Introduction
In the West, the ideas and practices of intergenerational (IG) ministry have been promoted one after another. However, if a church does not understand the concept of IG ministry, it may make IG ministry a ministry that offends every generation. Ortberg, for example, has said that when one does not understand the meaning of IG worship, one defines it as follows: “Intergenerational worship would be a congregation of diverse ages sitting through a service of mixed styles that displeases everyone equally.”
In view of this, this article attempts to propose the 5Rs, namely Reformation, Reaffirmation, Restoration, Recollection and Reimagination, in the hope that Chinese Churches will have a further understanding on IG ministry.
Reformation
Intentional Intergenerational Ministry (IIM) is a movement in the West, carried out in churches, neighborhoods, communities, corporations, and organizations which addresses problems of dysfunctional families and the indifference of society in the postmodern era. Its goal is to “start a movement to bring Christ’s intergenerational message of unconditional love to an aging society suffering from generational isolation, separation and neglect.” Nowadays, Chinese and Western churches also suffer from generational isolation and separation due to their “over-reliance” on age-specific ministries. This results in many of the next generation’s lack of belongingness to the church, which is one of the reasons why they leave the church. Faced with the high turnover rate, Western Christian scholars have returned to the Bible to re-explore God's intentions for passing on the faith down the generations, and IG ministry should be a crucial factor to bring back the next generation.
However, in the society defined by “age-segregation”, people of all ages in the church are generally accustomed to staying in their comfort zone of “age-stratified” meetings. Therefore, intergenerationality is not considered to be the mindset that the church should have, or the core value that needs to be emphasized; it is even viewed as counter-cultural. Fortunately, after nearly half a century of exploration in the field of IG ministry, Western Christian churches have begun to flourish in recent years. This can be evidenced by the diverse and creative intergenerational teaching materials published by different publishers. However, in Chinese churches, IG ministry has generally not received the attention it deserves. This is due to many reasons, with the major ones being the misunderstanding of children (childhood) and the lack of understanding of the rationale for intergenerationality.
Reaffirmation
In general, churches see only two aspects of children: they are sinners like adults, and they are developing creatures in need of instruction and guidance of adults. This makes the possibility of children's participation often overlooked when the church develops various ministries. A. L. Allen laments, “children face the marginalization and oppression of a modern church that does not take them seriously as co-participants in its ministry.”
With the development of childhood studies in Christian academic fields, the one-sided and narrow views above have been questioned by scholars. In fact, exploring from biblical and theological perspectives, it is not difficult to find that there are many more aspects to the nature of children (childhood), some even contradictory to the general views above. It is briefly described as follows:
•Childhood’s eternal value
In view of childhood’s eternal significance, Christians should commit themselves to recognize, and cherish the presence of children in the church.
•Children as holy gifts, blessings and sources of joy
The church that embraces and welcomes children will be blessed.
•Children as fully human and young fellow disciples
Children deserve to be treated like adults and to enjoy the wholistic church life, including service. Church adults need to put children “in” ministry and serve “with” them.
•Children’s vulnerability
The church should be a place where vulnerable children are protected and cared for, their basic needs are met, and justice for them is advocated.
•Children’s spiritual insight/ability
Children’s voices need to be heard and respected.
•Children as spiritual role models
The church should recognize that children can have a positive impact on the faith community and enrich the moral and spiritual life of adults.
•Children as sinners in need of salvation
The church needs to confront children's sinful nature. They need God's forgiving grace like adults.
•Children as developing creatures in need of instruction and guidance
The church should work together with parents to bear the responsibility of nurturing the spiritual life of children.
It is hoped that the discussions above on the nature of children (childhood) will encourage the church to reconnect with children, view them as an integral part of the church, and provide them with the same wholistic church life as adults. God calls the church to keep children in her mind when developing ministries, and IG ministry is a visionary and promising approach.
Restoration
Not understanding the foundation of intergenerationality is another major reason that causes Chinese churches to ignore IG ministry. Intergenerationality is in fact, deeply embedded in Scripture and theology. Firstly, there are multiple passages in the Bible that support the IG approach, including:
•Intergenerational gatherings: For example, the Feast of Tabernacles (Deut. 31:12-13), and the occasions when Jesus taught (Matt. 18:1-5; Mark 9:33-37; Luke 9:46-48).
•Generations passing on the faith: For example, Psalm 145:4 says, “One generation commends your works to another; they tell of your mighty acts.”
•A covenant community as an all-age community: For example, Genesis 17:7 states that God's covenant community is not just Abraham's generation, but also his descendants.
It can be seen that IG ministry has long existed in Bible times; how to restore such practices is a topic for the church today to ponder.
Secondly, theology also provides crucial foundations for intergenerationality. Banks observes that two basic images used in the NT for the faith community are the family and the body.
Church as a family
The NT delineates church members as the family of God; the head of the family is God the father (Gal. 4:6). Christians are not only children of God but also parents and children or brothers and sisters in Christ. For example, Paul views Onesimus as his child (Phlm 10), Phoebe as his sister (Rom 16:1) and Rufus’ mother as his mother (Rom 16:13). The same perspective of viewing the faith community as family is also found in Jesus’ teaching. Upon being told that his mother and brothers have arrived, Jesus says, ‘Who are my mother and my brothers’? Then, Jesus defines family, ‘Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother’ (Mark 3:33-35). Here, Jesus expands the meaning of family, i.e., the church needs to be a community that is characterized by family-type relationships, and a typical family is made up of different generations.
