Theology in the Raw - S2 Ep1084: A Case for Intergenerational Ministry: Dr. Holly Allen

Episode Date: June 12, 2023

Dr. Holly Catterton Allen retired in 2022 from her position as Professor of Christian Ministries and Family Science at Lipscomb University in Nashville. Her most recent books include Intergenerational Christian Formation: Bringing the Whole Church Together in Ministry, Community, and Worship, 2nd edition (InterVarsity Academic, 2023) and Forming Resilient Children: The Role of Spiritual Formation for Healthy Development (InterVarsity Academic, 2021). In this conversation, we talk extensively about the need for intergenerational ministries in our churches. 

Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in Iran. My guest today is Dr. Holly Allen, who was a former professor of Christian Ministries and Family Science at Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tennessee, before she retired in 2022. She's the author of several books, including her most recent book, Intergenerational Christian Formation, Bringing the Whole Church Together in Ministry, Community, and Worship. And that is the focus of our conversation. We talk all about what it is to create and maintain intergenerational ministries in our churches today. So please welcome to the show for the first time, the one and only Dr. Holly. Holly, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast. I know you've had quite the journey the last several months. So yeah, thank you for making it on the podcast. I'm really excited to talk to

you. Thanks for having me, Preston. So just tell us a little bit about who you are, just some basic 30,000 foot background of who you are and how you got into academia. And then I do want to jump pretty quickly into your passion. I would say maybe lifelong passion for intergenerational ministry in the church. And yeah, so who is Holly Allen? Well, actually, I came late to academia. I stayed home. I taught school for a while, got my master's in educational psychology. I had three children, stayed home for several years. And actually, my academic career dovetails nicely with my passion, my initial passion for intergenerational ministry. In the 90s, we were part of a church that was intentionally intergenerational. We met in small groups on

Sunday evenings, and it was a church plant. So at first we had one small group. So we met on Sunday evenings together. We had about 25 people, but half of them were children. We were just, you know, had a lot of kids. And that grew and grew. And in four years, then it was about 700 people. We had 25 groups, but we met together. All the small groups met together on Sunday morning and worship together. But much of the life of the church happened in the small groups, you know, the ministry, the benevolence, the care, the loving, the spiritual giftings and all those things. And we did worship together on Sunday mornings and loved it. It was fabulous. But I began to see things in those intentionally intergenerational small groups that I hadn't

seen in all the years that I had taught Sunday school. I had led children's church, had great passion for working with children, sharing who God was with them. But I saw new things in these small groups. So during the 90s, I just had this burning passion. I believe God given. The question was, what is it? What's going on? Why am I seeing such growth in the children, in the youth, in the adults? It wasn't just the children. What is it about being together with all the generations that makes this a hothouse for spiritual growth? I began to see children praying for their parents and other adults. I had never seen that. Children ministering to each other, but also to their parents and other adults in these small groups. They were doing it because they saw everybody else doing it. So it wasn't like,

now we're going to say, now the children may do this. It was that they were part of the group. And as we prayed, they prayed. We prayed for them and they prayed for us. prayed, they prayed. We prayed for them and they prayed for us. It was life-changing. It truly was life-changing. And it was for me, but it was for many of the children and the youth and the adults of the church. But for some reason, and I do believe this was just God-given, I think God has been calling people for decades back to this idea of bringing generations back together. And He visits people and says, don't you want to do this? And some people generations back together. And he visits people and says, don't you want to do this? And some people say, absolutely. And others say, not now. And so he'll come back later, but it was the right moment for me. And so we left Texas and moved to California and I pursued a doctorate asking the question, what is it about intergenerational

Christian settings that is such a spiritual hothouse for growth? And so that was the beginning of what I would call my career, my academic career, my academic interest, my scholarly interest. And it overtook my life and it has never left. It came and has stayed and it is exactly where it always has been. It's just an overweening passion. And people who know me, you know, anytime the word intergenerational is mentioned, all heads in the room turn towards me and I go, amen. So it's just what I do. And I love it. It's been a great delight.

What did you discover during your doctoral research? Because somebody could even right now say, yep, makes sense. Let's do it. But if you pursued a doctorate in this kind of work, I'm assuming that there's probably layers of complexity and questions and pros and cons or challenges that you have to kind of overcome. So what are some things you discovered in your academic research with regard to intergenerational ministry? Well, when you do academic research, especially, of course, in this field, you need to do your biblical work first and your theological work.

And I had to do some leveling because my background was educational psychology. And I'm going to do a little aside here and come back to it. Because it was educational psychology, it had all that developmental background. And all the developmental world was saying, children need what children need, youth need what youth need, young adults need what young adults need, and older adults need what older adults need. I had been really initiated into the whole world of Christian education with siloed ministries, but also in the secular world. That's the way we did life. And so one of my big questions was, will I have to give up everything I learned in developmental

psychology for an intergenerational approach? Are they inherently at loggerheads? And that was my first big question. And so I did look into that, and I'll come back to that in a moment. But I did have to do the biblical theological work. And just simply looking at Scripture and saying, how has God called us to be His people? And pretty much throughout Scripture, the predominant ways that we are God's people, that usually happens in intergenerational settings.

Now, not all the time and not always, certainly, but it is the norm. It's actually just the norm. And I thought, why did we leave that behind? Because throughout most of Jewish history, Israel's history, and Christian history, we've been together for most of everything. So why did we stop? And actually, the reason that we pulled away, or at least in my lifetime, the reason that we pulled away, it started before the 70s. But by the 70s, we were, youth ministry was a big, big thing. It had started earlier, but it became a big thing in the 70s. And we began saying, for psychosocial reasons and for developmental reasons, youth are in a unique time, and they need their own people, for psychosocial reasons and for developmental reasons, youth are in a unique time and they need their own people and they need people trained in growing them up.

