Life.Church with Craig Groeschel - Bonus! Pastor Joakim Lundqvist on the Power of Intergenerational Relationships

Episode Date: January 5, 2022

Whether you’re a Gen Zer, Boomer, Millennial, or Gen Xer, this bonus episode with Pastor Joakim Lundqvist is for you. Starting off with a game of generational slang and ending with a look back to mentoring relationships throughout Scripture, we’re discovering why having relationships with people older and younger than you just might be the most valuable thing you can do. This episode is from You’ve Heard It Said, Life.Church’s spiritual growth podcast for LifeGroups. To find this episode and plenty more like it, you can subscribe on your favorite podcast platform, or get emails when new episodes release at www.life.church/yhis More About You’ve Heard It SaidWant more meaningful conversations? We started this story-driven podcast to help LifeGroups and friends reclaim their time together. Listen before meeting, then use your time to do what matters most—talking about the episode, praying, and making memories together. Join us as we have honest discussions about the things that matter to you, the struggles you’re facing, and the spiritual truths that can guide you to a deeper understanding of who God made you to be. And don’t just listen—our hope is that every episode inspires you to start a conversation with someone you care about. Check out the Show Notes to find a special Conversation Guide with questions, resources, and more to help you get started. Also, every season comes with a Bible Plan you can go through with your LifeGroup or friends using the Plans With Friends feature in the YouVersion App. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to a bonus episode of the Life Church podcast. Today, you'll get to hear from Pastor Yulukam-Lunciss about the power of intergenerational relationships. This episode is from Life Church's spiritual growth podcast for Life Groups You've Heard It Said. We hope you enjoy this conversation and you can find more content like this by subscribing to You've He Said at www. at www.life.church slash Y-H-I-S. Now on to the show. Welcome to the You've Heard It Said podcast. This is Ali. And this is Jason.

And I'm just going to give you a fair warning, Jason, that today's intro is payback for last week's ambush. Okay. Bring it on. You sound way too excited about this. Okay, but anyways, we're going to play a game called generational slang. Oh, boy. Is this, you just, this is like you trying to prove to everyone how old I am. You said it.

I didn't. So that's on you. Okay. Tell me the rules. How do we play? Okay, so there's some cards here that I didn't mix. I don't know what's on them either. Okay.

And there's either phrases or pop culture references or maybe technologies. I don't know. Just something from all generations. Okay. So you read what's on the card. You say if you know what it means. And if you don't, you can just come up with a fake definition. Right.

Okay, so I can go first. Wait, but how do I win? Why is always your first question? I feel like you may need to address that at some point. Like maybe there's this unhealthy need to win all the time. I don't know. Okay, let's play. Let's do it.

Interesting. deflection, but here we go. Catch you on the flip side. Oh, well, yeah. Everybody knows what catch you on the flip side. It means like, I'll catch you later. Okay. I'll be a monkey's uncle.

This would be like, I'm surprised. Barney bag. Oh. All I can think about is like the dinosaur, like from Barney. I don't know this one. Maybe it's before my time. Okay. Yuppie.

A yuppie is someone who would be well off, plenty of money, nice things, and this is what a hippie would have referred to a yuppie as kind of like everything's, they've got everything clean and right and their kids are in, you know, perfect clothing and stuff. Did you know that for sure? Did you make that up? Nope. That's for sure. Oh, okay.

I've never heard of a yuppie before. Yeah. Okay. What's your 20? What's your 20? I don't know what this means. I guess like, what's your 20? What's your $20 bill for?

I don't know. All right. I think I'm winning. I don't know. Are these just before my time? I don't know. Then he's really winning here, Jason. Rents.

Talking about your parents. Ah, it feels very 90s, like, angsty. I don't think it's 90s. Really? No, I don't think so. I think it's newer than that. Yeah. I don't know.

Okay. Mood. This one is current. Like, oh, mood. Like, you just post something and you like a mood. Yeah, like a picture of something that's moody and this is my mood. Like people say current mood and then they post a picture. Yeah, kind of.

