Our parents were all close friends and they all did Bible studies together or just hung out outside of school. You were always doing something with the church families and I think that early development of getting to know the families when I was at a younger age encouraged the acceptance of us by the time we got in high school because we had already developed good relationships with them.
— Dexter
All of the high school students and junior high students sat in the front corner part of the sanctuary. They didn’t really include us a whole lot in the way the service ran. Every once in a while we were given the chance to lead worship, but that was once in a blue moon.
— Megan
On my dad’s side of the family, I (Kara) am the oldest of fifteen cousins. When I was growing up, thirty of my relatives would gather at Grandma and Grandpa Eckmann’s house for holidays. That’s far too many people to fit around one table.
So we set up two tables: the adults’ table and the kids’ table.
We Eckmanns are far from the only family to arrive at this clever and practical two-table solution. I can almost feel you nodding your head as you think about the two tables at your own family gatherings.
At Grandma and Grandpa Eckmann’s, the adults ate in the dining room. We kids ate in the TV room.
The adults sat at the fancy dining room table. We sat around card tables.
They ate off nice china. We ate off paper — or if we were lucky, plastic — plates.
They actually had and used napkins — cloth napkins at that. We had our shirtsleeves.
They had pleasant conversation. Somehow our conversation usually degenerated into throwing dinner rolls at each
other and holding a Jell-O snorting contest.
In theory, we were at the same meal. In reality, we had two very different experiences.
That sounds a lot like how adults and kids experience church today. The adults’ table is in the bigger, nicer room, and the kids’ table is down the hall.
Most churches have adult pastors … and youth pastors.
So, it was kind of … I don’t like this word, but for lack of a better one, segregated, in the sense of the high school students have their thing and then the adults have their thing.
— Ian
Adult worship services … and student worship services.
Adult mission trips … and student mission trips.
Do sixteen-year-olds need time to be together and on their own? You bet. As one youth worker told me, “The average sixteen-year-old guy doesn’t want to talk about masturbation with Grandma in the room.” Neither does Grandma. So that’s a nice win-win.
But one of my mantras is that “balance is something we swing through on our way to the other extreme.” I’m afraid that’s what’s happened here. In an effort to offer relevant and developmentally appropriate teaching and fellowship for children and teenagers, we have segregated — and I use that verb intentionally but not lightly — kids from the rest of the church.
And that segregation is causing kids to shelve their faith.
I remember the first Bible I received as a child. On the cover was a picture of “Anglo-Saxon Jesus” surrounded by smiling children of all different skin colors. Jesus had this dewy glow, and I think there were fluffy sheep nibbling on tufts of grass in the background. Too cute.
In reality, Jesus’ vision for intergenerational relationships was anything but cute. It was and is both radical and revolutionary.
In Luke 9:28 – 36, Jesus takes Peter, James, and John to a mountain to pray. Jesus’ selection of those three disciples and exclusion of the other nine almost certainly fueled feelings of jealousy and insecurity in those left behind. I can almost hear the other nine grumbling under their breath, “What makes Peter so special?”
Soon after, an argument breaks out among all twelve of Jesus’ disciples about who is the greatest. Jesus doesn’t seem to actually hear the argument, for Luke writes in Luke 9:47 that “knowing their thoughts, [Jesus] took a little child and had him stand beside him.” Jesus continues, “Whoever welcomes this little child in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. For it is the one who is least among you all who is the greatest” (Luke 9:48).
Thus Jesus places two figures before the disciples: himself, whom they greatly respect, and a child, who in that culture held little intrinsic value. The good news for the disciples is that greatness can be pursued and possessed. The bad news is that this greatness comes from doing something counterintuitive: welcoming a child.
An understanding of the Greek phrasing that Jesus uses in this well-known statement about intergenerational relationships makes his words all the more difficult for the disciples to swallow. The Greek verb Jesus uses here for welcome is dechomai (pronounced “DECK-oh-my”), which often meant showing hospitality to guests. Thus it carries a certain connotation of servanthood. In the first century, taking care of both guests and children was a task generally fulfilled by members of society who were viewed as different from, and even inferior to, the male disciples — meaning women and slaves.1
Thus Jesus was asking the disciples, who had just been arguing about their individual greatness, to show utmost humility by embracing the kids in their midst. According to Jesus, greatness — and dare we say “great” parenting and “great” Christian living — emerges as adults welcome children.