And we believed that and we saw that and we saw it be helpful in the general world and in other parachurch organizations that were doing youth type things. And so the churches started saying we should do this, too. And then, of course, children's ministry followed that and then all the other groups. So we did it, I think, for good reasons. My reason for starting Children's Church, the church that we were worshiping with in the 80s, was I thought, well, developmentally, these children aren't going to get much out of the sermon. We need to teach them in a way that they learn best. That was my world. I knew that world. And I began importing directly from the world of education into my Sunday school, into my children's church, and we did puppets and everything else.

It was great. It was fun. It was entertaining. But I was missing something. Another parallel journey I've had is looking at children as spiritual beings, not just cognitive beings. Are they learning the information? So that was another journey that was going along at the same time. But we were also, the children were also missing all the people of different ages who love God. And their teachers were good, and the teachers were good models. But throughout all the scripture, there's this sense that the generations pass on the faith. There's a reason for that. God knows this.

God knows as well that dividing people out just to the second graders and say, all you second graders need to come to know whatever second graders can come to know. It is being part of a whole body, all the generations together, so that as you are growing up, you see the 12-year-olds and the 18-year-olds and the 32-year-olds and the 86-year-olds. I am still, I'm in my 70s now, and I am still thinking of the people who I grew up with, who I now remember looking back, who were in their 70s and saying, what was their faith like? What did I see in them? How did they love God in ways that I was probably less aware of at the time, but I did imbibe,

I did receive. And that's been true all my life. I've, you know, when I was 12, I was taking in what was happening with the teenagers. And so when I became a teenager, like, oh, I need to be like them. So we emulate all the way up. So I think God knew what he was talking about when he said, this is the way we grow and learn and become, this is how we follow. So the biblical evidence to me was fairly clear. It wasn't hidden. Theologically, that was a little different question. Are there theological underpinnings

that we could look at? And I was not a theologian when I was doing my work. I had done some biblical work, but I was not a theologian. Didn't have as much prep for that. But for our new book, Corey Seibel, he's done our theological chapter and really has done an excellent job looking at the concept of mutuality and reciprocity and accommodation and grounded those in scripture and how bringing the generations together is a way of living those out that we somewhat sidestepped. You know, if you send the kids away and the youth away and you just have people in your little age span, you can get along well enough. But if you have to accommodate others, if you have to listen to the needs of others, you have to sing the songs that other people want to sing that you don't want to sing. It grows us up.

Others do want to sing that you don't want to sing, it grows us up. Others do want to sing that you don't want to sing. I mean, it, you know, both ends of the spectrum. The teens need to learn that the hymns have rich goodness there. It's not just that the old people like them and, you know, we need to sing their songs, but there's rich, good stuff about God there. And then the older people need to say, what is there about the newer music that is theologically sound and beautiful and can reach me? Just this morning before this podcast, I was listening to the Blessing song and you have been faithful, you have been good. And I played it over and over. And that's a fairly recent song. And it is feeding me now, feeding like hymns have fed me in my life. But not all contemporary music is theologically sound or even singable. Actually, not all of the hymns were actually very theologically sound and

some weren't very singable. So just choosing well. So theologically, Corey has done some really good work on that. Then I began to tackle learning theory, because if I am saying that we become better, more like Christ in intergenerational settings, is there any learning theory behind that? Or is it just like God said, like, get together in generations and it's good to go? Well, we don't follow that in everything else we do. We say, why did he put people outside the camp when they were, you know, it had a disease? Well, we know now what they didn, you know, it had a disease. Well, we know now, they didn't know then, but God knew it. So there are current ways of looking at things that God knew that we can explain. So I began looking at learning theory and I looked at developmental

theory and surprisingly, there was quite a bit of support for the idea that the generations can bless each other. You know, cognitive learning, even Piaget said, when children are with people a little bit further ahead of them, they are able to, as it were, move into the next stage. They can move from that early intuitive learning to more concrete. When their questions are not being answered at that stage, if they're with someone who's seven or eight or nine, they can begin to move into that concrete stage a little more quickly.

So he was even saying some of that. My favorite is Erickson, and he all along said all the generations bless each other. He is the person I got the word mutuality from. I began using that in my dissertation in 2001. I didn't see that in the intergenerational literature anywhere. He just said mutuality is when we grow each other up. You know, if you have children that, yes, you were helping to grow them up, but our children grew us up as well. And he knew that. And that's part of his theory. That's a developmental theory. And then learning theories, I looked at learning theories and I couldn't find anything there that really worked until I hit Vygotsky. He said,

actually, learning is pretty social. It's not just sitting and memorizing. We all know this, that you learn better doing things and with people who have been doing this. So his learning theory, well, it's a little bit hard to say, I mean, sociocultural learning theory or the situative sociocultural learning theory, basically saying we need to be with people a little further ahead of us on the journey to learn any life, anything that, and especially where's a better place to learn to be like Christ and be in a church with people of all ages learning together. There's always somebody ahead of you. And by the way, they don't have to be older than you. We learn from people across the ages because I believe the spirit works across the ages.

