Worship Weblog

Berkeley Book Group – First Meeting

Posted by cicw

Tuesday, October 27th, 2009

Book Groups

We invited 34 book groups across the U.S. and Canada to meet and discuss The Church of All Ages and its implications for their worship, and to share their notes here.
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Our group of eight members represents quite a diversity of ethnic backgrounds: African American, Naga, Filipino, multicultural, and Euro. We are pastors, ministry staff members, and laypersons, from congregations that are American Baptist and United Methodist. Our age range is twenties through sixties.

“Where does intergenerational activity actually happen in our churches?” It’s not hard to answer if we are looking at fellowship occasions, such as church dinners. But in worship? This is a question worthy of our focused reflection.

In our book, Howard Vanderwell writes of “quiet collisions that occur on multiple levels” (page xvii). In sharing about our first meeting together I’d like to offer some of these “collisions” we noted in our churches:
• One of our group members, who grew up Catholic, confessed that she “didn’t get it” when she joined a Baptist church and then was expected to send her daughter off to children’s church school, while the adults worshiped.
• Another spoke of “limited resources” being a collision point, as her church struggles to cover the bases in attending to the weekly needs of children, youth, and adults. Another challenge in her congregation’s worship is those who want/expect a more informal style and those who want/expect a more informal style. This cuts across the age groups (in other words, not all older people necessarily want a formal style, nor the younger folks an informal style!)
• Two group members felt a challenge in that the parents of children and youth seem to expect church leaders and teachers to be “experts” in working with these age groups, but few parents are willing to offer help or their own expertise when called upon to lead “children’s church.”

Our reading in Chapter 2 led to a discussion about one of the five “guidelines” noted on page 29: “Consider all the chapters of life’s journey to be equally valuable.” In thinking this over, the following comments were made:
• “Our young adults wonder: ‘Is there a place for us?’”
• Society in general often treats children as second-class citizens; does the church unconsciously fall into this pattern?
• There’s a fast-growing demographic of older adults. These have been the backbone of churches for many years, and they ask: “What about us?” Is there a time when they can begin to be served, having done so much of the serving through the years? Do they ever get to lay down their leadership burdens? Are their desires overlooked in worship, in favor of more contemporary trends?
• There are gaps in the “equally valuable” idea. Vanderwell states: “Often today we find that certain stages of life receive more concentrated attention than others.” In one member’s church there seems to be little attention paid to an age group that could be described as “post college/pre marriage and children.”
• In one of our group’s small churches, the “youth” group ranges in age from 11 to 19, the children’s group from 4 to 10. These age ranges are too large, but there is not enough leadership to break these groups into smaller ones.
• Sometimes individuals or groups can act rather self-centered, i.e. “It’s all about me.” Church should be a place where “equally valuable” is a strong value. But limited resources sometimes get allocated to the group with the loudest voice or most representation.
In summary, re “equally valuable,” each of our churches, no matter what size, could do with a good look at how the various generational groups are valued.

Finally, regarding intergenerational worship, our group will be talking more about the specifics of our liturgies in the next session. A few notes for now:
• One church begins worship with a “children’s worship song,” which is antiphonal with the congregation and serves as a call to worship.
• Another church, during an interim period in church life, intentionally invited every member to try their hand at preaching and at worship planning. Those who preached ranged in age from mid-thirties to age eighty. This lifted up not only a variety of generations but also equipped this small congregation by emphasizing that every member has the privilege and responsibility of interpreting the Word (very Baptist!)

We closed our first reading group session by listening to a beautiful recording of “I Was There to Hear Your Borning Cry,” by John Ylvisaker. Each section of the text was sung by someone of a different age. We will each be bringing back to the group more hymns that we find reflect the idea of generations worshiping together.

Tags: bgberkeley, Book Groups 2009, intergenerational