As we planned our College Transition Project, the FYI research team had hoped to find one thing that parents and church leaders could do that would be the silver bullet of Sticky Faith. We had hoped to find one element of kids’ church involvement (e.g., Bible study, small groups, mentoring, justice work) that would be significantly related to higher faith maturity — head and shoulders above the rest.
We haven’t found that silver bullet. While the study of Scripture, small groups, mentoring, retreats, justice work, and a host of other ministry activities are important, the reality is that kids’ spiritual growth is far more complicated than just one silver bullet.
The closest our research has come to that definitive silver bullet is this sticky finding: for high school and college students, there is a relationship between attendance at churchwide worship services and Sticky Faith.
I wish that there had been an intentional effort by the church to integrate the teenagers in the body with older believers. Although I was able to do this because of my parents’ direction, many of the other teenagers were content to remain in youth group, largely separated from the vision and ministry of the church at large. While it may have driven some youth away, I would have liked to see more integration within the larger church body and a clear direction for teenagers to learn what it means to walk with Christ, take up their cross daily, serve others at a cost to oneself, and be disciplined.
— Lilli
Students who serve and build relationships with younger children also tend to have stickier faith. Granted, some teenagers opt to serve in children’s ministry because they want to avoid going to “big church.” And sure, others volunteer in children’s ministry because their school requires service hours.
Yet even with these mixed motives, the high school students we surveyed who served in children’s or middle school ministry seemed to have stickier faith in both high school and college. Part of that is likely because of the type of students who volunteer to serve younger kids, but nonetheless, being involved in children’s ministry seems to be faith-building.
And while our research didn’t specifically examine the effect of teenagers’ involvement on the younger children, our guess is that it’s not just the teenagers who benefit from that inter-age connection — the younger children do also. When older kids take an interest in younger children, listen to them, and even build a true relationship with them, the young ones glow. (I’ve seen my own kids’ faces light up as twelve-year-olds make an effort to befriend them.) Young children at church tend to assume that adults will pay attention to them, but when “big kids” do, their self-esteem and their love for church skyrocket.
As a research team, we weren’t all that surprised that of five major sources of support (adults in the congregation, parents, youth workers, friends in youth group, and friends outside of youth group), high school seniors ranked adults in the congregation last.
What did surprise us was how far behind the other four groups they were. One youth group graduate reported that his church “would like to talk about having students involved, but they never really did.” Another reflected that church members “wanted nothing to do with us…. I think they see us as kind of scary in that we’re the people on the news you know who are dealing drugs and getting pregnant and all those sort of things … keeping us separate and treating us like we were a hazard.” The current chasm between kids and adults in church is greater than we had expected.
I couldn’t leave the church each week without being stopped by several adults in the church and engaging in lengthy conversations with each of them. The women of my church were very present when my mother died after my junior year of high school. Basically, I knew at least half of the people in my church fairly well, and they were very supportive of me.
— David
By far, the number one way that churches made the teens in our survey feel welcomed and valued was when adults in the congregation showed an interest in them. More than any single program or event, adults’ making the effort to get to know the kids was far more likely to make the kids feel like a significant part of their church. One student exclaimed, “We were welcomed not just in youth group; we were welcomed into other parts of the ministry of the church, whether it be in the worship or the praise team on Sunday mornings, or whether it be teaching Sunday school to kids or helping with cleaning and serving … all these other types of things really just brought the youth in and made them feel like they had a place and even feel like they were valued as individuals.”
Contrary to popular opinion, it’s not “out of sight, out of mind” for high school graduates. Contact from at least one adult from the congregation outside the youth ministry during the first semester of college is linked with Sticky Faith. Hearing from an adult from their home church — whether via text, email, phone, or something you’ve perhaps heard of called the US Postal Service — seems to help students take their faith to college with them. In fact, that ongoing contact still makes a difference three years later.
Once they became college freshmen, we asked the students in our study to share their top difficulties after high school graduation. Here’s what they told us:
Number 1 was friendship.
Number 2 was aloneness.