It doesn't wait till you're 80 to say, now you can have a spiritual gift. I think spiritual gifting comes at various times in your life. And we can be with children and teens who've received a spiritual insight that we can grow from. So I just love that idea. We have been missing that. And I was looking for a theory and I found one. I was very thrilled when I found it. I was in the library at Biola and I stood up at the table and I looked around and I thought, I've got to tell somebody. And there was of course nobody who needed to hear that. But I... If I'm hearing you correctly, so, you know, going back to the Bible, you know, and I was going to say, and I'm glad you answered it with the theological side of things, but like,

you know, culturally, it seems like obviously there's intergenerational stuff going on over the Bible, but is it just the culture? But you said, no, there's actually theological justification for that, that this is something God desires of his people. And then you went and looked at general revelation, psychology and see, is there evidence that this is more productive for a holistic spiritual learning experience? And you found justification for that too. So what would you say to somebody who said, well, yeah, we have intergenerational, we

have children's ministry of youth groups. And we also, I mean, it's intergenerational in the sense that we have an older youth pastor. We have a few youth leaders, our children's ministry. We have four or five volunteers teaching the second graders, you know, is what you're proposing. How is it different than that? One of the ways, and I'm not saying that's not intergenerational. You know, every Sunday school class is intergenerational. You've got second graders and you have a teacher who's at least older than they are. So you usually have two teachers. In fact, by law, you do have to have

two teachers. So it's not that it's not. What we're talking about is how reciprocal is it? How mutual is it? That's a teaching learning setting and it's absolutely fine. Most teaching learning settings are going to have two or three generations and there'll be some teaching going is it? That's a teaching learning setting, and it's absolutely fine. Most teaching learning settings are going to have two or three generations, and there'll be some teaching going on in some learning. When we want to be fully intergenerational, and I don't mean intergenerational all the time with everything, I'm saying if you want to look at your church and say, where are we being fully intergenerational? We're looking at times when there's more mutuality and more reciprocity,

and you might want to know more about what that means. And I wrote down some little words that will help. These are also theological terms, but they're used more broadly than that too. Mutuality is characterized by collaboration and carries the idea of interdependence. Charles Foster offers this description of mutuality. The goal of mutuality is to have the sense of belonging to one another, of having empathy for one another. The impetus in groups, including congregations, toward the experience of mutuality is powerful. It originates in our human quest to be connected to others, to share a sense of commitment to one another, to be on intimate terms with one another. It is the

persistent assumption that despite our differences, we have something in common. So there is this deep sense that this child and I, we are growing together. I'm not just teaching you so you will learn. It is a more mutual experience. But reciprocity carries us a little further. It implies there's a balanced give and take, that is, a sense that what we have to offer each other is of similar weight and importance. One of my small annoyances is when we pop children in for worship and they sing some neat little song with movement and everybody goes, oh, that's so cute. I would love for it to be seen as a spiritually formative moment, not just for the children, but for all of us.

What do the children bring to us besides being cute? We are assuming God is at work in all of these situations. And seeing children as the bearers of the Spirit as well would change how we see them, that what they bring is as weighty as what we bring. So when congregations bring the whole church together for worship and service and learning or fellowship, we need to seek ways to increase the levels of mutuality and reciprocity across the generations. So when you have that big fellowship thing on Wednesday night or whenever, and everybody's eating at tables, to make it more intentionally intergenerational, you know, you can seat people by color or, you know, all the greens sit at this table, the blues,

yellows, or we need people from, you know, children, youth, young adult, middle adult, older adult at this table. And then you've got questions in the middle of the table that say, you know, say something like, what are you afraid of? Or what's your favorite ice cream? Everybody can answer. It's not like the adult answer is more weighty than a child answer. They're all equal answers. The children say, hi, my name is Susan, and I'm afraid of dogs. And, you know, we can go, oh, I'm so sorry.

And then we move on. I mean, it can get important. I mean, somebody can say, I'm afraid I'm going to die young like my dad did. I mean, that's weighty and it's important. But to that child, being afraid of dogs is as important as that. So it levels the ground. We come to know each other as people, not just children and adults. Children begin to see themselves as having a space and a place.

And adults enter the worlds of the teens and the children and vice versa. So the traditional settings, even if you had like five second grade teachers and only 10 second graders, you know, there still is a, it still doesn't have the kind of vision of reciprocity and mutuality. of reciprocity and mutuality. It still is. These older people are one directionally kind of teaching the younger and it's really for the younger people, but they're still lacks that kind of expectation of mutuality and reciprocity. Is that kind of what you're? It lacks it, although it can have more. I'm teaching the fifth grade now, or I was until, you know, I had my accident. And I have been trying to turn it into a little bit more of a mutual reciprocal space. And I am finding that, you know, I've been teaching children since I was 11 myself. And that those long decades of I'm the teacher and you're the learners is very hard to overcome.

But I have found that when I share a hard story from when I was 10, it changes the room and we become on the same ground. It's really amazing that if I can recall back to being what I was struggling with then, then it's an us, it's not a you and them. So that has helped. I've tried three or four things, but for the most part, typically it's not a mutual reciprocal. I know a lot of people are probably wondering, so wait a minute, are you saying we should do away with, so say there's a pastor of a church of a thousand listening, you know, big church. So they have, you know, age specific Sunday school groups and probably a youth group with a few dozen people, junior high group. Like, so are you saying we should do away with all of that? Or what would, if somebody gave you the keys to the church, okay, whatever you say we will do, we're a traditional thousand person church.

We've got all these different age specific. What would it look like for you to integrate an intergenerational ministry in that kind of church context? Okay. Initially you would need to get the staff all on board. It can't be a message from just me. That will never work. And it can't be the youth minister.

You have to have the senior pastor on board. He doesn't have to run it, but he has to be on board. He can't be saying, oh, there's these people doing that stuff over there. It's got to be us. So once we're kind of all speaking the same language and saying, yes, this is an important priority. It's not maybe the only priority, but it's an important one. How can we do that?

