Worship Weblog

Hampton Book Group – First Meeting

Posted by cicw

Thursday, January 7th, 2010

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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It was a cold Sunday afternoon on December 20, 2009 in Hampton. Seven church members hailing from four congregations—an Assembly of God, a Baptist, a Full Gospel, and a Catholic church—met at my home to discuss the book The Church of All Ages. We each greeted with smiles and hugs, spoke of the holiday season, chatted about the football games of the day, munched on hors d’oeurves while sipping warm apple cider, and sharing stories of the joys and challenges of parenting. Then we joined hands, opened in prayer asking God to use us as vessels to spread His “good news” throughout the land.

I asked the group to offer their general impressions of the book. Immediately, one member cited that the book seemed to be culturally and class biased because it did not reflect his church experience. While reading the text he found it difficult to relate to the experiences of the author because he believed that his childhood church, which was predominantly African-American, grappled with these issues in a very different way. He reflected on growing up in Tennessee and sitting in the pew beside his mother, father, grandmother, and siblings, with several surrogate mothers sprinkled throughout the congregation who helped keep him in check. This church fostered a village like setting that nurtured him spiritually, culturally, and socially.

Another member of the group countered his reflection, while identifying with him on a similar upbringing in a Baptist church in New York City. She too, was steeped in that village-like setting in a predominantly African American church while growing up, and that philosophical foundation permeated her home because her father was the pastor of the church that she attended. It was not until she had a child and moved away from the familiar grounds of her upbringing, that she noticed the generational segregation the text discussed. She reflected on how her early church experiences shaped her and she longed for her son to share a similar Christian church experience. She spoke about the importance of children witnessing and participating in the service and the adults modeling the practices of praise and worship to train the next generation. She, like many Christians I know has participated in a sort of church “musical chairs”, basically going from one church to the next trying to find that right balance that aligns with her spiritual belief system. She noted that the churches that once operated intergenerationally have shifted and adopted elements from other churches in the dominant culture to diversify the church experience. She is disheartened by the current state of the church. She feels that the contemporary churches she has experienced is too focused on the performative aspects of worship and not enough on strong foundational teaching and preaching of the Gospel.

An interesting note about our group is that all of the members are educators and parents, and each has worked in some capacity in the church over the years. I shared with the group my spiritual roots in being raised Catholic. I attended catholic schools from kindergarten through college. I served as an alter-boy for several years. But I also experienced my mother’s church, which was Baptist. As a young man I broke from organized religion before subsequently reconnecting with the church after I got married. My story created a segue for us to begin talking about the challenges of maintaining a church that speaks to the generations in one setting. Several questions arose during the discussion, such as how to minister and keep the attention of young children (toddler-aged child to 5 years old)? How do we effectively minister to varying generations who favor worship styles in the same setting? How do we minister to increasingly larger congregation sizes? These were some of the essential questions that were asked at the end of our meeting that we hope to address in subsequent meetings and offer some possible solutions and insight into how we can effectively minister to the generations.

Tags: bghampton, Book Groups 2009, intergenerational