But it's not always like a negative mood. All right. Okay. Okay. So why did we do that? Okay. So I got inspired a while back. the internet was kind of taken by a storm from all of the hilarious memes where Gen Z was throwing shade at millennials and the millennials were dishing it right back.

Like the side part versus the middle part, high-waisted skinny jeans versus low-rasted flare jeans, no more laughed cry emojis. And all of these debates were really funny. Yeah. But it did make me think about the idea of intergenerational relationships. So it's really easy for each generation to think that we know best, but then we miss out the opportunity to learn from people older or younger. than us. Right. And I think that whole thing is totally choogee anyways. Oh my gosh. I just taught you that. I don't think you're using it right though. But maybe there is some value in not just stereotyping another generation. That's what you're

saying. Right. And let's have relationships with people in all different generations. Right. Okay. So that's today's big question, is what perspectives might be missing from my life that I could learn from. And I'm really excited about our guest who's going to be figuring it out with us. Pastor Yoakim Lundquist is the pastor of Word of Life Church in Sweden, who also leads more than 600 international network churches. He's spoken at our church a couple of times now, and he brings the best stories. So we are so excited to hear from Pastor Yoakim. Pastor Yoakim, thank you so much for being on the You've heard it said podcast. We're so excited to have you. Thank you for having me. You're welcome. And we love getting to hear your messages. One of my

favorite parts is the stories that you bring. And I love that they're always about all types of generations. I think the last time you were here, you told us this story about one of your youth groups that did this evangelism show at Disney. And it resulted from a teenager who walked into your office and gave you the idea. Yeah, it was a 14 year old girl. Oh my goodness. And so my first question is, how do you as a pastor create this environment where a 14 year old girl feels comfortable sharing ideas with you? Well, actually, I'm super happy that she did because one of my passions in life and leadership

sure is to build a generation church. I think that a lot of times we might get the idea that the kids, they're in the kids' church, the young people are in the youth church, and then like Sunday, that's for adults. And I don't want to come across that way. Sunday is for everyone, church is for everyone. And that means that even though there will be a youth pastor,

they will be a kids pastor and the young people and the kids will relate to that primarily I still want them to be able to relate to me so we have a back home we have 10 Christian schools for example and I visit all 10 every year to have a session

with all the kids, all the students down to the 5 year olds and with the 5 year olds I just sit on the floor with them and I'll share the God's word for like 10 minutes and then they get 20 minutes of Q&A and they can ask me whatever.

And those are really fun times. I mean, last time I did it, the first question was, when is Jesus coming back? And the second question was, what's your favorite ice cream? And I was thinking, actually, both these questions make sense because even the ice cream question

allows them to get to know me and there's just a bond being created. And I try to do whatever I can. Twice a year I'm speaking at our Sunday school rather than a main Sunday meeting. simply to get the kids and the parents the impression and that kind of stress that I'm their pastor as well, and I want them to get to know me and break down any walls in between generations, if possible. Yeah, I love that.

So I'm curious, how have intergenerational relationships played out in your life? Has there been people older than you or younger than you who gave you that passion? Yeah, I guess if you look at my early life, my grandfather played a big role. in that. I was not a Christian growing up, even though I grew up in a Christian home. But I did have a grandfather who loved the Lord. And I remember when I was 14, I said, remember this. He wrote me a letter. What he just said, yo, okay, whatever you do with your life and your future, just follow Jesus. Even though I really didn't want to and I was actually running away from God at the time,

I remember how those words had an impact. I locked myself in my room and I read the letter and I cried. And for some reason, you know, I didn't know what was happening in my heart, but that voice from like my grandfather really meant a lot to me. But then I do believe I came to the Lord when I was 16. I led a whole lot of my friends, basically everyone, to the Lord within a year. And all of a sudden, even though I was just new in my faith, I was the oldest one in my faith at the same time. So I had to take the position of being a youth pastor.

So I became a youth pastor when I was 18. And I had this group of 35 young people. And it kind of came out of that. I've been working with young people more or less for 25, 27 years. And as you do, you get the passion for young people, but also you see the need for generations to connect. And the importance of the kingdom of God displaying not only one generation but multi-generation. I mean, we should be that city on a hill, reflecting God's kingdom.