And no, I would never in a million years say, now everything we do has to be totally mutual and reciprocal. We're going to have four-year-olds preaching. That's the way it's going to be. You know, not going to happen. We're not going to change all of that. I would say begin with something that you're already doing, like your Wednesday night or whenever it is your church gets together and has a meal.

How can we make this meal more intentionally intergenerational? All the generations are here. It's just that the youth all sit over there. The older people all sit over there. The mamas with babies and things and daddies sit together. And then, you know, whatever works out. The retired people sit together and whatever. So how can we make this a little more

intentionally intergenerational? I just described one way to do that. You wouldn't have to do it that way all the time, but that would be one way to interject a way of bringing the generations together. Then you look at another way. How else are we already doing something that's multi-generation? How can we make it more intergenerational? Multi-generational means the generations are all there. They're just not intermixing. Even worship on Sunday morning. How can we make this more intentionally intergenerational? Well, you can have children and teens on your worship praise team.

You can. You can have them in, if you have instruments, you know, you can do that. They can read scripture. Anything that adults can do that kids can also do, they can do it. And they're not junior people. It's not like, we'll let you sing, you know, the second alto way in the back. You can be part of the praise team, equal, mutual, reciprocal. So at least when you're out in the crowd looking up, you see, oh, all of us are part of this church, not just the super people, not just senior people. So that's one

way of saying, what does this look like? Prayers can be led by fathers and sons, or if you're in a church where women pray, mothers and daughters, or any older person and a younger person so that they're together. I like it together. Yes, you can have a seven-year-old come and pray and that's fine. But I love having to have a teen and an 11-year-old. That's a magnificent or an emerging adult. Our 20-somethings are so underused. Call on them and then have a younger person with them. And they are the senior person to that younger person. That's a marvelous way to do that. Look at your VBS. How can we make it more intentionally intergenerational? Service and learning has been a place that we've already done some of that.

How can we do it more intentionally? Not just stick everybody together and let the kids go run play, but how can we embed them a little more? So anything you're already doing, say, how can we do that? As you are doing it, talk about it. Let people know why you're going that direction. Do some teaching.

I just did an analysis of about 50 intergenerational ministry doctoral projects. These were all people who did intentional intergenerational ministry in their churches. They either introduced an idea and said, let's do this, or they introduced several ideas and said, let's do that. And they said, don't go all or nothing. Don't say, we're now going to be intergenerational. So everybody feels threatened. The children's minister feels threatened. The youth minister feels threatened. All the Sunday school teachers feel threatened. So don't do an all or nothing. It's not either or, it's both and. Oh, and by the way, I do recommend Sunday school, even teacher learner. Yes, be by the way, I do recommend Sunday school, even teacher-learner. Yes, be as mutually reciprocal as you would like to be, but there is an important place

for the systematic learning of scripture. Okay. Hitting people at their specific age. So you wouldn't, if you even, okay, so I'm hearing, you know, baby steps don't introduce radical changes, but even if you had, okay, what would be the ultimate, your kind of end goal of what the church would end up looking like in 20 years, you know, even then you're saying you wouldn't do totally away with all age specific. So you would still have like a youth group. Is that right? Okay. I would not get rid of my children's ministers. There are unique and wonderful and spiritual

things that can and should happen in children's ministry and especially in youth ministry. You need to be with other kids who are grappling with the kinds of things you're grappling with. Not all the time. You don't, all 14 year olds don't need to just hear what the 14 year olds are saying. You know, that's Lord of the Flies. We need more than that. But yes, and the oldest people in your church need to be with others who are grappling with growing old and losing their spouse and not being able to get around like they used to. So there are unique and special life stages, developmental stages, and spiritual places that we need to share with others in our life stage and age. But what we've neglected is the other. But no, I would never get rid of all of the ancient things. I've heard, I mean, I'm pretty sure this is well known and verified that, um, younger people, teenagers have a much more likelihood of staying in the faith throughout

their twenties. If they have, I forget the number four or five non-parental adult influences in, in their life. Is that, is that pretty well known? I don't know where I think Karen or Kara Powell. Yeah. I think she, uh, and yeah, but I don't think she came up with that. I think that's pretty well known. Is that something I've, you came across that? Is that, can you verify that or, um, yes, Kara Powell has established that, but others of course have come around that even before her, although I'm not sure they said five, but she's, I don't know the number. Yeah. Um, and that's, that's by the way, that her work and Christian Smith's work and Kinnaman's work, all, although they weren't about intergenerationality, they all landed the same

place, basically saying what's important. One of the important things in keeping our youth and our emerging adults is that they have intergenerational relationships, that they know older people in the church. And that doesn't mean they have to be 80 years old. They can be 25 years old, just older than them, to accompany them on the journey, to listen to them. That was the early aughts, you know, 2000 to 2010. Those big studies came out. And that is when churches begin to say, oh, wait, maybe having everything siloed out is not the best way. And they begin asking, but it's been in the teens and even now

that churches are really saying, oh, wait, we really must pull back from a very siloed kind of ministry approach. But they're all saying, but we want both and, and that's a good impulse. It's a good impulse. From what I can tell, and I've got, I do, I've got four teenage kids. Actually, no, one just turned 22 days ago. So I'm officially, I officially cannot say so at 14 through 20. And I just, anecdotally, I can absolutely verify that. Absolutely. That our kids, they just, and we do, we've got several other, well, one family in particular that they just, I mean, our kids are at their house as much as

they're at our house, you know, and, and they're truly being mentored by this other family friend, you know, and, and there's things that, you know, they can get through to my kids that I, you know, it's a classic example, you know, they'll hear something from this other couple. I'm like, well, I've been saying that for years, but it just doesn't sink through the same way. So I just, when it comes to like a youth group, I just see so much value in obviously having a robust, you know, youth leaders involved, but that, that cannot like to have like volunteers or even other staff, like several, like really be intentional by getting many other adult like almost like

spiritually aggressive that could be maybe a little intimidating but like people who are intent not just volunteering to show up at a youth group and take up space or talk to the kids a little bit like actually like no we need several adult volunteers who are who are eagerly wanting to mentor these kids who be in their lives. I think that would just add so, so much value to a youth group, even if you had just a dynamite youth pastor who's amazing speaker. And that just will never be enough, right? I mean, yeah. One youth minister cannot possibly be that for 50 kids or 100 kids or even 20 kids. But youth ministry, by the way, picked up on this sooner than everybody else.