God calls his children to build the church and make the church a big family of God, but age-stratified gatherings keep people of different ages isolated on different islands, unable to establish family-like relationships. How can we build bridges between isolated islands through IG ministry, so that people from different generations can be reconnected to build up the big family of God? This is a tremendous challenge facing the contemporary church.
Church as a body
Another basic metaphor used in the NT to represent the Christian community is the body.
Paul speaks of the brothers and sisters of the church as the body of Christ, and each one of them is a part of it (1 Cor. 12:27). Paul then encourages all Christians to respect and value each member (1 Cor. 12:21-23). He describes every Christian as a certain part of the body, for example, eyes, hands, and feet. Every part is important to the whole body, and once a part is neglected, the body suffers. It can be seen that every brother and sister in the church is important and needs due respect, especially the relatively vulnerable members, such as children and the elderly.
In Ephesians 4:15-16 Paul further emphasizes this metaphor of the body of Christ and describes Christ as the head of this body. From Christ the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work. But the church generally ignores Paul's teaching and separates the members of different generations, especially the vulnerable members, such as children and teenagers. The body of Christ is broken and cannot fully perform the function of mutual help and love. It is no wonder that the majority of second-generation believers will leave the church when they grow up. This is the painful lesson of the contemporary church. How can we stop this cycle? The church should put Paul's teaching into practice, reconnecting all generations and rebuilding the body of Christ through IG ministry.
Recollection
In June 2019, NYCCC adopted “intergenerationality” as one of the core values of the church. Soon after, our church successfully organized an IG ministry team and promoted IG interest groups, IG family small groups, and milestone celebrations (blessing our church's graduates and gifting our church's own painted, pastor-signed stones). In March 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the IG family small group shifted to online gatherings. Although intergenerational gatherings experienced considerable limitations due to the online format, the pandemic could not stop the growth of IG family small groups. In mid-2021, when the pandemic situation improved, the group not only resumed physical gatherings, but also launched joint IG family fellowship with Fidelity (English Youth Fellowship) once a month. In the summer of 2022, the IG family small group hosted an intergenerational BBQ Night with English congregations from various age groups. The IG small group also hosted a Friends’ Night in 2022 Christmas season, inviting non-Christians to celebrate Jesus’ birthday.
There was an IG family small group gathering on the theme “Family as a Great Team.” Considering the fact that family members who are close to each other every day will inevitably hurt each other, this gathering included a meditation session to think about the forgiving grace of the Lord Jesus. After closing their eyes, listening to and meditating on the song “Precious Cross”, each group member needed to write a short letter asking for forgiveness from a member of the family. Among them, there was a family of five; all its members wrote letters to apologize to one of the children in the family. The child burst into a bright smile after receiving the apology letters from the whole family.
In addition to worshiping together and supporting each other, IG family small groups also serve together. For example, at our church's community service event to raise funds for Ukraine and Afghanistan refugees, the whole group participated in musical worship. The group members also served in the event according to their personal gifts. For example, several children were willing to sing alone, while the adults participated in musical instrument performances, face painting, food preparation, etc. It is particularly worth mentioning that this community service event was led by the young adults of our church, inviting different congregations and generations to serve together. This has brought our church's intergenerational and inter-congregational ministry a step forward.
Reimagination: Three arenas & five dimensions
Age-specific ministry has its advantages and necessity, but it must be complemented by IG ministry. The Lord Jesus called twelve disciples who were in their prime years to work hard with Him and proclaim the gospel of the kingdom of heaven, which is one kind of “age-specific” ministry. However, the Lord Jesus also valued “intergenerational” ministry. Children were seen among his followers (John 6:8-13). In fact, Jesus rebuked those who prevented children from coming to him (Mark 10:13-16). It is worth noting that although the Lord Jesus did not have a family of his own, based on his in-depth conversations with religious leaders in the temple when he was twelve years old, we can reasonably infer that Jesus received a good “family” education. The above-mentioned “age-specific”, “intergenerational”, and “family” ministries echo the “three arenas of faith development” proposed by Fredenburg and Lawrence. The essence of the three arenas is that the church equips different generations of Christians separately through an “age-specific arena”, edifies them simultaneously through an “intergenerational arena”, and thus enables different generations to build meaningful relationships. Finally, after receiving the church's age-specific and intergenerational nurturing, each Christian must return to the “home arena”, devoting him/herself to strengthen the family as a small church, and then move forward to build the church as a big family together.
When the church tries to build a structure by balancing the age-specific, intergenerational, and home arenas, she must consider how to incorporate the wholistic church life into this structure. The wholistic church life consists of five fundamental dimensions—celebration, learning, relationships, service, and spiritual discipline. Most Christians should have some basic concepts on how to implement these five aspects of church life in the age-specific arena, but how can they extend these practices to intergenerational and home arenas? This requires brainstorming and “intentionally” carrying them out, especially in a biliterate and trilingual church with language barriers. Although the challenges are significant, it is an inevitable responsibility of the church to bring back and strengthen the next generation to pass on the mission through IG ministry (whether in the church or at home). May God raise up servants in Chinese Churches to revive families and churches through IG ministry, so that the family of God will be solid as a rock and the body of Christ will be closely connected.
Hui Er (Maria) Yu (Intergenerational and Children's Ministries Pastor of NYCCC, PhD.)