And God's kingdom is a multi-generational, it's a multi-ethical, it's diverse in every sense of the world. So that's really been important to me throughout my life, yeah. Yeah, I love that. So I think that a lot of us want that sort of intergenerational relationships, but there's some things that keep us from doing that. So, like, for me, I'm in my 20s, and sometimes I feel like if I ask somebody older than me to hang out or ask questions, I don't want them to think I'm an inconvenience, or maybe they're too busy. So have you ever had any sort of like stereotypes that you've had to overcome when it comes to

building relationships with younger people or older people? And how did you get past that and just form them anyways? That's great questions. For me, the last verse in the Old Testament has always been a key, Malachi 4-6. It says that he will turn the heart of the fathers to the sons or the heart of the parents to the children. And if that happens, then God promises that the nation will be spared from a curse. And first of all, it says that the hearts are the parents to the sons,

meaning in some ways it's the responsibility primarily of the older generation. It starts with their initiative. It starts with them bowing down to the younger generation, not waiting for the younger generation to step up. But actually the responsibility of being a parent and even a spiritual parent, is looking behind you and see who comes after me that I could encourage, that I could pray for, that I could train. And I tell my church that if you are 20 years or more,

you should already be looking behind you to see if there is someone younger than you that you can help and pray for and support and encourage. But then also that verse, it says he will turn to the hearts of the parents. And I think it's really important to understand that you don't have the next generation, the younger generation will not need primarily new friends. So you don't have to pretend that you're younger than you are. You don't have to wear like leather pants and pierce your nose or something.

If you're 50, please don't. But rather the need for this young generation is not primarily a new friend, but rather a father figure or a mother figure. So sometimes I think that adults, the people in my generation or older or younger, might be feeling the pressure that I don't really understand the next generation, and therefore I'm a bit hesitant. But again, what they need is what you have. You have experience.

You have walked a few steps further. And I do believe that that's the point of connection. But I mean, I think that we can help also in church activities. For example, we have a men's ministry at Word of Life. And in that men's ministry, we talk a lot about being a spiritual father, you know. helping to train up boys, you know, to become men of God one day. So we work together with the kids ministry, and we work together with the youth ministry,

to bring together these men with younger men from the youth ministry. Of course, we can do some things like organized through church, but I think the main thing is that we need to understand because we live in such an individualistic time where it's so easy to think that I'm doing my thing, And my generation is isolated from all other generations. I do believe that most important thing is that we as grown-ups, and with grown-ups, I mean 20-plus,

will start to realize that God is a generation God and his kingdom is a generation kingdom. And I should actively include in being a believer to take on a parental responsibility for somebody younger than myself. In our season, in our culture, the gaps between generations, generations are growing wider and wider. But we try to be a counterculture to that

and just create a church where the kingdom of God, including the generational aspect, is fully revealed as much as we can at least. Yeah, that's so good. Something he said stuck out to me. He said, God is a multi-generational guy. Can you tell me more about that? Well, I'm fascinated that God in the Old Testament

introduces himself as I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. So in his name alone, there are three generations. There are so many encouragements to us through, especially the Old Testament, to tell your children about these things, and they in turn will tell their children. There's this multi-generational aspect all throughout the Bible. And I do believe we lost that to some extent. Maybe we realize that we show our parents to our physical kids, but beyond that, above that, we hardly are not ready to take on a responsibility, a mentorship,

being a spiritual father or a mother for someone else. But if you look at it, all through the Bible, you had people who were not physical parents mentoring spiritual sons and daughters. You had Moses who took Joshua into the tabernacle of Revelation. It wasn't his son, but still it took a spiritual mentorship and responsibility. We have Samuel in relations to David, the King David, who wasn't his physical son, but he took a spiritual responsibility. You have Elijah and Elijah, you have all these people who were not really connected by blood, but still it was natural for them to just have a basic understanding of their own responsibility

as whatever I have that I can give experience is good or bad that's come from my walk with God, I want to pass that on so that the next generation can not repeat my mistakes, but also actually move on further beyond the point where I get to stop, to go from glory to glory to glory. I like that you said, take what you have and use it to invest in somebody else. So for anybody listening who's like, I don't know if I have anything to offer, what encouragement would you give to them? Oh, you have so much to offer.