But youth ministry, by the way, picked up on this sooner than everybody else. Sooner by the 1990s, they were already saying, oh, wait, we have pulled kids away from their parents and all the other adults. Maybe that was not a good plan. And by the early 2000s, they were saying, you know, they were saying at that point, what is family based youth ministry look like? And that's better. But, you know, we've moved toward, wait, we need other adults. And now there are lots of youth ministers who say, I got to have some singles in here. I got to have some 27th. I got to have some married couples.

I got to have, you know, more people. I can't do this. And that's, I think, has made such a difference. I think it's huge. What about, so like the church service, you kind of hinted at, you know, integrating all ages into the service. That's a great first step. Are there, like, again, if you can look ahead in 20 years, where would you love to see a church to be if they kept taking these steps? Like what would a fully integrated, is it as simple as, you know, making sure the worship style is conducive for everybody and making sure you have

different age groups on stage doing age appropriate things. Like you said, four-year-olds preaching might not be the thing, but, you know, 10-year-olds can read scripture, right? And or give announcements or, you know, the musical talent, you know, the teenagers can be off the chart, you know, talented music wise. Are there other things that maybe that are kind of outside my traditional categories that I haven't even thought of? Well, something that we're hearing a little music-wise. Are there other things that maybe that are kind of outside my traditional categories that I haven't even thought of? Well, something that we're hearing a little bit more about now, a couple of books that have just come out by Dave Sinus and Daryl Hall about teaching and preaching, communicating with all generations. And this is kind of a little bit, maybe the last frontier,

that as we teach, and I mean, we're going to, for the foreseeable future, probably still have a sermon. We're not going to, you know, do away with that. That needs to be more accessible to all ages. So the illustrations need to be there. The understanding that we're all on this journey together and that the snags and issues that hit 12-year-olds are as important to the 12-year-olds as what happens to the 42-year-old and the 82-year-old. So I, and ministers mostly are aware of this, but I still, we could certainly grow in that. For it to be more acceptable to have babies in everybody where we're worshiping. Now in some churches you think, well, everybody's there. Actually not. Actually just not. And I've literally been in church buildings where you enter the, and it says, no food,

no children. No food, no children. I have theological problems with both of those statements. So, and they'll come and tap on your shoulder and say, you know, we have something for your child out here. Well, they're going to stay with me and somebody else will come along and tap you and say, we have something for you. You know, you get the impression, not allowed. But someone saying regularly how delightful it is to have all of our generations here. We have so-and-so celebrating her 80th birthday or 90th birthday. And our first graders going to school this week, fabulous. That says we, this is a we. It's not for the adults and the kids get to sit there.

You know, baby dedication Sunday or baptisms, anything that you have, don't send the children away. They need to be there. The only time they were there was when they were two. Well, they're not going to know that that happened to them, you know, or nine months or if they're baptized, but nobody's there except their parents. And of course you can have a smaller group, but it needs to be intergenerational. So all of the things that you do, you say, how can we include, especially and intentionally include all the generations? How can they speak blessing over this child or this adult who's being baptized? So that if someone is being baptized, literally an eight-year-old

speaks a blessing, a 19-year-old speaks a blessing, a 42-year-old speaks a blessing, a 42 year old speaks a blessing, an 80 year old. Speaking a blessing, literally speaking a blessing. That's powerful. And it says we all have a voice. We haven't put our minds to thinking about how can we include everybody. And as we do, we will come up with multitudes of ways without it turning into kids church. And I do not want it to turn into kids' church. That's, I don't think that's a great blessing for everyone, but there are wonderful ways and it's happening as we speak.

I didn't even clarify this, but like, so, so like a lot of churches, you know, the youth or kids will stay in through worship and then, then they leave to their groups during the rest of the service. And I appreciate you, you know, making sure baby steps and not making radical changes, but in your ideal church world, would you say, no, you would want everybody there for the whole entire service? Is that right? Ten years ago, I would have said, oh, I understand that cognitively,

the children probably aren't going to get a whole lot of life. They probably won't be able to name the three points at the end or whatever, or even the passage or whatever. I don't say that anymore. I did say that. I think much more happens in that 20 minutes or 25 minutes than did you get the three points. Right. They see people actually still people do look up passages in their Bibles, but they at least

if they don't do that, they see the passage on the screen or they look it up on their phone and the children see that. They see that all of us are learning scripture together. We are drawing who we are from what God said. You can't just hear about that happening. You need to be there when it's happening. You see your parents and other adults listening intently, even taking notes. You see everybody attuned and attentive.

And you overhear the stories. I know even when children are making their own little notes or coloring, which I'm not opposed to, they are multitasking. I heard a little girl behind me one time say she had had this little story in class just before, and he was telling the story of the lost sheep. And she looked up and she said, he knows that story too. And, you know, it just dawned on her. Oh, my goodness.

