youths are released to classes for age appropriate learning.
In the work “Nurturing Faith: A Practical Theology for Educating Christians” Fred P. Edie and Mark A. Lamport rightfully raise the necessity of intergenerational communal processes of faith. Spot on they declare that, “…faith communities are … essential greenhouses for nurturing faith.[1]” Essentially the “ecology effects both the young and old. The failure to do so lead to the loss of the “…distinctive language, gestures, practices, dispositions of the heart, and vision which are the ingredients of faith.[2]
Unlike the “Sunday School” models adopted by most Christian Educationists, appropriate Spiritual ecology responsible for intergenerational disciple making transcends “learning about” to incarnational “living out.”[3] Edie and Lamport offer some broad strategies for communal faith formation, which incorporate, developing catechetical culture, where new Christians reaffirm and reflect their faith learning, by “repeating faith.”[4] Offering leadership for congregational change through normalizing, adult, children, and young adults functioning together in intergenerational worship, through access for all methodology, that impacts all ages and stages of the congregation. Foster summarizes this as “Preparation, Participation and Reflection through the churches’, ritual practices, of worship and in mission. Intergenerational dynamics is enabled through a healthy congregational ecology of practices.[5]
[1] Edie, F. P., Lamport, M. A., Foster, C. R., Percy, M., Wright, A. M., Dykstra, C. R., … Groome, T. H. (2021). Pg 312. Nurturing faith: A practical theology for educating Christians. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.
[2] Ibid. (2021). Pg 314.
[3] Ibid (2021). Pg 315.
[4] Ibid (2021). Pg 318.
[5] Ibid (2021). Pg 324.