I’ve discovered that, as the Children & Youth Program Director, I spend a lot of my time at St. Clare’s asking and answering questions: which room is available? is the schedule up-to-date? where did the marker cap go? how many sandwiches do we need and do any of them have onions? Most of these questions have concrete answers—18 sandwiches, no onions—but there are many that don’t. The questions that need time and space, prayer and conversation to answer, are the same ones I come back to again and again.
Namely, what does it mean that St. Clare’s is “intergenerational”—that our services are open to “all ages”—when we have separate spaces, materials, and programs for children? How can we meet children where they are developmentally and still incorporate them—intentionally, authentically, meaningfully—into the life of our church? Are we showing children that they truly belong here, in our church, as part of the Body of Christ?
Last week I came across a short article that explores a few of these questions. (You can read it here.) Part of a series on “Intergenerational Formation Insights”, authors Sarah Bentley Allred and Wendy Claire Barrie look at the age-and-stage model of ministry, in which members of a congregation are grouped together by age or life-stage, and its relationship with intergenerational ministry, which “intentionally brings two or more generations together in worship, service, learning, or sharing”. These models are often characterized as being in opposition with one another: that no church with a Sunday School or Youth Group can be truly intergenerational. (In some online discussions, I have seen “separate is not equal” referenced more than once.) So how do we account for the fact that children and adults have different developmental needs? Allred and Barrie posit that—like most things in life—it’s a both/and, not an either/or. A church can have both separate and joint programs for children and adults, and still cultivate a sense of belonging and nurture reciprocal relationships across generations. We can hold them in balance.
And I know we can, because it was this balance that rooted our family at St. Clare’s. It was knowing that our children were as welcome downstairs, singing This Little Light of Mine with Wendy, as they were at Communion, crawling from cushion to cushion, as they were at coffee hour, sharing a cookie with Peg Ross (who always asked Anna where she could find cat shoes in an adult size). It was having opportunities to worship, learn, and gather as adults with our adult peers and as parents with our children. It was looking around the sanctuary on a Sunday morning and seeing that we could belong here at every age and stage.
I think we still hold that balance. While I order 18 sandwiches without onions, you pull up a stool for Nicholas to dry dishes in the sacristy and give Mia a thumbs-up while she carries the basket during Communion. You go to Cincinnati for a week with Youth Group and show a new family where they can find the bathroom. You make wreaths at the Advent Workshop and buy cookies for coffee hour so that a three-year-old girl wearing cat shoes can share it with the person sitting next to her.
This is collective and collaborative work, and so, as I read this article and looked at the accompanying resources, I knew I wanted to send them to all of you. It’s important that we share an understanding and a vocabulary to discuss what it means to be part of an “intergenerational” community. It will help us ask more thoughtful and generative questions about what we’re doing to build the kind of church Jesus wanted for all of His children. (And then we can look for that marker cap together.)
— Eliza Nuxoll