And she was listening. She was listening. He was telling the story of the lost sheep. So much more. And you know this from having kids. A lot more is happening. They pick up on so much. so much we don't realize. Absolutely. Stuff they're not supposed to be even hearing. I mean,

it's within earshot, but they're very intent on their Legos or whatever. And oh my goodness, you know, when he said about that guy dying and everything, what was he talking about? And that's really good. That's important. So, no, I don't say that anymore. I say they need to be with us. Some churches say, well, how about the fours and fives? You know, if that seems to be the breaking point, okay. Keep the little ones because they need that formative piece, I think. When they get up to two, it gets a little squirrely, gets a little hard.

Maybe threes and fours might be the best time to be somewhere else. But I don't recommend it. But I say, if that for your church is the place where people just say, I just can't do this. Okay. Dude, create a place, make it fine. Yeah. Let them go out during the summer. I wouldn't die on that hill. No, I wouldn't. That's good. That's helpful.'s helpful. Um, I would also add a preacher to preachers out there, like a really good preacher, the better the preacher, the more age diversity they can communicate to, you know, like, you know, I think it's one of the best preachers that I, you know, that are just powerful or even like, I'm thinking of someone, okay. Someone like a Francis Chan and he, you know, he's, you know, he's got a unique gift that most people don't have, but I mean, he'll preach a sermon that

will impact an 80 year old and this just as much as a, as an eight year old, like, and, and, you know, that's kind of maybe an extreme example, but I mean, if, if you're preaching and, you know, your average 15, 10, 15, 18 year old is just not tracking. There's a pretty good, good chance that your 50 year old's not tracking either. You know, like, so I would, I would say if, and I don't want to take words out of your heart here, but I mean, like if you're first passionate about intergenerational ministry, if you see this as a high value, then you, I think you will maybe work extra hard on tailoring a message. It's like, Hey, I, how can I communicate this?

Maybe not every line, every word will land in the same way. But overall, there will be an impact across generations. And also, I come from a very low church, non-denominational, whatever. denominational, whatever, but like, I, I, I'm going to assume that a more liturgical church where there's much more audience participation, you know, even, even something as simple as like reciting the Lord's prayer together, or standing up, sitting down, doing, you know, like that's something I think can be incredibly formative for kids. Is that what, do you have any thoughts on that? Like, like adding, I guess, you know, every church has to do their own thing, but I mean, are liturgical rhythms, is that one way to also reach different generations or?

Yes. Churches that are more liturgical are a little further ahead on the journey than those who have been less liturgical because there's always been a place for children to respond to the reading of the word. You know, every time they read the word, then they say at the end, oh my goodness, the phrase has gone out of my head. Bless the reading of the word. You know, every time they read the word, then they say at the end, oh my goodness, the phrase has gone out of my head. Bless the reading of the word or something. There's a phrase right after the reading of the word and everybody says it. And then also passing the peace. May the peace of Christ be with you and also with you. I've been to liturgical churches where they say that and the children participate just as well. They say it all around you. We have done a few in our less liturgical settings,

antiphonal readings like Psalm 136, I believe it is, where you read a passage and then you respond, may the mercy of God be with you or something like that, repeatedly, repeatedly all through. And children, even who can't read can recite that. But there are a lot of passages you could do that with. Just insert and everyone will say at the end, amen or so be it or and thank you God and thank you God and thank you God. And we can do that and everybody can join in.

I really love that. I mean, kids can memorize Frozen after a few years. No, they're so smart. They're just sponges. You know, they absorb things. And yeah. What are some of the biggest challenges to intergenerational ministries? Like what are some things you come across where a church tried to do this and they just

kept maybe butting their heads up against some challenges that made it really extra difficult? Well, you do get pushback sometimes from the children's ministers and youth ministers and their fear. It's fear, you know, I'm going to lose my job. I'm sorry, it has been harder for older people than younger people to adjust. Some are not willing to give up their ways of being. If your church is basically the elders or the leaders or the board or whoever runs it, or if they're all silent generation, that generation has been a little more open. The boomers have been a little more, this is the way it's going to be. I'm embarrassed

to say that's, of course, my generation. Sometimes boomers and millennials haven't gotten along well in compromising. And sometimes the boomers will just say, when you get leadership, you can decide. That's not a good formula, by the way. It's not going to work well. The millennials will take their toys and go somewhere else. And I'm very sorry. I've seen that happen multiple times. Working together and saying, how can we do this in a way that honors all the generations,

respects all the generations? If we think of especially music as being our heart language, to take away the heart language for anyone over 60 doesn't make good sense. And to deny the heart language for those who are 25 and under doesn't make good sense. How can we do both? And some insist, they insist, this is my church. This is the way we do things. We're not going to do that. And that, you know, you just run up against that. If you have a leadership who says, who works as kindly and as gently as you can with those who are fussing about it, and then they say, well, I'm just not going to stay, you might lose some people. And that's really scary. And a lot of people aren't willing to risk that. So you do have some people who object to things not being done the same way.

Some of the challenges would be that the senior pastor isn't on board. They're not against it. They're just like, somebody go do that somewhere. Winning over the ministry staff, you know, cognitively, they need to understand the biblical and theological support. And then also the learning theory support and the sociological support, empirical support now that we have can be part of it. But experientially, they're going to need to actually experience some things in ways that being together with

all the generations can bless everyone. You know, you can think about it theoretically, but really, is it just going to work? I mean, it's just going to be kitty church, right? So creating some spaces and places where they can experience it and then implementing probably the best way, the easiest way to start is to be more intentionally intergenerational in an already existing setting like a service project. And then those who are really convinced and know how to do it, make it more intentionally so. And then those who are really convinced and know how to do it, make it more intentionally so. And so experiencing it, learning about it, doing it will help convince others that we can do this. It is good. And so that's probably the hardest space after you've tried a few things, people go, oh, that was fun.

