I commented on Hafidha’s recent post about what she’s struggling with in church. I share her frustration with what’s become the tradtional separation of ages during the Sunday service.
I’ve argued for a long time that a religious education needs to begin with the Sunday service, that religious identity cannot be formed unless its formed in communion with a worshipping body. Otherwise, our young people reach the age of eighteen and walk away from our churches because all of a sudden “church” looks nothing like how they’ve experienced it all their lives up until that point. As one classmate of mine has been quoted as saying, “When I was a child we worshipped in circles downstairs, and when I grew up they expected me to move upstairs and worship in rows.”
Absolute segregation of age groups leads to eventual discontinuity in religious identity.
Now, it may not be practical to drop everything and integrate adults and youth in the Sunday service, especially if there’s a well established RE program staffed with professionals. However, there are ways to create the intergenerational experience.
When I interned at Unity Temple, I was handed just such an opportunity, creating a pilot program of Friday evening intergenerational events, with catered meal and worship service following. I spent the next ten months learning much by trial and error.
The worship service itself had two concurrent goals: (1) Have a service that reflected the current worshipping culture of the congregation while (2) still engaging young minds and bodies (difficulty factor: don’t lose the grown-ups in the process). Also, heading into Friday night with younger folks, it needed to be shorter.
So, I needed gathering/exploring/returning segments, and I needed to hold the attention of a younger audience while still engaging adults. I decided that the trick would be to avoid “dumbing down” the language of worship while adjusting the flow and pacing of the service. I took as my blueprint the “lessons and carols” model. Brief readings and/or homilies on a theme, interspersed with group singing. This became the main body of the service. Around the body were the usual trappings of the Sunday service: chalice lighting, offertory (stewardship was the biggest lesson I took away from my own younger days of being in worship with adults), benediction, etc.
The services took place on the first Friday of each month, each lasting a half hour to forty-five minutes each. I went primarily with seasonal themes (advent, twelfth night, MLK, Spring renewal). We started with around fifteen people attending and had more than doubled that by the time I left. By the end of the year, I had other groups and members within the congregation volunteering to lead services. My successor has continued the program, and the congregation has added a second Friday Soulful Sundown program. Within a few years, the church should have some form of worship service every Friday night.
I learned several important lessons as I tweaked the program over the year (in no particular order of importance):
- The support of a few key leader-parents in the congregation is essential. If they feel emotionally and spiritually invested in the program, they’ll be your best marketing resource in the congregation. But . . .
- . . . don’t ask them to plan or lead worship. They’re invested in the program because they want to worship with their families. It’s unfair to ask them to give up that experience to take on the grunt work of service planning and presentation (ushering, setup, and the like, however, are OK).
- Cater a meal. No potlucks. Food brings people in, but to ask someone to prepare a dish after work on Friday is asking too much. Your target audience will feel unwelcome and stay away. Feed them good. Save dessert for after worship.
- Engage mind and body. Intergenerational worship forced me to reassess how we worship kinetically. By mid-year, I had begun to add some ritual for the youth to participate in to get them out of the pews, on their feet, and hands on. By the time I took on summer services on Sundays, I was looking for more ways to get grown-ups moving, too. The whole self must engage in worship, no matter what the age.
- Don’t dumb down the language. I said it earlier, but it bears repeating. I don’t expect younger minds to understand everything that’s being said. The goal of intergenerational worship is to let younger people experience how a congregation worships together, how we simply agree to “be” together in church. That being said, most young people understand more of what we’re saying than we give them credit for.
- Music Music Music. Use lots of it. I was lucky to have a music director who enjoyed the intergenerational services almost more than I did. Have a musician or two invested in the success of the program. Trust their instincts.
- Watch your language. It’s an intergenerational service, not a family service. Only one of these terms is inclusive.
- Get a steering committee together early. I didn’t. I almost burned out. Have good help on hand.
Intergenerational worship is a lot of work, but the rewards for a congregation that engages in it can be great. In a few months, I’ll begin trying to replicate the program at my new post. I’ll continue to update here on the progress.
PDF