Number 3 was finding a church.
It’s no wonder students have a hard time finding a church. Those who have been sitting at the youth ministry “kids’ table” don’t know church. They know youth group, not church.
Chap says a lot of brilliant things, but I think perhaps his most brilliant insight in the last few years is that we need to reverse the ministry adult-to-kid ratio. What does he mean?
Many children’s and youth ministries say they want to have a 1:5 ratio of adults to kids (meaning they want one adult for every five kids) for their Sunday school class or small groups.
What if we reversed that? What if we said we want a 5:1 adult-to-kid ratio — five adults caring for each kid? We’re not talking about five Sunday school teachers or five small group leaders. We’re also not talking about five adults to whom you outsource the spiritual, emotional, social, and intellectual development of your kids. We’re talking about five adults whom you recruit to invest in your kid in little, medium, and big ways. As we at FYI connect with parents across the country, we have seen families experience a 5:1 ratio when they develop a sticky web of relationships for their kids.
Extended families often have been the traditional web of caring relationships, and for good reason. Families share holidays and celebrations, attend weddings and funerals, and offer a form of support that lasts generations. Many parents instinctively choose to live close to other family members, and some parents even make career sacrifices in order to stay close to their families. But with the advent of Facebook, Skype, and other new technologies, even distance need not be a barrier to building a sticky web across your extended family.
Parents who are not blessed with grandparents, siblings, and cousins nearby may need to do a bit more work to form a web of relationships, but opportunities abound at church, in the neighborhood, at your child’s school, or at your child’s activities. Look around you — often the best web is created when you can give as well as receive support for your children. Be one of “the five” for your children’s friends, and maybe their parents will be one of the five for yours!
Sticky social webs don’t happen by accident. You need to build those relationships with regular contact. As with most aspects of parenting, we have to be intentional. Just as a spider meticulously creates its web, so we must devote significant time and energy to surrounding our children with intergenerational relationships.
At my church, I’ve been inspired by one small group of families who have created a sticky web for their kids. While most of the adults in the small group are now grandparents, they started meeting together when their children were newborns. Early on, they decided that they wanted to do more than study the Bible together every week or two; they wanted to be families who stuck together.
Every three months, they bring their calendars to their small group meeting. As is typical in small groups of busy families, they plan several months in advance when they are going to meet. But unlike most small groups, they have taken calendaring to a new level.
This small group has covenanted to make each other’s family events a joint priority. So during their quarterly calendar review, not only do they plan their meetings, but they also share important upcoming family dates and events. All five families mark the Sunday afternoon when Claire has her piano recital. All five families make a note of Mario’s Eagle Scout ceremony. All five families jot down the date and time of Isabella’s middle school graduation. And as much as possible, the five families try to attend these milestone events.
That’s 5:1. That’s kingdom community.
Two years ago, Dave and I decided to follow their example by starting an intergenerational group of families to walk through life together. We invited three families to join: one that was in our life stage, one with a newborn, and one couple in their sixties who has mentored us since we were engaged.
We meet together monthly. The first hour or two of our time is devoted to dinner together. The second half of our meeting is focused on whichever book (or more recently, half of a book) we read that month. When possible, we choose books that revolve around topics that our kids can discuss with us for at least a few minutes before they go to another part of our house.
The group would not be the same without the young family just starting to navigate parenthood. Our conversations would not be as deep without the not-so-young-but-still-young-at-heart couple who talks about their love for Jesus and others — both present and past. We could have simply asked three families in our own life stage to meet with us, but we would be the lesser for it.
Maybe that sort of intergenerational small group isn’t an option for your family. The good news is that even if you can’t develop 5:1 from one cohesive small group, you can create a cluster of relationships that form your own 5:1 constellation.
Maybe you go out of your way to encourage your child’s teacher (or small group leader or Sunday school teacher) and invite them over for dinner or dessert with your family.
My parents always made sure that I was involved in a lot of adult groups and classes at church and it was there that I felt the most valued and welcome.
— Bess
Or perhaps your family invites your neighbors to go on a walk or throw a football in your front yard.
Or maybe you schedule regular video calls with adult friends and relatives around the country so your kids feel connected across the miles.