And now let's go back to doing whatever we were doing. Sense of keeping it going, even though it's a little harder. It's a lot easier just to send the kids away, send the youth away and let the people that are left do what they want. Instead of always and constantly saying, how do we make sure all of us, all of us are in a reciprocal, mutual learning, growing environment. So steadfast, staying with it, perseverance for the long haul. And you've got to have strong advocates who lean into the spirit and listen well and love well.

You mentioned the service project. Yeah, that would be a pretty easy way, I think, to get generations interacting. So I was at a church that had a – every six weeks, they had what's called Serve Sunday. And they made it really clear, we're not canceling church, we're being the church. So they would go out in the community. And during the Sunday service, they would – and people didn't think about it. But you had 10-year-olds raking leaves next to a 70 year old, you know, and like, but then that even, even little things like that, then the next Sunday when they, when they are in service together, they've had this kind of experience that kind of creates a kind of

bonding, you know, and, and, uh, I think something as simple as that can kind of bring, bring people together. What, what, what about, and I run into this because I preach on hot topics, sexuality and so on. Like, um, how do you deal with, you know, age appropriate messages where the adults need to hear a message that might be a little, you know, PG 13 R rated or something. And it might be a bit much for the kids. Is that something you just navigate as you go? Cause I wouldn't want to shy away from really stuff the Bible does address and stuff that many people are struggling with and need discipleship on. Is that something you ask the kids to leave? I don't know. Have you run into that? Yes. Planning ahead, knowing what

you're going to do when you're going to do it, and then creating some alternative environments for some of the people that you think need that. Not because we're going to have this hush hush topic, but created this is what we're doing this week. And you would do it several times in a year, not just because of the topic, but because you have something unique or special that needs to happen. And I think you better do that. You better make sure that you're not just avoiding everything because, oh, well, we can never,

ever talk about pornography. We can never talk about infidelity. We just can't because, you know, there are kids here. You're going to have to work that out. Another alternative way is to have special teachings on those things. You know, Sunday afternoons or Sunday evenings or Saturday, whatever. You don't have everybody there, but you will be addressing it, and you will be addressing it in a very real way, in a more in-depth way than you can do in a 25-minute sermon. Sure, yeah. And I do need to go back to a point that we just finished,

and I didn't quite, I realized I left off what I was saying, was that to keep going for the long haul is you keep teaching about why you're doing what you're doing. And that illustration you gave about the service, the next Sunday is when you debrief it and you say what happened and you talk about what happened and what good you did, but also what happened in us, what was God doing among us. And someone needs to say, and this is when the seven-year-old and the 80-year-old were raking leaves together. This is when we went to the grocery store and the kids got to pick out the green beans and whatever to take to somebody. You've got to articulate what's happening and why regularly if you want to keep it going. And I failed to finish that point earlier,

but your service administration reminded me when you said, and the next week you come talk about it. Absolutely. Not just that you did it and wasn't it great, but why it was great. But back to the more difficult topics, there are two or three ways to do it, but yeah, avoiding is what we end up doing if we're thinking, oh, the five-year-olds are going to be here, the seven-year-olds are going to be here. You just have to plan ahead and work toward it. And I want to be clear. I think we usually go the other extreme and assume like, you know, a 15 year old shouldn't be hearing this. I'm like, they're probably already been talking about it for five years, you know? Like, so, so I, I,

yeah, I don't want to, um, be naive to think that even younger, maybe teens, especially aren't ready for some really hard and maybe even explicit conversations, but, but, you know, there's, you know, you keep going down the age ladder and there might be some age appropriate. I mean, I was at a small church once and I told the pastor ahead of time where I was speaking on and I forget something with, maybe it had to do with porn or something. And it was a small enough church and it was energetic. Like the youth stayed in the service and everything. It was a small enough church where the pastor went to, he knew a few families that might not want their kid to hear this. So he just kind of took them aside real quick and said, Hey, you know, we're, we are going to, the speaker's going to, you know, talk about porn or something like that.

And so they, they, they, you know, they were able to make decision, you know, whether they keep their kid or not. So, but at a bigger church, you know, that'd be a little more difficult, but like you said, if you just kind of were really open with what you're going to discuss and let, let the parents make those decisions on whether or not they want their kid to hear that at that point. Yeah. And that's important. We have tended to err on the other end and just avoid, avoid, avoid. Each church will have to work that out, but it will need to be, you know, we have so many ways to communicate today. We don't have, everything doesn't have to be done in the sermon. And so that's another thing to keep in mind. And I absolutely, by the way, agree with you that our teens have got to be here for these

conversations. They just have to be. Can't say just adults here. They've got to be almost anything. You think of the council in Acts 15 that met together. The children were not there, you know, when they were deciding about the Jews and the Gentiles and all that. So it's not like the youth have to be here for everything. It's not like a rule, just be wise and all that. I mean, it goes without saying, but like the early church, you know, obviously they met in homes and they, I don't, seems like they were, it was a family gathering, right? Where we're brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers spiritually and coming together. And I do, I wonder, you said it wasn't, when did age-specific ministries really take off? You said it was like really like in the 70s, it really started to take off, but they existed before that.

Is there any like, what's the history of like the youth group? Does it go back hundreds of years or is it really a recent invention? No, parachurch organizations sprung up in the 20s, 30s and 40s. They were not in churches. They were just youth gatherings. And they were very successful. YWAM and some of those. There were five or six.

