Do the elderly members of your congregation know the names of the children and their parents in your church? Is there much meaningful interaction between the youth and children’s departments? Does fellowship exist across the generations? If the answer is no or you’re not sure, you may want to consider some creative planning to bring together the different age groups in your church. This is a good thing to do because it promotes love, unity and warm fellowship. Such intentional embracing of all the members of Christ’s body is very instructive to young ones.
It was not so long ago that congregations worshiped together without the partitioning we often see in the church today; old and young tended to mix and mingle more both in and outside the church walls, and both benefited from it. Dividing up the church into age groups is a fairly recent innovation, and as with all progress, something was lost even as something was gained. Children certainly can benefit from a time of Bible teaching and instruction geared toward their cognitive development, and moms certainly appreciate being able to sit through a service without distractions! But the result of each age group evolving into separate ministries with its own interests and focus can be a segregation that doesn’t please God. We must pray and work hard towards overcoming this result; the rewards will be well worth it as the church grows in maturity and love. Titus 2 provides an example of how this should work in the church, with older women teaching and training younger women to love their husbands and children. It will be hard for this to happen, though, if there is rarely any interaction between them!
5 Ways To Connect Generations at Your Church
Here are some ideas to get the creative juices flowing as you think through how to bring together young and old in your church:
- Have your Sunday school class pay a short visit to an adult or senior Sunday school class. (Plan this ahead with both teachers.) Sing a favorite song for them, or recite a memorized Scripture passage. Encourage introductions and eye contact!
- Have children “adopt” elderly shut-in members of your church. Make cards and send gifts; try to post pictures so the ones who haven’t met him or her can visualize who they’re communicating with.
- Make cards and simple gifts for new moms and babies, or for youth celebrating birthdays.
- Help clean or decorate an area of the church normally used by seniors or toddlers.
- Host occasional after-church luncheons; invite two specific groups, like young marrieds and senior members, so that names and faces can (finally!) be put together, and friendships can begin to develop.
It’s exciting to think how such simple efforts could result in such rich benefits to the church. Where the motive is to promote love and fellowship among members of Christ’s body, God is honored and glorified and the church is built up.
Your creative ideas are welcome!
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Fantastic post. I LOVED your ideas. Thank you so much for sharing them! This is something that I’ve been wanting to work on, but I was at a loss for how to get started. Thank you for all of your practical ideas. They WILL be put to use! Thanks!
Thanks for these practical ideas. It’s a challenge. One thing that works at my church is scheduling older adults as helpers in children’s church. They mostly mind the doors, but they love to serve the kids even in small ways.
Excellent suggestions! We also used our VBS program last year to encourage the kids and the older adults to interact: our program director designed the snack time so that the adults would sit among the kids and listen to them chat. The director also gave the snack time assistants a box full of little “treasure chest” toys she knew the kids would like–temporary glow-in-the-dark tattoos (Christian-themed, of course), toy cars, stickers. The adults loved ministering to the kids and found that there conversations were not only entertaining, but it was the beginning of a dialogue between some of the kids and some of the adults.
I won’t say that it revolutionized relations between the generations, but I do see more interaction than I did before VBS.
Thank you for bringing up an issue that does need to be addressed, but in a gentle, unfolding manner.
God bless you!
Wonderful ideas. I would also suggest that we remember to be prayer partners for one another. The seniors can “adopt” a Sunday School class, confirmation class, high school class and at the end of a semester or year have a luncheon together. The older adult may not want to teach Sunday school however invite them to come and read the Bible story. There are so many wonderful ways to engage all of the groups. Mentoring and “adopting” a grandparent are both good places to start.
this website is indeed an eye-opener to some of us in Africa. the practical lesson outlines makes it easy take a class through the basic biblical experiences. i really like the bit on bridging the generational gaps. it can go a long way to facilitate the course of christianity.