Perhaps you even try to avoid the all-too-common kids’ table and adults’ table when you have other families or a flock of relatives over for a meal. Maybe you intersperse kids and adults around various tables so cross-generational conversations emerge that never would have otherwise.
In Big Questions, Worthy Dreams, Sharon Daloz Parks describes engaging her extended family in intergenerational dialogue at a recent family reunion in which all fifteen relatives intentionally sat around one dinner table: “After we concluded dinner with a yummy cake to celebrate both a fiftieth and a twenty-first birthday, with some trepidation I suggested that around the table we each take a turn sharing something that had been particularly satisfying in the particular year, and something that we expected would be particularly challenging in the year to come. As each one did just that, we were able to catch a glimpse of each other’s lives in fresh and shared ways.”2
With a bit of planning (and perhaps a bit of courage), most of us can develop a web of adult relationships for our kids that will help develop Sticky Faith.
There’s no need to keep what you’re doing a secret from your children. We encourage you to let them in on your 5:1 goal (or 7:1, 10:1, or whatever you’re shooting for) and celebrate with you as your family develops its own sticky network. If talking about 5:1 itself feels a bit calculated or forced, you can instead regularly remind your kids of the adults (coaches, teachers, neighbors, church leaders) who care about them and are on your family’s team. If you pray at meals or before bed with your child, you could even thank God for the sticky web God is helping to weave.
Recently I met a single mom who had a brilliant idea for helping her son visualize their family’s sticky web. In the hallway between their bedrooms, this mom has hung a few large collage picture frames, each of which has several openings for pictures. As her son builds a relationship with an adult — especially with a man — she takes a picture of her son with that adult. Then she places those pictures in the frames to remind them of the amazing adults already surrounding their family. The empty slots in the picture frames reinforce that there are more 5:1 relationships still to come.
Other adults are often able to speak into your kids’ lives in a way that you cannot as their parent. A few years ago I (Kara) heard Tony Dungy, the Super Bowl – winning coach of the Indianapolis Colts, talk about the impact he had seen other adults make on his son.
Tony’s high school son was playing football, so every day after school, his son had three hours of football practice. Tony knew the energy that both school and football sucked out of his son, so he urged him to have more than a Pop-Tart for breakfast. The son refused, saying that a Pop-Tart was all he needed. Tony tried to convince his son that he needed more fuel for football, but his son blew off his advice every time.
One morning Tony’s son woke up early and stumbled into the kitchen to make himself a large breakfast of bacon and eggs. Tony was tickled that his son had finally heeded his advice. He couldn’t resist mentioning to his son, “So I see you’re having a bigger breakfast today.”
I would have liked to see a one-on-one program … something where every high schooler in the church has an adult in the church that they can look up to and talk to who isn’t their parent because there are always barriers with a parent … someone they can talk to and be honest with.
— Maggie
The son replied groggily, “Yeah, my coach said I should.” Here this high school kid was living with one of the most respected NFL coaches in the nation, but since that coach happened to be his dad, he refused to heed his suggestions. It was the coach at the high school who finally got through.
Recognizing the powerful influence of other adults in their kids’ Sticky Faith web, many parents include mentoring in their 5:1 plan. Through these empowering relationships, your kids are able to spend time with adults who are farther along in their spiritual journey. Our research has shown that beyond the benefits of the mere presence of mentors, the more adult mentors who seek out the student and help the student apply faith to daily life, the better.3
In The Slow Fade, Reggie Joiner, Chuck Bomar, and Abbie Smith cast a new vision for the role of a mentor in a young person’s life. They write that mentors should ask, “What is God already doing here? — not, What should God be doing here?”4 In this vision of 5:1 mentoring, adults who meet regularly with your kids will often ask more questions and share more experiences than provide answers.
For more tangible ideas on mentoring, visit www.stickyfaith.org.
Some parents, realizing that the adults they know, trust, and respect are too busy to meet regularly with their teenage children, are seeking less intensive 5:1 connections. One mom I recently met detests gardening, but her teenage daughter loves it. This mom wisely invited one of the women in her church to take her daughter shopping for flower bulbs and then plant them together a few times per year.
