Intergenerational B@TCH
Breakfast at the Coronation Hall church has long inspired me. So it was great to recently to get a chance to chat with Barry Kelk, B@TCH minister about their attitude towards children. B@TCH is an intergenerational church. Up to four generations worship together each Sunday and all are equally valued and invited to contribute. Barry shares his ethos on children, families and the whole family of God in this creative wee video. Click here to view.
Moving your Church – Embedding an intergenerational culture in your church
Jill Kayser shared this message of culture change at the Kidsreach Conference in Sydney in February 2016.
Becoming an intergenerational church is a journey. Intergenerational is not a programme. Intergenerational is a practise. And like any practise it does take a long time to perfect and embed it as an ethos into the congregational culture.
Today I’d like to explore with you how to move your church from “here” to “there”. We’re going to create a metaphorical map for introducing and ultimately embedding an intergenerational ethos in your church.
Listen to the MP3 of her talk or read her keynote talk.
Intergenerational Ministry Beyond the Rhetoric
Intergenerational is not something churches do–it’s something they become.
In this article Brad Griffin of the Fuller Institute offers practical tips to those wanting to make this paradigm shift with their congregations.
Simple proximity doesn’t equal relationships. Being in the same room does open the possibility for relationship, but it’s not the whole answer to the problem of the adult-kid divide many of us experience in our congregations. Intergenerational youth ministry ends up being a great new catch phrase that in practice tends to be really vague to most churches.
Connecting the generations
Our Sunday children’s programme is called Pathfinders so we’ve started something called TrailBlazers. We’ve created A5 cards with a p
hoto and profile of a child (with permission from parents) to hand out to the adults in our congregation to encourage them to pray for and connect with their child. We want our adults to blaze prayer and mentoring trails for our kids hence the name “Trailblazers. I’ve had amazing feedback regarding these and it is great and easy way to connect the generations. Our long term goal is for ages 0-25 ish to be covered. Youth group will be the next cab off the ranks. (Ben Tennant, Youth Ministry Coordinator, St Barnabas, Plimmerton)
Art of conversation cards
These “Art of Conversation Cards” are great all-age icebreakers for getting people to share and get to know each other. Good for training sessions, family mealtimes and all age worship such as “Messy Church”.