Worship Weblog

Holland Book Group – First Meeting

Posted by cicw

Friday, October 9th, 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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Key Theme: “’Intergenerational worship’ is worship in which people of every age are understood to be equally important.”

Christ Memorial Church (CMC) is a congregation of about 3,000 members whose vision is to be “a Christian community of all ages, abilities, backgrounds, and cultures dedicated to living as the hands, feet, and voice of Jesus wherever we go.” This vision positions CMC to fully embrace the concept of “intergenerational worship” as described in The Church of All Ages. Therefore, Gary Matthews, minister of worship, decided to create a Book Group composed of the Creative Worship Team plus a few other people.

This group began meeting weekly in September and has covered the first four chapters of the book. In our discussions, we have learned that the ages in our group include five decades (20’s to the 60’s). We are “long-tenured,” mid-tenured,” and “short-tenured,” “settlers” and “exiles”, and “twos” and 1.5’s. All of these categories, while sometimes surprising, were genuinely helpful. Our congregation is a “blended congregation.” We agree with the optimism which states that a blended congregation has “the greatest potential for success in becoming genuinely intergenerational” (p. 14).

As we have discussed these chapters, we keep coming back to the call to understand that people of every age are equally important. Several people mentioned this statement as foundational to our thinking – and the thinking of the congregation.

During our first meeting, we listed the attempts that we have made to make CMC intergenerational in the past (youth Sundays, profession of faith Sundays, teen and children’s choirs, scripture passages read by youth and children as well as all ages of adults as well as family groups, children invited to be blessed as their parents come to the front for communion, “bless the children” services each fall, children’s messages, orchestra and praise teams made up of diverse age groups, etc). Gary summed up our discussion by saying that CMC is already accepting of and interested in becoming more inclusive of all generations. But we need an intentional coordinated effort to find practical ways to demonstrate that inclusiveness on a weekly basis.

The understanding of what it will take to intentionally plan so that each age is treated as equally important has grown at each meeting. How do we meet the needs of people of all stages of faith development in one service? In our focus on the needs of children, how do we also remember that seniors are also in the process of growing and maturing? Conversely, how do we give seniors who are full of wisdom and experience an opportunity to share that in worship? Will the members of the congregation who ask where the teens and 20’s and 30’s are be willing to accept the kind of worship that will draw them in? How do we move beyond “it’s all about me” to “it’s all about the church?”
Answering these questions is our task.

Tags: bgholland, Book Groups 2009, intergenerational