YVQ: GENERATIONS

GENER ATIONS Breaking Down Walls Nathan Want

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Gathering or Dividing?

E. Waldron Barnett

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Ministry As A Family Geoff & Ros Cox

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Diverse, Yet Still One Church Tim Walter 16 A Blank Page Sue Allison

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Anchors In A Time Of Change Ann Fair

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Care For The Spiritual Nature Of The Child Vivienne Mountain

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AUTUMN 2017

Contributors

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Nathan Want

Ann Fair

Nathan ‘Dubsy’ Want is one of Australia’s emerging voices in youth culture. For the past decade he has been working with young people in primary schools, secondary schools, and local churches, speaking into their world and giving students and leaders skills and resources to navigate life well.

Ann is the Families Pastor at Door of Hope Christian Church in Launceston, serving parents in the community as part of the Generation Team who seek to grow hope through Jesus Christ in the next generation. Previously a primary school teacher, Ann and her husband Andrew have four adult children and three young grandchildren.

E. Waldron Barnett

Tim Walter

Beth has served in ministry with Baptist, Anglican, Uniting church, Scripture Union, and World Vision communities and currently teaches children & families ministry and mission at Stirling Theological college, is completing a New Testament PhD thesis on the constructs of maturity in Paul, and leads the staff team at the VCCE, providing intergenerational resourcing and professional development. She loves coffee, running, and veggies.

Tim was born in country Victoria. He was heavily involved in camping ministry and studied teaching. He was called into ministry in his early 20s and has a track record of building ministries from the ground up over the past 20 years. Tim is a recognised children’s and family practitioner with a focus on leadership teams. Tim’s wife Evette and three children now live in Ballarat where Tim is the Associate pastor at one2one Church of Christ.

Sue Allison

Brendan Petty

Some people may say that Sue Allison is old but as she’s the one writing this she’d just say that she has lots of years of experience in working with youth and kids in small churches, big churches, and within schools and camps. At Easter 2016 she took on the position of Generations Pastor at Red Church. Her heart is that the rising generation grow a strong and resilient Christian faith that impacts the world in which they live.

Brendan Petty is the children’s minister at Doncaster Church of Christ, where he also leads worship and at DYG (Doncaster Youth Group). He enjoys tinkering with the way we do worship, reading books such as Allen & Ross’ Intergenerational Christian Formation, and exploring Lucy Moore’s Messy Church, which he hopes to implement at Donny later this year.

Vivienne Mountain

Geoff & Ros Cox

Vivienne is a lecturer at the University of Divinity in the area of children and families ministry and has a private practice in counselling and supervision. She lives with her husband and two small dogs in a Bayside suburb of Melbourne, is an active member to her church, enjoys theatre, music, art, and lively interaction with her large family. Vivienne has published three books, contributed chapters to five others, has published numerous peer-reviewed journal articles, and holds numerous qualifications.

Geoff and Ros have been married for 14 years and are parents to Emma (10), Sophie (7), and Claire (6). They have had years of involvement in mission with children and families and, as a family, have served for 7 years as part of the McCrae Scripture Union Family Mission team. They belong to Bundoora Presbyterian Church.

Youth Vision Vic/Tas is the generational ministry arm of Churches of Christ in Victoria and Tasmania (CCVT).

The Youth Vision team consists of Kat Deith, Scott Mageean, and Mitchell Salmon.

A | 1st Floor 582 Heidelberg Rd, Fairfield VIC 3078 P | 03 9488 8800 W | churchesofchrist.org.au/ youthvision E | yv@churchesofchrist.org.au

YVQ | Issue 15 | Autumn 2017

From the Editor YVQ Annual 2017 Where do you sit in your Sunday service? I mean physically, where in the room do you put your bum?

When I was little, I sat with my mum and dad on the right hand side of the third pew from the front in the centre-right bank of pews in the church hall.

Every week.

As I got older, I transitioned from sitting with mum and dad in our regular spot to sitting with the youth group in rows 2 to 6 of the left-most bank of pews (the ones nearest the band). These days when I sit in the Sunday morning service, I still sit in the youth seats in staunch defiance of my gradual shift out of that age bracket. And, I realised without realising it, mum and dad have themselves shifted away from third-row-from-the-front to sit with their friends in the right-most bank of pews.

There’s probably a lot to unpack in that little anecdote as to the way our physical placements and choices reflect the deeper spiritual and discipleship realities of our churches, and that doesn’t even touch on the large proportion of Sunday church time—I might even wager a majority of time over my life—spent outside the 10am service in age-aimed programs and in leadership roles, which is a connected story, but another story.

But I’m not here to do that unpacking. I just wanted to reflect that, when the topic of our third-row-from-the-front spot in church came up in conversation the other night, mum said that she had chosen that spot intentionally, and deliberately stuck with it the entire time my brothers and I were growing up.

