The hippie movement was at its height in 1971, and Stuart Briscoe had just become pastor of Elmbrook Church in Brookfield, Wisconsin. Stuart persuaded a group of 100 counter-culture youth to attend worship one Sunday, and one of the church's leaders was not pleased.
"I want to make one thing perfectly clear," the leader said. "These young people you brought into our church have to be kept separate. We have worked hard to keep our children away from these kinds of people."
When a "full and frank exchange of positions" concluded (Stuart's more experienced, diplomatic description), the leader offered a solution Stuart could agree to. "I'm tired of hearing about the generation gap—let's build a generation bridge."
Soon afterward Elmbrook started a new Sunday morning class. It ran for three months, and participants were hand-picked from diverse age groups.
The class wasn't given a teacher (or a referee); the studies were led by the participants themselves, with an older person and a younger person sharing the task each week. Their curriculum, the Book of James.
In time, friendships and mentoring relationships were built that last to this day. The class shared its experience with the church, and a waiting list was created for the next Generation Bridge class.
This paradigm integrates whole households—mothers, fathers, widows, singles, and children of all ages—into the same activities. An intergenerational ministry (also called inter-gen, multi-gen, or age-integrated) brings diverse ages together in the same place, with the same materials, for the same purpose. The goal: to build cross-generational relationships that strengthen faith formation in the community and at home.
Advocates of this ministry model tout the home as the primary center for faith formation. Often their top priority is training parents to impress the faith upon their own children. But successful intergenerational ministries incorporate more than just mom, dad, and the kids.
"The single most important thing in intergenerational ministry is to include the non-nuclear family units," says Eric Wallace, director of teaching services at Harvester Presbyterian Church in Springfield, Virginia, and author of Uniting Church and Home. "We call them 'households'—the widows, singles, single-parent families, etc. If you don't include them, you're just creating a 'family' fragment with separate needs and separate relationships from the rest of the body. The goal is to build unity and faith in every home, no matter who lives there."
Meeting the Objections
Intergenerational ministries begin in one of two ways: either the church is founded with core inter-gen values, or the idea is introduced slowly. In the latter case, inter-gen proponents often face stiff opposition. The cultural norm, common in schools and most church environments, is to separate people, and especially children, by age. Cultural norms aren't amended easily.
"Not everyone is going to want to do this," says Mike Sciarra, pastor of families at Voyagers Bible Church in Irvine, California. "That's okay. We don't want to swing the ministry pendulum all the way from age-specific to totally age-integrated. The two can co-exist."
Instead of complete overhaul, some innovators have succeeded with small, experimental forays into inter-gen ministry.
Rock the Cradle Slowly
When Ben Freudenburg joined the staff of Christ Church in Phoenix, he began examining ways he could "tweak" the existing ministries to introduce an inter-gen element. Freudenburg had been a pastor of youth and children in Kirkwood, Missouri, for 17 years. There he cultivated a culture of intergenerational ministry from which he wrote The Family Friendly Church (Group, 1998). The book included a section on shifting the church's paradigm. At Christ Church he put his transformation principles into action.
He discovered that every Advent season the church displayed larger-than-life Nativity characters made from wire framing and filled with Christmas lights. These figures were placed on the roof of a covered walkway (they placed the Wise Men to the east of the manger and moved them westward each evening). As they read the story and each character was mentioned, its rooftop figure was lit.
Freudenburg asked himself, How can I tweak this highly visible event to bring generations together?
He invited the households of the church to bring their own Nativity scenes to the chapel. Prior to the lighting ceremony, the little manger sets were displayed for the whole community. They celebrated the variety and international diversity of the crèches.
Following the lighting, Freudenburg and his wife led a devotion that included readings and exercises for families to do and discuss together.
There was also a place for families to dress in costumes of the Nativity characters. While so adorned they made photos and videos to send to distant grandmas and grandpas.
Can I Do This?
The biggest obstacle to intergenerational ministry is personal insecurity.
"Parents are so used to the church planting their children's faith development that they don't feel they have the know-how," Freudenburg contends. "Therefore, when we give them options, they feel frustrated. The solution: we need to equip parents to lead their family's faith development."
For Freudenburg, equipping parents includes hosting a devotional fair. Bible studies, models for instruction, and other resources are on display at various stations. At each station parents are invited to try each resource with their children. If parents find something that works well for their whole family, they can buy it and use it at home.
Many churches that incorporate intergenerational ministry report unexpected benefits. Some have found it increases involvement of singles and seniors. Others appreciate that the added parental involvement reduces staff workload. Still others discover their innovation brings in new families who are looking for ways to strengthen their home.
The people of Olathe Bible Church were relieved their generational differences were more easily overcome than anticipated.
"We have older people who actually enjoy worshiping with the Gen-Xers," says Janzen. "And some of our teenagers like hanging out with the elderly. We found the different generations have more in common than some of them are willing to admit."
How Intergenerational Ministries Close the Gap
Regardless of setting—teaching, worship, outreach—intergenerational ministries are built on several principles:
- Age-integration. Rather than separating into groups by age or grade-level, inter-gen ministry purposely teams people from different age groups.
- Generational understanding. Relationships are fostered that reduce intergenerational conflict and misunderstanding.
- Integration of "households." While not all inter-gen ministries use the same terminology, singles, widows, and other heads-of-household are validated as family units and are often mainstreamed with nuclear families.
- Parental responsibility for faith development. Parents are encouraged and equipped to take the primary role in their children's faith education, to "impress" upon their own children the truths of God (Deut. 6:6-9).