You might try taking advantage of structures and programs that already organically pair your kids with other adults by infusing them with 5:1 mentoring vitality. For instance, if your child is already volunteering at your church in some way, talk with the adult who supervises them to see if they’d be open to having a meal with your kid, or your entire family, every once in a while. Try the same with your kid’s hockey coach, teacher, or drama coach. Take the time to explain the values and priorities of your family to these influential adults. Sure, these adults are busy, but odds are good that one of the main reasons they do what they do is because they care about kids — including your kids.
In chapter 3, Chap introduced the importance of rituals in students’ growing sense of being loved by God. An additional benefit of rituals is that they enable your child to develop 5:1 intergenerational relationships.
For the last few years, Chap and I have enjoyed rubbing shoulders with Reggie Joiner and the great team at reThink Ministries. In Parenting beyond Your Capacity, Reggie’s coauthor, Carey Nieuwhof, shares a powerful 5:1 intergenerational ritual for his son, Jordan, as he was entering adolescence.
When Jordan turned thirteen, Carey sat down with him and they chose five men whom they both admired. Carey approached the men, asking them to spend one day with Jordan that summer. They could do whatever they wanted to do for that day, but Carey hoped that they would share one spiritual truth and one life truth (i.e., good advice) during the course of their conversations.
A few of the five men took Jordan camping, and another took him to work. One of the five was a police chaplain and took him for a ride in a police cruiser. At the end of the summer, the five men, Jordan, and Carey gathered for a barbeque, and Jordan shared from a journal what had impacted him the most during each of those five special days. Jordan presented each of the five with a Bible with their name inscribed on the cover. Each of the five then took a few minutes to comment on their time with Jordan and ways they saw God at work in Jordan’s life. Afterward, they all gathered around Jordan and laid hands on him in prayer. Many of the men shared, “I wish someone had done that for me when I was thirteen.”5
When Carey’s second son, Sam, completed the same mentoring process when he was turning thirteen, one of the highlights was the five mentors sharing how their time with Sam had impacted them. In fact, that final barbeque dinner was so powerful that the five men asked if they could get together every year, if that was okay with Sam. Sam said it was, and they are already planning for next year’s dinner.
You have enormous control over which adults walk into your house and into your family’s life, so consider intentionally building friendships with adults of all ages. One student we interviewed reported about a couple who was close with her parents: “I guess I consider them family friends, but I wouldn’t mind hanging out with them, just me and them. Like I would go to coffee with her if I had the chance…. It’s just … very natural, like another set of parents almost.”
There was a friend of my dad who actually gave me a One Year Bible, just because he cared about what I was going through at the time.
— Adrea
One friend of mine has asked her daughters to name five adults they respect and want to be like. Now my friend knows just who to invite over for dinner on a free evening.
One family we know has a special ritual that involves sending their two sons to work with men they respect. They asked each man to let their sixteen-year-old sons shadow them for two hours. At some point during those two hours, their sons were given a few minutes to ask each man questions, such as “What’s the hardest part of being a man? What’s the hardest part of following God? Looking back over your life, what do you wish you had done differently?” Their sons still stay in touch with these men, and they also seem to assume that they can and should continue to seek out other male mentors now that they are in college.
For her kids’ birthdays, one mom I met during our research asked friends or relatives who might normally give a gift to her children to give them experiences instead. Instead of giving her kids a gift certificate or a new sweater, these folks take them to a movie or out to dinner, thereby building a stickier relationship.
Ask your kids to share prayer requests with other adults, and vice versa. Encourage both to touch base periodically to see how God moves.
Invite adults who are close to your child to gather together, perhaps at a birthday or holiday celebration, and share words of advice or encouragement with your child. If they write these down and present them in a book or folder, then your child will have a permanent reminder of their 5:1 support team.
One family decided to host their son’s baptism at their home instead of at their church facility. They invited family members as well as church members who had invested in their son to come and bring their eighth grader a simple gift with spiritual symbolism that they could explain to their son, such as a small painting or sculpture or something from nature. These parents experienced the power of the Jewish bar mitzvah in their own home with their family and close friends.
