Connecting With Generations

I'm going to admit something right up front.  I am, in a lot of ways, a kid at heart.  In fact, I think there is a decent chance that my three year old daughter is actually more mature than I am (you could ask my wife and probably get a pretty honest answer!).  I love kids, and I love playing with kids, working with kids, and simply being around kids.  Kids are great.

I've also discovered, over the years, that I also enjoy working with older people.  They have a view on life that you can just sit back and revel in.  Sure, they may have their moments where they talk about the aches and pains of life, but is that any different than hearing about the skinned knees and other boo-boos that little ones get?  Plus, I have come to the conclusion that both young and old simply love a good story, or to tell a good story.

While I love connecting with both old and young, I've also learned that it takes some effort to create such connections.  Being a fairly tall male, there are times when I can tell that kids are a little frightened of me.  In a way, that's good, as it shows that they have a respectful fear of strangers.  So it takes work and effort on my part to show them that I am someone they can trust, and that I want to be their friend.

That same dynamic can also be found working with older adults.  I don't know if I personally frighten them, but I do know that there are things that I regularly make use of (such as technology and vocabulary) that they seem to be a little frightened of.  They have a respectful fear of such things, especially if they aren't regularly connected with it.  So it takes work and effort on my part to show them that I can be trusted, even as I regularly make use of these new gizmos and gadgets.

It takes work to connect with different generations.  Sometimes it means that we set aside the fears that we may have about them (I don't know what to talk about with them, I don't know what they like, I don't even know how to talk to them, etc.).  Sometimes it means that we simply show them that we want to care about them, even if we have a difficult time understanding where they are coming from, or what they are involved in.

What can you do in the next week or so to make a connection with someone who falls either 10 years younger or older than you?  What fears do you have of attempting such a connection?  What would you like to see happen from such a connection?  Oh, and one final question.  Who is that person that you will connect with, and when will you do that?

Generational Ministry and Intergenerational Ministries

In preparation for a number of different ministry ideas that I have been pursuing for a while, I have had cause to give a lot of thought to how many churches conduct the ministry that God gives them to do.  Traditionally in our day, age, and country, there has been a tendency for several decades now to seek to minister to age and stage groups.  Not a bad emphasis at all.  After all, the needs of the more senior adults in God's church have different ministry needs than do young families, children, or youth.  Each one of these ages and stages have different challenges they face, and the effort is there to have some form of ministry for them according to their need.

Again, this is a good thing.  However, many have started to realize that this also creates certain "problems" within God's people.  In one book I was reading, the author shared how, upon a visit to a congregation, a young lady in her early 20s was interviewed.  She had shown up once to a funeral.  Upon being asked, the young lady acknowledged that she didn't know the person who had died, an elderly member of the congregation.  When asked why she would come to the funeral of a person she didn't know, the young lady remarked that she had never been to a funeral.  She wanted to know what one was like.  Upon further questioning, she also shared that she had never held a baby, or even really worked with children, other than those who were her age when she herself was a child. 

This points to one of the problems that can arise when age and stage groups are created.  They rarely interact with one another.  (Oh, and if you think that this isn't an issue in your congregation, go ask the young people how often the older people interact with them, and vice versa.  You may be shocked at just how isolated each age and stage can get.)  We would like to think that the ages come together and interact more than they do, but the reality is that we humans tend to be found with those like us, in mindset, in age, and in stage of life.  It takes intentional effort to cross those generational boundaries.

Again, I want to re-iterate that there is a place for age and stage ministry.  However, if that comes exclusively at the expense of the ages and stages interacting, then something has gone wrong.  God's people of all ages and stages are supposed to be living life together.  The family doesn't each get sent to their age/stage room, but are supposed to gather around the dinner table all together (think the Sacrament of the Altar here).  They are supposed to have family time together (think of the fellowship of the saints here).  They are supposed to pray together, play together, and know each other.  Even if they separate to be challenged and to grow according to their age and stage, it should never be at the expense of the whole body.

Yes, this presents a rather significant challenge.  How do you bring the ages and stages together, and at the same time, let them have their needed time on their own?  I won't say that this has any particular answer, but I do know that it is something that we will be working toward in the congregation I am part of.  Sure, we will have our ups and downs, and I will pray for patience and understanding as we try and learn from failures and successes.  And I will ask you to please remember, while it may be easy to point out what is wrong with what we do, if you don't have a suggestion for improving it, then please keep it as constructive and positive as you can.

Introducing Intergenerational

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.

What's the Worst Case Scenario?

Okay, I know I've been touching on a lot of different facets of the recent Supreme Court decision, as well as how we, as Christians, need to take a good look at what we believe biblically about ourselves and not just those whose lifestyle is deemed sinful according to God's Word.  I know that there are many out there who are truly frightened about what this may mean, especially for clergy and churches who hold to the Biblical definition of marriage.

