By Brad M. Griffin
“But what if he makes a mistake up there? What if he sounds bad?”
“What will the older people think?”
I’ll never forget what it was like to try to convince a church leadership group to include a 16-year-old guitarist into an adult worship team. The resistance was palpable, despite the knowledge that this student already had experience playing in the youth worship band. Excellence in worship was such a highly-prized value in this community that it was hard to consider other values that might also influence decisions about our worship life.
Excellence isn’t bad. Many of us have go-to Scripture passages to prove it. But when our version of excellence holds a death grip on our worship services, we might be at risk of something even more critical than worship quality.
The faith of our young people.
Why must we pay attention to today’s younger generations?
Three demographic realities stand out about the church in our context today.
1. Most churches in America are not growing.
2. Most churches in America are aging.
3. About half of young people are walking away from church and faith.
While this is no proof that the sky is falling, a number of studies have been tracking trends in all three of these areas enough to raise eyebrows. At the Fuller Youth Institute we’ve spent much of the last dozen years investigating these trends and what churches might do in response through our Sticky Faith and Growing Young projects. While many worry about the future of the church—and clearly there are plenty of reasons to do so—we tend to focus our attention on hopeful solutions around young people and the church.
Much of the disconnect in today’s churches stems from a generational disconnect. Generation gaps are nothing new, but in recent years we find a few pronounced ways they are impacting the church. This doesn’t have to be the case for your church, though. One of the areas you can create more intergenerational connection is through the common experience of corporate worship.
Why do intergenerational contexts matter?
“I knew we were starting to get somewhere when my six-year-old son was rattling off who he wanted at his birthday party. There were as many adults as kids on that list.”
A leader once shared this with me as we talked about the conversation surrounding intergenerational (sometimes called cross-generational, or multi-generational) ministry. At the Fuller Youth Institute we’ve been proponents of this conversation because of what we’ve seen in our research. As we have explored both what helps young people stay connected to faith after high school and what draws young people to churches, intergenerational worship and relationships consistently play a key role. These connections across life stages serve as glue to bond the faith community together in profound ways and at profound moments—from birthday parties to weddings to funerals.
But it’s hard to get to know people you’re not around. Much like big gatherings of family or friends, sometimes it feels like there are adult tables and kids’ tables at our churches. Young people learn (often as children) that while their younger faces are welcome around the church, their voices may not always be heard. Too frequently kids and youth are relegated to a “kids’ table” experience of the faith community—including during gathered worship. Our well-meaning attempts to offer age-specific programming experiences at the same time as “big church” adult worship may have unanticipated long-term consequences.
If you’re wondering how to shift from age-segregated worship to more intergenerational worship, the good news is that other churches have been working on this question, too.
Where do we start?
1. With warmth
When we studied churches for our Growing Young project, we asked a lot of questions about how people talk about their church. In our analyses of the terms young people and adults use to describe their churches in over 1,300 interviews, we noticed repeated phrases such as welcoming, accepting, belonging, authentic, hospitable, and caring. We began to call this the warmth cluster.
Warmth is more than superficial community. It’s like family. In fact, the phrase “like family” surfaced as one of the most common terms young people used to describe their church in our interviews and field visits. This metaphor of family is rich with images of hospitality and unconditional acceptance. Across the board in statistical analyses, the warmth cluster emerged as a stronger variable than any one program.
Warmth often lives much deeper than programs and structures—it’s the lifeblood coursing through the veins of your church body. For young people today, “church” means much more than a worship service or a place to gather. Despite how much energy, money, and other resources we might pour into making Sunday spectacular, the production of the worship service may be less important to young people than we think. When we asked young people how they would describe their church to a friend, only 12 percent talked about worship, and only 9 percent mentioned worship style.
In research site visits, we couldn’t help but notice that some churches are moving away from the models of attractional worship and highly polished, timed-to-the-minute experiences. More than one research team noted that what a particular church lacks in physical resources or flashiness, it makes up in warmth, authenticity, and hospitality. As it turns out, warm is the new cool.
However, these statistics don’t mean that worship planning no longer matters. Churches growing young are thoughtful and intentional about worship. Many young people are drawn to churches that treat gatherings more like family room affairs than theater excursions, and that invite young people not just to share beliefs, but to share life.
As a first step, consider the warmth of your congregational worship—what happens before, during, and after the service. Where could a little extra relational connection make a big difference for a young person?
2. WITH young people
“Have you asked any teenagers or young adults what they think about the changes you’re proposing?”
This question stopped the pastor in his tracks. Their ministry team had been working on a host of ideas for rethinking their Sunday gathering and were on the verge of rolling out a plan when my colleague asked this question. Suddenly he realized that their all-adult group had spent a lot of time and energy developing something new with young people in mind—but without any young people physically present in those discussions.
We find that the most successful moves toward intergenerational worship and community life emerge when young people are involved in the process from start to finish. This is one aspect of what we call “keychain leadership,” a shared value of intentionally entrusting and empowering younger leaders with their own set of metaphorical—and sometimes physical—keys to the church. Keys are about access, influence, and power to make change happen in the congregation.
Consider ways you can involve teenagers in your planning for intergenerational worship from the first conversation. They might love your initial ideas, or they might have ideas you never would have conceived on your own.
3. Wherever you are today
As you look at your worship structures, rhythms, and practices right now, assess the current level of intergenerational involvement. In what ways are children and youth present, engaged, and leading worship right now? What kind of openness do you see to an increase in youth participation, and what areas might be easy first “wins” that could open the doors for more substantial experiments? Where might you feel the most resistance to changes?
Churches that have been successful typically started with what they were already doing well then asked, “Since this is already good, what would it take to move to the next level if we leveraged it as an intergenerational opportunity?”
Intergenerational is not something churches do–it’s something they become. For most churches, becoming intergenerational is nothing short of a paradigm shift, and the whole church must value intergenerational relationships and community at a core philosophical level. This shift requires that all of the leaders of the church (not just the youth leader) buy into the value of intergenerational ministry and commit to changing the culture of the church over the long haul.
Rose is a pastor in Minnesota who discovered the power of intergenerational worship as their leadership team experimented with particular Sundays each month that carried an intergenerational focus. They discovered that creating and telling a shared story is one of the most important elements of success in intergenerational worship. Consider how you might start crafting a shared story about your church as a family where everyone belongs and everyone’s voice matters. What first steps could help you build that story into reality?
Is it worth it?
Intergenerational worship can be hard work. At some point along the way you will likely be tempted to give up and revert to worship-as-usual. So what makes it worth it to keep going?
In short, young people need the church, and the church needs young people.
Given the changing developmental realities of teenagers and young adults today, combined with the increasing complexity of our society, young people need a special measure of support and guidance in order to navigate their lives. We believe churches can become the best place for teenagers and young adults to find answers to their toughest questions of identity, belonging, and purpose.
And our churches need young people. Despite the reality that churches across the US are shrinking and aging, we’ve found that effective ministry with young people leads to a thriving church—the whole church. Churches that make young people feel at home experience growth across all generations. In other words, young people multiply what is invested in them into the rest of their congregation.
As you take next steps along your own journey of intergenerational worship and connection, keep reminding yourselves that young people need the church, and the church needs young people. Worshiping together reminds us that we are the family of God.
BIO
Brad M. Griffin is the Senior Director of Content for the Fuller Youth Institute, where he develops research-based training for youth workers and parents. A speaker, blogger (fulleryouthinstitute.org), and volunteer youth pastor, Brad is also the coauthor of over a dozen books including Growing Young, Sticky Faith, and Can I Ask That? Twitter: @bgriffinfyi