Graduation is a natural time for asking for advice and encouragement. Have kids invite adults who have been special to them to their high school graduation parties. Provide a journal in which guests can write down their words of advice and encouragement. And better yet, have your kids tell each guest (either in person or on the invitation) how he or she has impacted them. Not only will the adults feel thanked but also the kids will begin to understand and appreciate how much other people have contributed to their lives — and realize the importance of doing that themselves someday.
Those of us who are involved in a church have a natural springboard for our 5:1 relationships. My church, Lake Avenue Church, is moving toward more intergenerational worship and relationships. And yet last year, my seven-year-old daughter showed me how far we still have to go.
It was our Good Friday evening service and our family arrived a few minutes early. As we were waiting for the service to start, Krista pointed at the front of the worship center and asked, “Mommy, what are those yellow tubes? There are so many of them.”
I smiled and answered, “Krista, those are the pipes for the organ.”
“Mommy, what’s an organ?”
My amusement at my daughter’s first question quickly changed to dismay. No one, including me or my husband, had ever explained to her all of the dynamics and elements of our worship service. How could she feel a part of the broader community if she felt like a confused outsider? So I made it my mission at that Good Friday service to explain everything. I whispered in her ear, “Hear that music? That’s coming from the organ.”
“See that woman? She’s making announcements.”
“Can you read those words on the screen? They’re reminding us what Jesus did by dying for us on the cross.”
Here I am a champion for intergenerational ministry and my own daughter didn’t understand what was happening in intergenerational worship. It was a good reminder that we grown-ups take a lot for granted, and children have a lot to learn. So here we will look at some concrete ways we can make sure that our children have contact with adults and are fully integrated into the life of the church.
As with your own family, 5:1 won’t happen at your church by accident. Your church will need to be intentional in its planning and programming.
The good news is that as your church moves its programs toward 5:1, it doesn’t have to start from scratch. Your children’s ministry, your youth ministry, and your church are already hosting events that with a bit of planning and some broader invitations could easily become more intergenerational.
Perhaps if your adult Sunday school class is going to serve food to those who are homeless, you could suggest inviting the middle school kids to join you.
Or if you’re a mom, you can encourage your daughter’s friends and their moms to join you and your daughter at the upcoming Saturday Women’s Tea.
If you’re a dad, you could invite your son’s friends and their dads to join you and your son at the men’s annual steak fry (whatever that is; does it literally mean men fry steaks? I’ve never been to one).
The bottom line is that if your church plans ahead, you can capitalize on momentum from existing events instead of starting from scratch. As you look at your church calendar, consider ways to be a voice — loud or subtle — for change toward more intergenerational connections for your kids and others.
A youth ministry I heard about recently is taking larger leaps toward sticky intergenerational relationships through their worship. Like many youth ministries, this ministry met twice per week — once on Sundays and once on Wednesdays. The youth pastor, along with some kids, parents, and other church leaders, started asking, “Why are we meeting twice per week? What’s the purpose of each meeting?”
They realized they were more or less offering the same sort of worship, teaching, and fellowship twice every week. They also realized that hardly any of their students were involved in the larger church.
So they canceled Sunday youth group. No more Sunday meetings. Instead, kids are now fully integrated into the church on Sundays. Kids are greeters, they serve alongside adults on the worship music team, they are involved in giving testimonies, and they even give chunks of the sermon from time to time. The youth pastor described the power of this 5:1 shift: “We knew that this would change our kids. What has surprised us is how much it has changed our church.”
Another church decided to make their youth choir the main choir for the primary 11:00 a.m. Sunday service. They knew they risked that the service might shrink in size until the only attendees left were the teenagers and their parents. But the opposite ended up happening. That 11:00 a.m. service became one of the most popular services as adults who had invested in those kids as Sunday school teachers and confirmation sponsors, along with other adults who simply cared about kids, couldn’t wait to have the teenagers lead them in worship music.
I’m not saying that every church should cancel their Sunday youth group or disband their adult choir. But I am saying that the parents in churches should be asking, “How can we increase adult-kid interaction during worship?”
As we’ve interacted with churches nationwide, we’ve noticed that smaller churches are often less likely to have “full service” children’s and youth ministry programs and thus tend to already have more opportunities for intergenerational relationships. That’s to be affirmed, but every church — regardless of size — can still look to either increase their opportunities for adult-kid interaction or increase the strategic impact of the opportunities they already offer.