So today, I simply want to think through what the worst case scenario would be.  Perhaps you would see it different, but that's okay, because the reality is, no one knows right now what is going to happen with all of this.  But this is some form of representation on what the worst case scenario could look like.

Since clergy hold the authority to officiate marriages for both their faith and the state, the state declares that no exceptions can be made toward whom clergy choose to wed.  That means that, regardless of belief, if the clergy are going to hold the authority to marry civily, they will have no grounds upon which to deny marriage to anyone who fits the legal definition of those who can be married.  They must perform the ceremony if asked.

Should a clergy refuse, they would face legal ramifications of discrimination.  That could involve fines, jail time, or any other of a variety of punishments for not upholding the law.  Very likely, this would cause clergy of many faiths to give up the authority of conducting a civil marriage. 

In addition, since particular beliefs no longer are recognized according to the state, the state also decides that the customary tax exemption that churches enjoy is no longer applicable.  Churches are then taxed for their property.  That also means that offerings are no longer considered as "charitable contributions", and thus, no longer carry a tax break on the part of the state. 

One final strike could be that churches would also no longer be considered nonprofit (for the record, I doubt that this particular one would come to pass, but who ultimately knows?).  That means that churches also have to pay taxes such as any business would upon income.  That means that the offerings that people make would be considered taxable income.  Suddenly, for churches, the cost of doing ministry is much greater, as they have to pay their taxes, from which they have been exempt for centuries in our nation.  As you can perhaps imagine, that would cause a rather significant change in how God's people go about gathering, ministering, and operating within the state. 

Civil, Religious, Both, or Neither?

All right, I'm going to start off today with a question to which we will not know the answer until we have been ushered into the eternal kingdom.  When were Adam and Eve married?  As soon as God woke Adam up from his sleep?  Was it when Adam named Eve, calling her the mother of all the living?  Did the LORD God oversee a ceremony that declared them to be one flesh?

I know, this is a bit of an unfair question.  We don't know the exact moment, just like we would be hard pressed to say for sure when that exact moment is that a man and a woman go from being two different people to one flesh.  Is it when they commit to marry one another?  Is it when they are declared husband and wife?  Is it when they make their vows?  (I have known people that stand by each of these as the time when the two become one.)

I think, in general, we see two different issues at work here.  One is the commitment of a husband to a wife, and a wife to a husband.  God makes it clear that this commitment is the utmost, vital element to the marriage that He creates.  Just as God is commited to His people, His people, when joined in marriage, are to be commited to one another. 

So that's the first issue.  The second issue is having a "moment" in which we recognize that something has changed for the husband and the wife.  We typically call this the ceremony.  We have an occasion which celebrates what God is doing in the lives of the man and the woman as they are joined together in a one flesh union.  The ceremony gives us a clear picture that there was a "before", when they were two, and at the conclusion of the ceremony, the "after", they are now one.  So we recognize that the ceremony exists for the sake of good order, even as we recognize that God does something in the midst of that ceremony.

In case you think I am just rambling on this, I do actually have somewhere I am going with this.  One of the realities we have faced in the nation and time we live in is that a marriage has been recognized as the joining of a man and a woman at the conclusion of the ceremony, both by the Church and by the state.  In fact, most clergy are vested with authority by the state to marry people, which means that, in some respects, there are two ceremonies taking place; one faith oriented, and the other state oriented.  At the conclusion of the ceremony, both the Church and the state would recognize the man and woman as being married.

I'll get to a point here to keep this from being too long a post.  If the state were to declare that marriage can consist of something other than what a faith deems marriage, could the two (state and religious) ceremonies then be separate?  If a clergyman were to be required, by the state, to civily marry any two people who desired marriage, could the clergy "give up" the right to conduct ceremonies recognized by the state, and focus exclusively on the religious ceremony?  If the couple then decided that they wanted their marriage to be recognized by the state, they could then arrange for a civil authority to do what their clergy would already have done religiously. 

As we look at the day and age that we live in, is this an option for clergy who hold to particular beliefs about marriage?  It's a question that I believe we will have to be addressing fairly soon in our nation.

God, Rights, and the Church

"Am I not free?...But I have made no use of any of these rights..."  1 Corinthians 9:1a, 15a

If you search through the Bible for the word "rights", you may be surprised to learn that you won't actually find the word occurring very frequently.  That may be somewhat surprising to us, especially in the context of North America and the United States.  Here, we hear quite often about our rights as citizens, about equal rights, and the like.

