I have been blogging about a number of different things lately, as we have had a lot make its way into the news that has some direct impact on our Christian faith and life. I've discovered that it is relatively easy to get drawn into extended discussions about some of these topics, which sometimes can come at the expense of actually getting into the meat and potatoes of doing God's work among God's people and the communities in which we find ourselves placed by God.
So I'm taking a bit of a change today. I want to start introducing something that we will be working on this fall in our congregation here in the 'burbs of Atlanta. For lack of something more clever to call it, we'll simply call it intergenerational ministry. It is related to the family ministry model that we are putting together, but seeks to also go beyond what we will be doing there.
(I should also mention that this is a part of what I am working on as my project toward my Doctor of Ministry degree in Missional Leadership. It is a project to be conducted within the life of the congregation that demonstrates missional leadership as we seek to be taking God's Word and the forgiveness that God gives in Jesus out into our communities. So this isn't just some knee-jerk, hey let's try this kind of thing. It is a detailed, thought out, researched plan that we will be looking at as a ministry model for years to come.)
Basically, the essential element of intergenerational ministry is to connect the generations with each other. We have much about faith and life that we can learn as we connect older adults with younger adults, children, college students, and even toddlers and infants.
The plan that we will undertake this fall will be the creation of three of these groups that will commit to meeting weekly for a period of three months. They will follow a booklet curriculum that I will develop, which will seek to grow them in their relationships and faith with each other, though with the ultimate goal of becoming more confident in talking faith matters with people from different generations. At the end of the time together, the groups would then be encouraged to reach out to people they know, invite them to come learn more about the faith that we share, and to create additional groups who would then follow the same curriculum.
Over the next few weeks, I'll be sharing some of the background that goes into why we will venture in this direction. As we do that, I would encourage you to prayerfully consider how you might be a part of this as we move toward it this fall.
So I'm taking a bit of a change today. I want to start introducing something that we will be working on this fall in our congregation here in the 'burbs of Atlanta. For lack of something more clever to call it, we'll simply call it intergenerational ministry. It is related to the family ministry model that we are putting together, but seeks to also go beyond what we will be doing there.
(I should also mention that this is a part of what I am working on as my project toward my Doctor of Ministry degree in Missional Leadership. It is a project to be conducted within the life of the congregation that demonstrates missional leadership as we seek to be taking God's Word and the forgiveness that God gives in Jesus out into our communities. So this isn't just some knee-jerk, hey let's try this kind of thing. It is a detailed, thought out, researched plan that we will be looking at as a ministry model for years to come.)
Basically, the essential element of intergenerational ministry is to connect the generations with each other. We have much about faith and life that we can learn as we connect older adults with younger adults, children, college students, and even toddlers and infants.
The plan that we will undertake this fall will be the creation of three of these groups that will commit to meeting weekly for a period of three months. They will follow a booklet curriculum that I will develop, which will seek to grow them in their relationships and faith with each other, though with the ultimate goal of becoming more confident in talking faith matters with people from different generations. At the end of the time together, the groups would then be encouraged to reach out to people they know, invite them to come learn more about the faith that we share, and to create additional groups who would then follow the same curriculum.
Over the next few weeks, I'll be sharing some of the background that goes into why we will venture in this direction. As we do that, I would encourage you to prayerfully consider how you might be a part of this as we move toward it this fall.
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