Why Intergenerational Ministry Matters
My First Intergenerational Experience
My first intergenerational experience occurred in fall 2015. I gathered with two small groups of ten people who represented five different generations in our church. We huddled in a circle each week for two months, one group on Sunday and the other on Wednesday, to spend time meditating on and discussing Scripture. We began with a time of sharing a life-giving moment from the week, then read a given passage, paired up with another person to discuss, and concluded with a time of group reflection.
I looked around the room each week with a slight grin at who I saw. A retired elder of our church. A young married couple. A new teenager in our youth group. A mom and daughter who wanted to try this reading experiment together. All different ages and stages of life coming together to read the Bible. The smile on my face resulted from knowing how unique this group was because of our brief time meeting together. I will admit that I had some reservations before that first meeting. However, I quickly watched a warm bond begin to form among the groups in surprising and refreshing ways.
A Surprising Experience the First Night
One of those surprises occurred with the very first group meeting. After we introduced ourselves and read the passage of Scripture, I encouraged everyone to find a new person as their discussion partner for the night. Across the room, I watched a young mom begin to shed tears as she discussed the text with an older woman in our group. They kept talking even after we huddled back together. The meeting ended, and I checked in with the young mom to make sure everything was okay.
Her eyes were still red from crying, but a grin broke across her face. She told me that everything was fine and that the night meant so much to her. She told me that she shared with the older woman some recent, unexpected news in her life. The day before, she found out she would be having an unexpected fourth child. Emotions soon flowed once she began sharing this news with her older discussion partner.
The wise older woman listened. Then she shared that she, too, went through a similar experience two decades earlier. Their family ended up welcoming a third, unexpected child. She, too, could understand the swirl of emotions happening in the life of the young mom. Her tears were those of relief in knowing she found a new mentor and friend who could walk with her through the next nine months. Their interaction and developing relationship became a sacred, shared moment. My grin returned and broke wider across my face.
A Refreshing Experience the Last Night
A similar smile came on the last night of the group’s being together. This refreshing moment happened when our oldest group member paired up with the youngest. They tucked themselves away in a corner to discuss the passage for the night. I watched with some caution because these two had not been a pair for any of the previous weeks. He was a large presence with a long history at our church. She was a timid teenager who seemed uncertain about discussing Scripture with him.
We returned to the larger group for a closing discussion when the older man spoke up. He said, “I have been studying the Bible my whole life, and my friend here helped me see something in this passage I never noticed. She blew my mind with her insight. It is so good to know our young people are such good students of the Word.” I glanced over to his new friend. A bright smile emerged on her face. She beamed with embarrassment and pride as she received this blessing from her partner. Everyone in the group smiled as we watched the sacred moment unfold. Five years later, when I followed up with some of the participants, this young girl still remembered this moment. She told me how much it meant to her years later and how it stayed with her through the years. She felt like she had something to offer.
The Why of Intergenerational Ministry
These two experiences begin to illustrate why intergenerational ministry matters for congregations. I can list Bible passages that support this vision of the church. There is research that shows the unique formative potential of these encounters between different age groups when they are meaningful and mutual. I also know of other reference points that demonstrate increased unity and health in congregations who incorporate these rhythms into the life of a church. I often share these references when I work with churches who want to develop a greater intergenerational culture in their church.
But there is something about stories that get at a deeper “why” of intergenerational ministry. They show how relationships develop and grow in ways that are not possible when we isolate from other ages in our church. They show the important ways perceptions are altered when you get up-close with a different age group. They illustrate how God can work in ways, in both old people and young, to form and shape the individual and the whole.
Forming Our Communities
The reason I spent two months with these groups is because I was doing research for my Doctorate of Ministry project. I concluded the project by interviewing the participants. One question I asked was about the intergenerational dynamics in the group. Specifically, I asked about the way a church would be formed if everyone had the chance to participate in an intergenerational group like this one.
One of our older participants, a seventy-one-year-old, said, “What kind of church would be formed if everyone got to experience what we have experienced? It would be a caring, stronger, more devoted church. As we were discussing this, I got to thinking about Paul’s statement about neither male nor female, Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, and now we would have to add young or old, because this has enhanced our experience with God to have all of us here.”
This quote points to the “why” of intergenerational ministry. It is a vision of the church that takes seriously Paul’s vision of what it means to be “in Christ.” Those generational barriers that often divide or rank us are reconsidered in light of Christ. In the Body of Christ, every part is equal and matters to the collective whole. Every part offers something, and every other part is made better for that contribution. When we begin to envision our communities through this lens, then we better see each other as valuable and essential. Moreover, intergenerational ministry offers a better way for us to see who God is and how God might be at work in our lives through different generations.
