Worship Weblog

Langley 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.
Learn more

Learning to Be Hospitable to and between All Generations

Dave, a worship director and high school music teacher, is part of a church that makes deliberate attempts to include children and youth as regular service participants. However, children only participate with the whole congregation for part of the service, after which they continue in another location. His church continues to wrestle with questions about the timing of children’s offering and the participation of children in communion. The other Dave, a former worship pastor, now a university faculty member, has been part of a church where children are completely excluded from the congregation’s worship, and another church where children participate until the sermon.

Lindy, a children’s ministry coordinator, asked whether smaller or more traditional churches are more intergenerational by default (due to lack of resources), or by deliberate strategy. In the smaller churches she has attended, children were kept in the service, but very little was done to engage them.

In many of our churches, the Sunday School hour is no longer separate from, but rather concurrent with, the worship service, providing what is perceived to be a chance for adults to connect, undistracted, with God while their children also connect, undistracted/unbored by “adult” worship, with God.

Dave the teacher observed that among his students, their comfort with or interest in intergenerational worship is often tied to their denominational roots. Those who were raised in more traditional Protestant churches expect an intergenerational experience; students that come from contemporary evangelical churches tend to assume that such an experience would be inherently alienating and boring.

Cyndi, a worship pastor, described her attempts to encourage wider participation between generations, especially during special seasons or celebrations. However, in most cases the level of children’s participation in worship is dictated/limited by the timing needs of a concurrent Sunday School.

Tim, a university chaplain, shared the challenge of planning a chapel that would connect with students but would be a safe and enjoyable environment for faculty and staff to also participate in.

We concluded with a discussion about hospitality – the importance of making room for one another and of learning to understand one another across generations. We agreed that this requires far more than just compromise. Compromise often fails because one group simply will not see worship through the eyes of the other, and remains territorial about its worship preferences. We agreed that it is essential to teach the congregation about the biblical models for an intergenerational worshipping community, and to intentionally engage in the otherwise “unspoken” conversations that float around the community with regard to worship. The goal must be to help all generations gain a greater understanding of and appreciation for one another’s unique voice in worship, so that when these voices come together, they are all welcomed to the table as friends and fellow sojourners.

Tags: bglangley, Book Groups 2009, intergenerational