From Kara Powell’s blog Sticky Faith:
What do you think of this idea? Do you see a problem with integration that needs to be addressed?
As we have wrestled with the concept of Sticky Faith in our context, the importance of intergenerational worship has risen to the top of our list of adjustments to make. Like so many churches, we have enjoyed years of great age appropriate and age segmented ministry. These individual ministries have been amazing and have been effective in many ways. However, in the past few years, we have noticed an increase in the number of students who refer to the student ministry programming as their church. In fact, some have stated their parents go to “Christ Community” but they themselves go to “encounter” or another youth program.
We see the corporate worship service as playing a significant part in our efforts to begin to more holistically incorporate our students into the life of the body. For this reason, we have cancelled our Sunday morning student programs for about 12 weeks of our year. These cancellations force our families to attend corporate worship together where our students have the chance to meet more adults and feel more a part of our congregation. In addition, it gives our adults a great chance to meet students and be positively impacted by their energy, spirit, and youthful zeal. It is definitely a two way street and a win-win situation.
We have chosen to focus our time around Advent and Lent, cancelling four or five weeks in a row for each of these two seasons. We’ve also taken the opportunity around Spring Break and July 4 to cancel. These windows offer us a balance of age appropriate ministry while holding up the significant value of being together as a corporate body.
Has this been easy? No! Has there been resistance? Yes! Is it worth it? You bet! We look forward to where we are going and what awaits us.
I have a very strong opinion here.
If the youth are not in the multigenerational service (at least from about 6-10 years of age, I won’t quibble about the exact start here) 52 weeks a year, the church has blown it.
I would not even consider attending a church on a regular basis that felt such age segregated worship was appropriate.
Not only this – the worship itself should actively involve people from 7-70 on a regular basis. (And 7-70 is intended to make a point not to be rigid start and end ages).
By the way – I also think that youth ministry is absolutely crucial, but it is in addition to, not instead of, whole church corporate worship.
I’m with rjs, especially the first comment. Growing up, the “youth group” was Sunday school or an evening (Sun and/or Wed) thing. We were still expected to be in worship the same time as everyone else.
How can we expect our kids to learn what church is if they never go? How can they learn what it means to me if they never even see what I see — or see what I do?
I learned about Jesus sitting beside my parents in church, and I expect my kids to do the same.
I would even add that the youth ought to be part of leading the church corporate worship. My church has teenagers among the musicians and singers regularly, and once a month the teenagers lead and perform entirely on their own.
If the youth don’t consider themselves to be an important part of our churches, instead of second-class citizens or afterthoughts, they’ll go make their own. Or leave altogether. And I don’t blame them.
I have begun to wonder if youth ministry as the main way that youth relate to their faith and the church might be the high dropout rate, or especially what Tim Clydesdale calls the lock box effect. That is the effect of young adults putting their faith in a lockbox because, although they don’t reject the faith of their youth, they can’t make sense of it in their new life.
I wonder this because I see the age graded ministry model expanding to all ages. Just today I had a meeting to talk about ministry to (for) 25 to 30 year olds. The expectation of well meaning older adults was that these folks shouldn’t be expected to join adult ministries yet. They should be in a peer group and older adult need to lead those peer groups. As a result, the more mature folks were excusing this group from joining the church until they had a peer group.
I would have to think if these young people would have been integrated into the body at an early age, they would not expect a group for them as a precondition for their involvement in the church. I would also expect that they would grow in their faith more consistently.
Peer groups are good, as rjs says, as an addition, but not the core connection to the Body of Christ.
I agree with RJS…I would add that I think it is fine for children to leave during the teaching time to receive age-appropriate teaching. Our community is small and is able to do this weekly. Children participate in prayer & singing, leave for teaching (and receive in their own groups), and then return for Eucharist, prayer, and more singing.
I agree. Multi-generational church experiences are necessary. Ralph Winter (US Center for World Missions) once wrote a scathing critique on churches that focus on age/stage and do not offer multigenerational worship/fellowship. He described churches that “chop families into pieces as they arrive at the door”. He contended that, among other things, it was vital for children to observe their parents receiving teaching, correction, and encouragement from their elders.
I agree with RJS and Paul. I have moved and now a attend a church that includes children in worship. very small children can go to a activity time during the sermon but they return before the end and they return before communion. There are many young families and teens in this church. My old church (same denomination) fussed over this issue many times and always gave into the “I don’t want children bothering me or others during church crowd” therefore we had to have sunday school at the same time as church. when we went to a “sandwich” time schedule these people refused to bring their children to sunday school and demanded SS during the worship time too. THAT church was losing young families and had almost zero youth left.
I think this is the way of the future. More and more churches are dumping ministries for specific generations and trying to head towards somewhat holistic models.
Perhaps the best example of this was once in a home group we where praying for a woman and I looked down as we were in the middle of the prayer with our hands on her, one of the two year olds was lying on the ground between my legs watching, I though ‘great they are seeing what REAL faith looks like”
Make kids part of the fullness of the faith from the beginning and they can see what it is really about. By having age segmented things, we’re also pandering to the narcissistic consumer culture.
We’ve got to keep all parts of the church open to all ages. Perhaps as someone commented, this is the reason for the high drop out rate among young Christians, they are no integrated into the broader church and so when their age appropriate ministry ends, so does their faith.