The surprising thing is that God doesn't seem so much interested in our rights as people.  It's not that God doesn't value us as people any less.  God is a God who created us and who desires that we would recognize the dignity that belongs to every person as a part of His creation.  In a way, we could almost say that God is an idealist.  After all, if every person recognized the dignity that God gave to every other person, would we ever have to worry about rights?

Yet, we do face the fact that we live in a fallen, sinful world.  That sinfulness has us turn inward on ourselves, so that we find ourselves demanding our rights.  That might not be such a bad thing if we did that in a way which honored the dignity of the other as much as we sought that dignity for ourselves.  Yet, the history of humankind reveals that we fail at such an endeavor far more than we succeed at it.

That's why I find it interesting, especially if you read through the chapters around the verses quoted above, that Paul "gives up" his rights in service of the Gospel.  Sure, he could bear the claim that he had founded the congregation in Corinth.  Sure, he had taught them what they knew about Jesus, and could assert that authority over them.  Yet, in a stunning move (especially in their eyes), Paul chose to give up those rights.

In fact, in another letter to another group of Christians, Paul actually points out what God's preferred way of dealing with one another truly should be.  In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul writes that God's people should "[submit] to one another out of reverence for Christ."  (Ephesians 5:21).  Mutual submission to the other actually fits far better with God's will and design for life than a clamoring for our rights.  Instead of looking to our rights, we are to be looking to what best serves our neighbor, the "other" among us.

As you can perhaps see, this often serves to place us in a direct contrast with what we have been raised to believe in the context of our nation and time.  Especially as others are celebrating that they have their rights recognized, we face the question of what are appropriate rights and inappropriate ones. 

But perhaps, for us as Christians, our question should be a little bit different.  Rather than worrying about rights, what if we were to instead ask ourselves, how can I submit to my neighbor to demonstrate God's compassion and grace to them?  Rather than making issues about rights, what if we looked at ways to serve them?  Sure, it is possible (and likely) that they would misunderstand and even abuse such service.  But then again, who fully grasps the service and compassion that our Lord Jesus has toward us, even as He faced the cross?

The Church and The State

Okay, today I'm going to change gears a little bit.  I dearly love digging into the Bible and unearthing the things that God says in there, which we did a little bit yesterday.  I honestly believe that we Christians actually don't get the severity of God's commands, will, and design often enough, and therefore, we have a lessened understanding of just how amazing God's grace is.  But I will dwell on that a little more in a couple of future posts.

But for a moment, let's change gears and think about something that I honestly believe gets highly confused in our nation and in our day and time.  As Americans, one of the sayings that is consistently brought before us is that there is a separation of church and state.  The state (i.e., the ruling authorities) cannot dictate what people are to believe.  The church (i.e., the gatherings of all religious groups) does not rule according to their particular tenets of faith and belief. 

Now, I put this before us for this reason.  If we truly believe that there is to be a separation between the church and the state, then that means that the law of the land may not necessarily be in line with what a faith gathering believes.  As an example, I lived for a good amount of time in Utah, where there are many who belong to the Mormon faith.  This particular emphasis on the difference between the church and the state affect many who adhere to that particular faith.  Mormons, at least traditionally, held to the idea of polygamous marriage (that is, a man having more than one wife).  However, the state in the past has only recognized the union of one man with one woman.  While this stance may have had an impact on the legal definition of marriage for those of the Mormon faith, there are those who held that their particular beliefs meant that a man could marry additional women, but only one would be recognized by the state.  The others would be practiced in the context of their religious union.  What the Mormon would believe would be contrary to the law of the land, and would have an impact on how they legally live in the land, even if they would find alternatives to live out their faith in the context of the state.

What I want to put out here for us to think about today is simply this.  If we truly do believe that there is and should be a separation of church and state, then that means that we shouldn't be overly concerned when the state defines things differently than the church does.  Yes, it may have a great deal of impact on how we have to do certain things, but because there is a separation, we honestly should not get too up in arms when the state changes how it views certain matters.  Yes, we pray that the state will see the wisdom of God as He outlines things.  Yes, we pray that the state would work to preserve the value of life and protect its citizens.  Yes, we pray that God will work to influence the state in positive ways.  We do all these and more because we are citizens of the state, even as we realize that we are only temporary citizens here.

As we think about the state re-defining what constitutes marriage, we realize that it will affect us personally in some form or fashion.  We also realize that the state is not mandated to hold to the particular beliefs of the church (even while we would hope and pray that they would see the wisdom of doing so).  They are, after all, two different entities.  So if the state changes the way something, such as marriage, is defined, we realize that there will be an impact on us, but we don't lose heart.  After all, our hope is not in how the state defines things, but in the fact that our God has forgiven us and given us a permanent home through Jesus.