One church decided to display a onetime powerful and sticky image of how kids can and should be involved through worship. One Sunday during worship music, the regular worship team comprised solely of adults began singing and playing their instruments, just like normal.
Suddenly a teenager came forward from the audience and tapped the shoulder of the guitarist standing at the center of the stage. The kid held out both his hands, and the adult musician handed his guitar to the kid and walked off the platform. The kid started playing the guitar.
A few moments later, another kid came from the side of the platform and tapped the adult drummer on the shoulder. The same thing happened: the adult drummer stood up, handed his drumsticks to the kid, and walked off the stage. The kid resumed the drumming.
Within a few minutes, kids had stepped up to the platform and taken the places of the bass player, keyboardist, and lead singer. What had been a 100 percent adult worship team became a 100 percent student worship team. Regardless of their age, all members of the congregation were swept up in a new spirit of enthusiastic worship.
Then the senior pastor got up to preach. After a few minutes, a voice from backstage yelled, “If you’re serious about involving us, we have to go all the way.” From backstage, a teenager appeared, walked up to the senior pastor, and tapped the senior pastor’s shoulder. The senior pastor stopped preaching, handed the microphone to the kid, and walked off the platform. The kid finished the sermon.
There’s something very powerful and beautiful about that sticky imagery. We’re so used to kids being segregated off in the youth room or in their Sunday school class that when we get glimpses of kids being involved in the full church, we know it’s right. We know it contributes to Sticky Faith.
As much as I love that imagery, if I could wave my Sticky Faith wand (still looking for how to invent one of those, by the way), there’s one thing I would change: I wish the adults and kids had actually led worship and preached together. After all, our research doesn’t suggest that kids need to replace adults in leading worship. Our vision is that kids and adults experience worship together.
About half of the time I share the importance of intergenerational worship with parents, I get asked, “Should I make my kid go to church?” Believe me, as much as I am an advocate for intergenerational worship, I’m not naïve about how teenagers feel about sitting through church. I felt that way a fair amount myself as a kid.
This is a tough question, one I wish we could discuss over coffee so I could ask more questions about your kids and family. But not knowing your specific family, let me say this: while your long-term goal is intergenerational connection primarily in and with a church family, the first hurdle is to help your kid to feel like they are part of something they are choosing and enjoy. Forced friendships do not work very well for adolescents. Depending on the issues your child is dealing with and why they do not want to go, perhaps you could consider the following:
1. Make sure your kids know that, as important as church is to you as the parent, you respect their desire not to go. At the same time, let them know that being a part of God’s family is an important part of your family’s life.
2. Find ways to connect your child to Christian friends in casual or organic settings. As these intentional relationships develop and deepen, your child will have a greater internal incentive to get involved.
3. Find out what, if any, faith activities they would like or are willing to be part of. (I would do all you can to steer away from “making” them attend.) Perhaps a parachurch group, or a different church’s worship service, or a Bible study would help them feel more connected and involved. Sometimes a friend’s church or youth group will become a place where they can connect with a faith community.
4. In the end, do your best to seek a compromise. Depending on their age and your family’s circumstance, ask your child to attend with you once a month, especially if they are plugged in somewhere else, and to do it out of love and respect for you and your faith. If they are attending a different church, you should probably offer to attend that church with them monthly also.
In addition to your family, your church might provide opportunities for 5:1 rituals. San Clemente Presbyterian Church is a congregation fifty miles south of Fuller’s Pasadena campus that had already embraced the importance of intergenerational relationships before FYI even started our College Transition Project. As a result, while other churches are taking 5:1 baby steps, San Clemente Presbyterian is sprinting ahead. Much of their intergenerational DNA centers on grade-based rituals, or “rites of passage,” that you might want to suggest that your own church consider.
Families of first graders gather with their children every year for a first communion.
In both second and sixth grade, children receive a Bible from the church inscribed with a note from their parents.
Fifth graders and their families come together to celebrate a traditional Passover dinner.
When students reach junior high, they are taken on a confirmation retreat and officially become members of the San Clemente body.