K. W. Leslie (#5),
Our church used to have a broader range of people participating in and/or “leading” worship. Now we only have people from 15-25 (roughly) leading and participating, excluding paid staff who preach and very, very, very few other exceptions – and frankly I feel alienated from the whole experience.
This has been eye-opening for me. It has made me pause and consider how others may have felt alienated before in other circumstances, situations where, from my viewpoint everything was great. This is also part of the reason I think a multigenerational experience actively involving all age groups is essential to a healthy church(7-70).
Brent,
I don’t think it is the wave of the future as much as a return to the past. How many people here over 40 or 50 grew up confined to age-specific ministries?
Maybe my experience was not the norm. We certainly had youth groups and Sunday school classes – but we were all together for worship Sunday morning and Sunday evening. From Junior High on we occasionally participated in the programming. I knew the adults in the church and they knew me.
It has been largely the same for my kids as they grew up in our current church (although no Sunday evening service).
It’s a shame that it has come to this. As a worship leader in an evangelical church, I am dismayed by how we have utilized the Sunday morning worship service to fulfill “attractional” evangelism and not actual worship. This has led us to feel the need to offer specialized worship venues in order to cater to the desires of the attendees; ie. traditional, contemporary, alternative, children’s, students, etc. We continue to fragment the body in order to help it grow, but to what cost? I’m glad to see some of us are coming to our senses and realizing the value in intergenerational worship.
I’m completely on board with rjs and may even feel more strongly about this. But can we please dispense with talk of “more holistic models”? For heaven’s sake, we are talking about God’s family, the people of God, real human beings gathering together to express their love for God and each other. This is not something the church has to engineer or develop “models” for.
The church where I serve as a youth pastor is looking at the Sticky Faith stuff, as well as some other similar approaches. What I’ve read is confirming what I have experienced myself and it goes beyond (but includes) inter-generational worship. When adults welcome in kids and teens as people who are a part of the church and build relationships with them, teach them, listen to them, and worship with them students have a better sense of their own faith and a stronger understanding of the role of the church.
Most of the students who have gone through our youth group and “kept the faith” are the ones, regardless of their background, who were taken hold of by people in the church.
I completely agree with RJS and all those that have agreed with her. I spent about 15 years as a youth pastor, creating the exact kind of segmented programming that I now balk at. It was expected and required of me. In one congregation the greatest fights I fought were not only in being mandated to remain segregated by age, but also by gender.
Moving into a senior pastor role 15 years ago, I headed a different direction entirely (with hiccups along the way.) Yet our general consumeristic sensibilities, our individual right to have it our way, remains a constant struggle against the Christian community I (and I would guess most others) are hopeful to nurture by making these kinds of intentional decisions in the way we are.
What I mean to say is that the individual operates with a view towards the rightness of their nuance, preference and comfort too often, over and against the health and benefit of the entire community (which hopefully pastors and elders and staff, at least, are genuinely and humbly pursuing.)
Chaps @14, amen and amen!
“Dumping” age segregated ministries may be like dumping a 30 year smoking habit. While age segregated ministry may have failed many, the ones whose lives were changed are now elders, deacons, etc., and may not be too keen on eliminating a partially effective ministry for an unknown.
Successful transition will require education, role changes for ministers, education, and education.
I work at a church where the pastor wants everyone from 6th grade up in the worship service. I think it is important as well, in that I believe if the youth never participate in corporate worship, then chances are they will not once they have graduated and moved on.
One of the things I have done at both churches I have worked as full time youth pastor is asked the youth to be the leaders of the church in worship. Not only by joining the praise team, but by being the group that sets in the front of the church and participates.
It really sets the bar for the adults who are in the service as well.
I originally wrote this blog post for Kara and the Sticky Faith website as a way to transparently express how our church is seeking to build “sticky faith” in the lives of our teenagers. There is a lot right about age appropriate ministry in the church today, but there are some things that we are discovering may not as healthy as we thought they were, or at least they are having some unintended negative consequences we did not imagine when we decided to implement them. A large group worship service on Sunday morning, at least in our context, is one of these areas.
I am over 40 and when I was a teen, we went to Sunday School and church. We were at church whenever the doors were open as were most of our friends. However, in the context I currently live and minister in, this is nowhere near the case. Most families are so involved in other things they only attend one service on Sunday mornings. It’s all they can fit into their busy lives (a whole new matter entirely to discuss). When the student ministry offers ANYTHING during the hour they are there, Sunday School, small groups, or a large group program, most students will opt for the student ministry program rather than the corporate worship service. Most parents would encourage this choice. In fact, some of the flack we have taken for cancelling ministry like we have has included families considering moving to another church down the street where families can get what they want.
Change is hard and must be managed well. We are in a larger church context with multi-site implications and significant history and preferences to overcome. We are excited about where we are going and will continue to make adjustments and changes that hopefully lead to a more significantly sticky faith in the lives of our teenagers. The struggles your church faces may be different than the struggles we face in my context, but the question remains, how are you doing at building sticky faith in your teens? Are you going about your business blind to the realities of students leaving not only your church but their faith when they graduate or are you actively seeking ways to adapt your ministry and encourage a deep and sticky faith? What needs to change in your context and how are you going about changing it?