Intergenerational Relationships: A Necessity for Today’s Church
I just finished reading a great article entitled “A Gift for the Next Generation” by Carol Howard Merritt author of Tribal Church: Ministering to the Missing Generation. In this article she talks about her experience pastoring a church of people who she believes she would naturally be friends with if – let’s say – she met them on the street. However, in that article she also talks about a previous pastoral appointment where she was nearly 30 years younger than everyone at the church. The dynamics that she described in that portion of her piece are very familiar to me.
For I share that testimony today that I am as pastor more than 30 years younger than the next person in leadership at Pleasant Hope. I’m a young husband and new father with endless energy and wide eyes for the future who has never known a world without modern technology. However, most in leadership at the church I serve are 60 or older, retired – or about to retire, extensive travelers, and in some cases technological neophytes who aren’t interested in making the computer a regular part of their day.
So these past 16 months have been a time of great exploration, joy, discovery, and frustration. Like any new relationship, it is taking some time to really get to know one another. In a society that promotes age prejudices, we have to be all the more vigilant about breaking down the barriers that divide the generations at Pleasant Hope.
No older adult should be considered “too old” to contribute to the future of our church. Likewise, no youth or young adult should be patronized or despised because of their age. We won’t dismiss the hymns and old songs of the church. Neither should we shake our heads in shame at every new gospel song. We will honor the sacred traditions of how church used to be, but we won’t let that reverence blind us to how things need to be today in order to effectively minister to the world around us. We will acknowledge the ways in which the church of yesterday thought about church leadership, but we’ll also acknowledge that the emerging generation has a different view of the church and its leadership.
No doubt there will be times of friction as we struggle to speak each other’s language and understand each other’s worldview. But the more we commit to be in true relationship with each other, the more we will understand where the other is coming from – even if we ultimately still decide to disagree. We can disagree without being disagreeable.
What we all should be able to agree on is the need for intergenerational relationship and partnership. If you take a mental snapshot of our church, we have seniors and children- not many teenagers or young adults. Young people today don’t want to be patronized, disrespected, or pulled into plans that were already decided for them. They want to be real partners whose opinions are valued, whose gifts are let loose, and whose creativity is not stifled by controlling elders. If we don’t figure out how to be partners, then a very sad time is around the corner for this congregation: as the seniors make their last earthly transition we might just fall into a day where there is no one to pass the blessing of Pleasant Hope on to.
I am enjoying the journey of building intergenerational relationships and while we have much more walking together to do, I’m encouraged by the example of Jesus who was one who tended to attract people who wouldn’t naturally share space – bringing together revolutionary zealots and tax collectors, pharisees and prostitutes, the convicted and the convinced. The Gospel of Jesus Christ isn’t a story of homogeneity. It’s a story of radical diversity within community.
We’re about to start some intergenerational small groups at our church focused around a book that I’m currently reading and have not been able to put down. It’s called The Leadership Jump: Building Partnerships between Existing and Emerging Christian Leaders by Jimmy Long. I’m asking for young folks and older folks to sit down together and read this book so that we might sidestep intergenerational pitfalls and experience the blessing that comes about when everyone is loved, respected, and encouraged as the beautiful gifts from God that we all are.
No comments yet.