Sometimes we make it too complicated, and that's our problem. When we speak about generations and God's perspective, probably my favorite story in the Bible in regards to this brings the point that you're asking for. And that's the story of Mary in Luke 1. You got a teenage, all of a sudden she gets the information that her life is so much more precious and she carries a much more larger calling that she could ever have imagined.

She's going to give birth to God's son. And she responds to the angel by saying, I am the Lord's handmaid, may it be to me according to your words. But then it says, and then the angel left her. And that little line I've been thinking about it so many times. Then the youth conference ended. It's like I see that so many times.

Young people get encounters with the Lord, maybe at youth church, maybe at conferences. But then the angel leaves. And the big question is then what? What will happen to that stirred heart? What will happen to those seeds planted in that young heart? The next verse says, then Mary immediately left to go to her relative Elizabeth.

That's like a two-day walk from the north of Israel to the south. Now, this young girl instinctively knows she needs the experience and the protectiveness and the prayers of somebody who's gone before her. Elizabeth was older, but she was also pregnant. She had gone further in the process. And I love the fact that when Mary meets Elizabeth, and these two women or generations meet, the spirit of God falls upon both of them.

Elizabeth's child is stirred and revitalized and refueled with the Holy Spirit, and young Mary bursts into this beautiful song of praise. And that paints the picture for me. It's not only the young generation who needs the older. We need each other. The Elizabeth generation and the Mary generation, when we come together, supporting one another,

praying for one another, encouraging one another. It doesn't say that Elizabeth had a lot of skills, but she just offered a bit of experience that Mary didn't have. And if not anything else, you could pray, and everybody needs that. That's so good. So I love that you are saying that we can influence, one another and it's not just the younger one that needs the older and the older one needs the

younger. It's this mutual relationship. So I'm curious, what's something that you've learned from having people in your life who are younger than you that maybe you wouldn't have learned from just having people in your same stage of life? Oh, you learn so much. You learn so much. Three years ago, you know, the Lord challenged me because I got a pretty busy schedule, but he challenged me. He said, spend, I want you spend 40% of your time with people half your age. 40% of your time will people have your age. That took some serious changing of schedules, I tell you that. I bet.

But it's been so beneficial. I have a team of about 60 young people from the age of 14 and up who wants to learn how to preach. Maybe not to become full-time preachers, but still get some experience in that. My wife Maria and I have taken the whole team on cruises in the Baltic and just had workshops and how to preach and how to preach. teach and how to prepare and they get to preach back five-minute sermons to us and we coach them in that and then Maria my wife has been working with worship for such a long time so we always have our house full of young people and try to lead them to the place we were at their age but I mean I do believe that the crown jewel of the older generation would be the wisdom and experience but the main

treasure of the young generation will be the passion and the energy. And I love that. Every time I'm among young people, they refuel my energy, they help me open my eyes to areas that I don't see. So it's not at all just me teaching them. It's me asking them. How can our church be a better church for you, for your generation? And the input I get is so much better than any idea I would have come up with myself. So even though it was quite tricky to get this whole new setting to work, it's given so much more than it's taken. So it's been incredible. Wow. So same question, but what's something that you've learned from having relationships with people older than you that maybe you wouldn't have learned just from your same stage of life? Well, I do believe that

when you start out, when you're young, you think you're invincible. You think you know it all. And that comes with the territory. That's not necessarily a bad thing. It's part of the whole energy and wanting to change the world and all that. And in a way, that should stay the same. You just have to gradually wake up to the fact that you don't know it all, and you cannot do all things, and you need help and you need guidance in life. And the sooner you realize that, the better.

For myself, I have two mentors that are both in their 80s and have both been in the ministry for decades. And by mentors, I don't mean people that I claim to be my mentors, but we're never really in contact with one another. I call them all the time. And they have full access to me, to my struggles, to what I go through, to whatever challenge I may face. And to me, that's such an amazing protection.