I did a little bit of looking to see. But they weren't church-generated. They were generally in rented spaces or something. And they were having such a marvelous and good effect that churches said, oh, we can do that. Yeah, Youth ministry took off in the seventies. Now, not to say there weren't youth groups before that, but it took off. By then we were starting to hire people, eighties for sure. Before that, you know, whoever kind of wanted to do it would do it. But yeah, it's recent. This is 50 years. And I think it seems like they're dying, dying now. Like I, I can, again, anecdotally, I look around, I know lots of churches that at one

time had a flourishing youth group or college group, and they're just have a fraction of the numbers now. And when I talk to other people kind of in the field, they're like, yeah, it's, it's, that's pretty, pretty common. Is that, is that pretty common? Ministry's not my specific field. I live in the South and in Nashville, and surely it's the most church city in the world, but I don't know if that's true. But I mean, just looking around.

The churches that I know here have flourishing youth ministries, flourishing children's ministries. But of course, I think in general, since the pandemic, churches are down a little bit. And I would say in the teens, churches were starting to reduce in numbers a little bit. That's true everywhere. I mean, churches are getting smaller. So the youth groups aren't hundreds as much as they are 100 or 50 to 100. So that has to do with Christianity, I think, is we're losing numbers. We're losing youth. Kids that used to leave the church after they graduated from high school are beginning to leave at 15 or 16, probably about the time they can learn to drive. Oh, interesting.

Okay. Wow. Yeah. And that's all the reasons that you would be aware of. Our village should be our church, and right now our village is our schools or other social groups. And one of the reasons that intergenerational ministry is so important right now is that our village should need to be our village. All children everywhere, as they live into their identity, need to be with people, not just parents who believe, but people, strong people in their 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s say, this is my life. This is the way I live. This is my identity. This is who I am. And they don't see it as just

something children do or youth do. It's a life thing. It's not just the youth minister, not just the elders, but it is a way of being. And they need to be with people who have lived whole lives with this. That's why, particularly, I have something I want to say here at the end that just has touched me recently. I have begun to see that, and surely almost everyone has, that we're entering a time of times coming when generations are going to really need to be together intentionally and regularly for support and encouragement. I think we're going to be entering a time of more persecution. Certainly Christianity already does not have the social

clout that it had. We're covered. We're sort of covered. You know, you felt like we're the privileged people. That is simply not true anymore. And I do think that we're coming to a time when there will be persecution. I don't know what it'll look like, but I think eventually it will get harder and harder. I think the older believers it'll look like, but I think eventually it will get harder and harder. I think the older believers are going to need the strength and the energy of those younger, and the younger believers are going to need the steadfastness and the deep faith of those older as they learn to stand in a world that's hostile to Christian belief.

Learning to stand requires community, and I believe intergenerational community. That's why I feel very urgent about this message right now. That's a good word. And even biblically, before there was physical persecution, there was social persecution. You see it in books like 1 Peter and others where Christians were starting to feel the social ostracism of not bowing the knee to Caesar and living a very different life. And people get kind of offended when, you know, groups of people are living differently than the status quo. And that's usually, that's the kind of persecution that Christians face early on in the Greco-Roman

society. Of course, later on in the first century, there was more, you know, physical persecution. But, and I think we, you know, persecution is a tricky word, but certainly, well, you use, I think the most perfect word. Christianity has less and less social clout than we had in the 80s and 90s, which I think is actually a good thing. I don't think the rise of the moral majority in the 80s and trying to take over culture really fared well for the church. But yeah, I think our younger, I get so scared to talk about my viewpoints because people just look at you like you're evil. If you don't affirm things and, you know, certain social norms that, that everybody else seems to affirm and, and yeah, what, what greater need than to have older people to kind of come alongside them and help our youth and teens and preteens be courageous. So before I

let you go, tell us about your recent book. Um, It's, well, it's a second edition of your, of an earlier book you wrote, Christian Intergenerational Christian Formation. Yes. 2012, first one came out. Christine and I wrote it. We had done our dissertations on it and she wanted to write a book. I said, we can write a book, but nobody's caring right now. Well, InterVarsity wanted to publish it. And we thought, okay, we'll let you publish it. Sure. But nobody's going to buy it. Well, nobody bought it at first, but it eventually, I mean, it started growing and every year, you know, more and more people have bought it.

And about three years ago, they said, you know, your 10-year anniversary is coming up. Do you want to do a second edition? We were like, yeah. Because for one thing, there's been a lot more research. About 50 intergenerational ministry dissertations have been written, and I read all those and came up with what they're saying. An amazing amount of good work research has come out. Also, the words mutuality and reciprocity have risen to the surface, and they help explain what we're going for, what we're looking for, rather than just making sure all

the generations are in the same room. We also know more about leadership. We also have a lot of churches who are five and 10 years down the road, and they're able to say, this is what we've done. It really has worked well. This is what we've done that really didn't work very well. This is what we recommend. This is what we say will be a challenge. So we had a lot of, oh, my favorite chapter in the new book is intergenerational spiritual disciplines. So that is delightful. And intergenerational teaching and learning. You know, I was saying, well, we don't know how to do that very well. We can do it. What does it look like? How can we all benefit? So those are kind of cutting edge things. I'm really delighted with those chapters, but we have a new one on leadership and this new one on theology.

So delighted with the new book and it's already, it's just hitting. It's really just now hitting Amazon. You can order and get it and you can get it from InterVarsity as well. So we're really delighted. We have a new author. It was Christine Lawton

is my co-author from the first book. And now we have Corey Seibel. So there are three of us and we turned out to be a really good trio. It was a lovely working relationship. Well, Holly, thanks so much for joining us on Theology in Iran, for giving us so much food for thought. I hope a lot of, especially pastors and leaders, at least think through and consider all that you have given us. So thank you for your ongoing passion and work in this really important area. Thank you for having me. It was wonderful to spend time with you today.

My pleasure. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network.