At the beginning of their senior year of high school, students hike to the top of Half Dome in Yosemite with the youth pastor, the youth ministry volunteers, and the senior pastor. According to Dr. Tod Bolsinger, the senior pastor, “This tradition is so important I have parents of elementary age children telling me to keep in shape so I can take their child on this rite-of-passage hiking experience.”6
At the end of the school year, the church hosts a blessing ceremony for all high school students, graduating seniors, parents, and congregation members.
For more practical intergenerational ideas for your church, visit www.stickyfaith.org.
Every year at this church, students experience 5:1 rituals that break down barriers between the adults’ table and the kids’ table.
The small groups at my church have also really been a big presence in staying connected with us … they’ve been coming up with projects and … ways that they can stay connected with the college students and so that’s really nice too, especially when my roommates find out about it because they’re not particularly strong Christians…. During Halloween they sent care packages and it was just kind of neat because my roommates see this huge box on the porch and it’s full of candy and snacks and stuff and they’re like, “Who sent this?!” So it’s nice to be able to share with them who it was.
— Bethany
As we have networked with and learned from other churches moving toward 5:1, we’ve been encouraged by their creativity. Here are a handful of innovative ideas that you might want to experiment with or, better yet, use as a springboard to come up with even more creative ideas.
Hold a technology tutorial. Gather your kids with senior adults and let the teenagers teach the seniors how to send text messages so they can keep in touch with their grandkids.
Throw a junior-senior dance. Invite high school kids and senior adults together for a dance (or depending on your denomination, maybe a banquet). Play fifties music and let the boogying begin.
Schedule a new Christian birthday party. Once a year, schedule a big birthday party for folks of all ages who’ve become Christians. Decorate with streamers and balloons, serve cake and ice cream, and invite your entire church to celebrate the “new creations” of all ages.
Have teens worship with the children. Once a quarter, invite teenagers to join the children’s worship experience. Involve both little kids and big kids in the worship music, the announcements, and the teaching.
Go camping. Get away for a weekend with other church families and experience the beauty of God’s creation together under the stars. Share stories around the campfire as you roast marshmallows.
In our list of 5:1 ideas above, you might have noticed that many of them revolve around uniting kids and senior adults. Both groups often feel marginalized and underappreciated. Plus there’s a special tenderness teenagers hold for senior adults, and vice versa. (Remember the tight bond between seventy-eight-year-old Mr. Fredrickson and young Russell in the movie Up?)
There’s one or two elderly ladies that send me cards at college sometimes or those are the ones that I do talk to the most when I do go back to my old church and say “hi” to everybody. Mostly it’s just small talk and little stuff that we talk about, but it’s still good to have that little grandma figure with you.
— Rajeev
As theologian Stanley Hauerwas reminds us, providing ways for senior adults to build meaningful relationships with teenagers allows those seniors to reach their full kingdom potential. Hauerwas convincingly argues that when people age, “they cannot move to Florida and leave the church to survive on its own. For Christians, there is no ‘Florida’ — even if they happen to live in Florida. That is, we must continue to be present to those who have made us what we are so that we can make future generations what they are called to be. Aging among Christians is not and cannot be a lost opportunity.”7 So helping your kids connect with senior adults — whether in your church, family, or neighborhood — is a great way to get your 5:1 train moving down the tracks.
For more Sticky Faith ideas involving grandparents, visit www.stickyfaith.org.
Last but not least, the families we know who are best at using 5:1 to move away from the adults’ and kids’ tables dichotomy often use service or justice work as a springboard for intergenerational relationships. When you’re painting a wall or feeding someone who’s homeless, most of the barriers and awkwardness of age differences quickly fall away. Our next chapter is devoted exclusively to Sticky Justice, so as you turn the page, please continue reading with your 5:1 glasses on.
1. To what degree are your kids at the “kids’ table” in your life and at your church? What is good about that? What might be problematic?
2. What are the advantages of trying to surround each of your kids with five adults who care about them? What are the costs?
3. In your role in your church, how (if at all) can you help change your church’s culture? While you may have a limited sphere of influence at your church, what changes can you suggest in your own sphere?
4. What ideas do you have to help your kids connect with other adults and move toward the 5:1 ratio?
5. How would you explain your 5:1 goal to your kids?