And especially the times where you ended up in a position, you didn't really know what to do. You came into a new situation. There were problems, and you didn't really see the way through. It's so easy that we act through pride. You know, I'm going to fix this myself. Instead of taking an account the experience that is already there for me to draw from. So I do believe that that's a vital part of the generational connection.

I want to learn from the experience of men and women of God who has gone further than I have. And to not use that source of wisdom, that would just be pride. That's really good. So why do you think it's so important for the church to value intergenerational relationships? And what do you think could happen if we start valuing it? I believe primarily because the church is a reflection of God's kingdom. And if the church is only one generation, we do not project the diversity of that kingdom. The church is called to be a city on a hill.

We're called to be the light of the world. We're called to be the reflection of God's values, God's kingdoms, God's essence, God's personality. And we cannot really read the Bible without coming across constantly the whole generational aspect. So I do believe that as a statement to the world, we need to be the ones saying,

this is what God is like. When you're moving into God's family, you move into another kingdom, another culture. And in that culture, the multigenerational aspect is so incredibly important. At the moment back home, I couldn't tell for the US, but at the moment back home, we are facing a lot of splits and tensions in between different groups.

And I think that's a global issue right now. There are these fractions in between people of different ethnical backgrounds, in between generations, between social groups. And I do believe that one of our high callings is to be that entity, maybe the only one in society, that can actually reflect the full diversity of the country. kingdom in generations, in ethnicities, in different social backgrounds and all that. And we can reflect that God is a God for everyone. Yeah.

So I think all of us listening are wondering, yes, I want that. How do I make that happen? And so what advice would you give to somebody who's wondering, how do I start? How do I form these relationships? Who do I go to? What's the next step? You know, there can be many, many next steps. We have our businessmen's meeting, for example.

When I'm in there, I just tell them you have an incredible set of skills. We have so many young people in our church that wants to make it in business. Don't call yourself a businessman in our church unless you train someone else to become a better businessman than you. Don't call yourself a worship leader unless you train someone younger than you to be a worship leader.

Just give whatever you have. Use the skills and the assets and the wisdom that you have gained so far. Use what is your passion, what is your desire, what's your involvement. whatever you do in church, whatever you do in life, there will be some young person that will want to learn from that. And just make yourself available and start where you are. I'm not saying that you should be like this patriarch with 200 little kids running after you.

It's just about seeing the people who are already there. And maybe you can grow from there. For example, this is not the first step you might take, but a couple of years ago we started a new year, youth project called New Generation. It was a big student organization that we launched in Sweden. And many of the stories actually tell while here are stories, testimonies from that organization, the young people, the young adults there. And early on the first year, we announced that you could come on volunteer staff. If you were a high school graduate, you want to take a gap year,

you can come and volunteer staff with us for one year. So we had 11, 18 and 19 year olds that came on to work with us for that. And so we got them a house because we wanted them to stay together because that's the greatest way to make friends through pain, you know, by cooking together and cleaning together and getting to know, because they came from different denominations, different parts of the nation and so on. And we needed this team to be like the best friend team because they were going to work together very intensely throughout the year.

But then one night, my wife and I were praying, all of a sudden, she just said to me, hey, Yolkin, why don't we move in with these young people for the year? And we actually did. Wow. Yeah, we moved in with 11 teenagers in a one-family house for a full year. And I was not on board on the idea initially, but she was. And you know how it is with wives. And we realized to us, living with 11 teenagers, it wasn't like we were the king and queen of the household.

We were cooking together. We were cleaning it together. Three times today we were praying with these young people. And we were just living a Jesus life. You might think that that would be kind of, oh, it was all for the young people. But honestly, it was for us too. It was so wonderful that at the point where we are now in life, I mean, when you're 20, you can do anything crazy.

But, I mean, we had our two daughters and everything. But just that statement, that proclamation of us living together, different generations but in perfect unity for the greater cause of the kingdom of God. I'm not saying that everyone who listens to this should move in with 11 teenagers, but I think that we need in different ways

to express this truth. That we are one. Different generations still, we are one body. We are one people. We're one family. And the more we can express this, the stronger is our testimony to this world. Mm-hmm.

Pastor Yoakum, that's been so good. Before we close, could you just pray for everyone listening, just that they will know what their right next step is and that will begin to form these intergenerational relationships? I'd be happy to. Thank you. Father, I pray right now that you will give us the grace that even though we live in one of the most individualistic and selfish hours of human history,

that we will not be infected by that, that we will see the next generation. and we will see the generation that's gone before us and we will be given the grace to build a generational church that truly reflects your kingdom. Father, help us to pass on what has been our experience and our building material to the next generation so that your kingdom can go from glory to glory to glory

and not only repeat itself or go in a decline. We thank you, Father, for giving us that grace by the power of your Holy Spirit. I ask you to bless every single one listening, young and old, and it would just help that you'll give us the keys to connect, Lord, the way you want us to reflect your kingdom truly. In Jesus' name. Amen.

Amen. Thank you so much, Pastor Joaquin. We've loved getting to have you. We're so excited for more messages that you're preaching at our church, and I know our life groups will really benefit from this conversation. So thanks for your time. Thank you so much again. Man, I love getting to hear from Pastor Joachim,

and so much of that was just like a breath of fresh air for me. And I feel like, Allie, the biggest thing that you should take away from this is don't make fun of my age anymore. That's what you got from this? No, but it's what you should get from this. Okay, okay. But Pastor Yoakim, the thing that he was saying specifically about intergenerational friends, it made me think about the pivotal conversations in my life. So just kind of go there with me for a second.

So you know those conversations where you end up making a big decision. or doing something different or changing your mind in some way that change your life. So when I think about those conversations, it's really hard for me to think of one where the other person wasn't from another generation. And I'm like, okay, what's that about? And I think it's almost like when you look at a piece of art and it's really the shadows or the contrast that helps you to see the beauty and the color and the artwork. And I'm thinking maybe it's kind of like that with other generations. Like they help me to see myself and the world better. I like that. So as I was thinking about this, it made me think about being a kid and how so many adults made lasting impact

in my life. So I think about my teachers or like my babysitters or coaches or just all of those different people. And I think that we all recognize the value of being a caring adult for a kid. It's a big part of why I serve in life kids and why I've served in Switch. But somehow when we become adults, we kind of stop thinking about intergenerational relationships in the same way. We kind of start thinking like, oh, okay, so now it's my turn to like give advice to people younger than me, but then we don't really seek out people older than us. But when I think about one of my favorite seasons of life, it was when I was in college and I had relationships from two different generations. So I was mentoring one of my switch students whose name was

ironically also Ali. And I had an older mentor named Amy and I loved getting to learn from both of them. Right. And I think it goes back to this idea that he said that there's no age limit on the body of Christ. And if you think about it, if Christ is eternal, which he is, then why would we think that his body, the church, would need to be a certain age or look a certain way? So for me, having people in my life from different generations puts me in situations where I hear answers to questions that I honestly often didn't even know to ask. Yeah. And so it's like Pastor Yoakim talked about,

we can't represent a diverse kingdom of God if we're just one generation. Right. And I also think about how it's really easy for me to convince myself that my perspective is right, but in reality it's often incomplete. So it makes me think of Proverbs 1817, and it says the first person to speak in court sounds right

until they're cross-examined. Right. And I think so often we're all operating with these blind spots that we don't even know are there. So it takes having those people around you who see the world a little bit differently or who have lived longer or shorter than you to really point out some of those gaps we have in our understanding about God or ourselves or the world around us. Yes, yes to all of that.

So our big questions this week are, what people and perspectives might be missing in my life that I could learn from? And how will I seek out those people and perspectives more regularly? talk about this with your friends, your life group, and definitely some people who are younger and older than you. I'm so glad you listened to this episode. Have you heard it said? In fact, I'm so happy about it that I want to give you a free gift.

Just kidding, that sounds really cheesy. But really, we made you a conversation guide to help you talk with people about what you just heard, and it includes everything that you need for a great conversation. And you can find all of that and subscribe to our email at www. life.church forward slash yh-h-is. Also, one more thing.

We think they're really great.