She could have sat us at the back of the hall, where many young families often sit to avoid distracting other worshippers and for ease of escape in the event of belligerent child, but mum wanted us to be engaged with what was happening in the service, and chose a seat to maximise that possibility (based on the advice of theorists and writers in a vein similar to those in this edition of YVQ). A physical action reflecting a discipleship reality that it wasn’t enough to soak a child in the hall space, but that young disciples need to be an engaged part of the life of the church.

In this edition of YVQ, we welcome a collection of wonderful thinkers and doers in the area of generational or family-oriented ministry and mission; practitioners and scholars and educators and troublemakers who often aren’t themselves so keen on sitting quietly in the pews on a Sunday and would rather search out something loud and mobile and fun to do with young disciples.

As we continue to explore how churches and ministries can do better at discipling people of all ages together, it is our hope that this collection of voices can go some way to stimulating thought, experimentation, trying new and untested things, and encountering the richness of an intergenerational community of active disciples.

Imagine A Fairer World YVQ Annual is an art journal for young and emerging artists to be published in November 2017. If you are a young and emerging writer or artist, you are invited to make a submission to YVQ Annual for a chance to have your work featured in this year’s anthology of essays, short stories, poetry, and visual art.

Published works will explore the topic prompt “Imagine a fairer world” through art, writing, and poetry, with a particular eye on God’s imagination for a shalom‑centred world in which everyone, and particularly people on the margins, are loved, included, and advocated for.

Submissions open September 1 to October 31 2017. For more information, visit churchesofchrist. org.au/yvqannual.

Letters to the Editor Something in this edition of YVQ stick with you, start you thinking, or make you want to explore the topic further?

Address your letters to our editor and contributors to editor@churchesofchrist.org.au.

Messages that move the conversation forward may be included in future editions of YVQ, with a response from the original contributor.

And may all our practices be as intentional as sitting three rows from the front.

—Mitchell Salmon

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Breaking Down Walls Writer Nathan Want

It was November in 2009 and I was sitting a café waiting to meet my new boss. At the time, I was the Youth Pastor at Careforce Church (now known as Discovery Church) and while I was on annual leave I was informed of a restructure that had happened in our kids, youth, and young adult ministry. This restructure was to generate greater alignment between all these ministries and to create a seamless discipleship pathway from zero to thirty years old. So in my first week it was arranged for me to meet with Peter Lusk, who had taken on the role of Generations Pastor and talk about how this would be outworked and expressed in the youth ministry.

I knew Pete already—well, I knew of him. He was a member of the kids team that all worked at the other end of the building. Those familiar with Discovery know it’s quite the journey to the other side, so you might as well pack a snack and tent for the trip. Once a year I would meet up with Pete to talk about the transition of year 6 students into the youth ministry. This conversation never really went longer than an hour. In that meeting he would pass on contact information and agree when they would transition. That was the extent of our contact, and now I hear he is my boss and I’m waiting for him in a café thinking about what on Earth we are even going to talk about.

He turned up and we had our first meeting, and on reflection I would describe it like an awkward first date.

We made surface level conversation about who we were and what we liked, and started to explore how we could create this seamless discipleship pathway. At the end of the meeting we got up from our table, paid for our own bills, got back into our cars, and drove five minutes down the road back to the church. It’s interesting to note that on that day we both came from the church and didn’t travel together, and somehow we didn’t see how siloed we had become. We were both building good ministries, but with no intention of setting the other up to win.

It wasn’t malice, it was just what we knew to do.

Maybe like us, you’ve found yourself in a similar situation. Maybe you are or you have been part of a ministry team that’s been more caught up in doing their own thing that they miss the bigger picture of doing something together for the sake of the generations.

The truth is when I look across generational ministry (kids, youth, and young adults) the stories I often hear are of ministries working separately and not in collaboration.

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This happens because we’ve made our own ministry area that we lead more important than anything else in church life, or we don’t have a relationship with key ministry leaders in kids or young adults, or we have good intentions to work in collaboration with kids, youth, or young adults but we just don’t know where to start or we don’t have enough time to add another thing to the list of things we need to do.

But what if we pushed aside what we know? Let go of our own agendas? Worked together, hand in hand, shoulder to shoulder? Pushed aside differences in ministry practice and philosophy to be part of something bigger and greater?

I just want to take a few moments to explore how to create a generationally-focussed ministry.

This whole idea of working in partnership with ministries should, in theory, be easy to do, but we are caught up in deadlines, faith goals, leadership expectations, or the next best thing in church life that we miss the bigger picture and the bigger story that God wants to write across all areas of church life.

So how did we create a generational focus?

We Appointed A Leader

The first move made was to make a leadership change.

Peter Lusk stepped up from being one the kids pastors to become the Generations Pastor to have oversight over kids, youth, and young adults. This was a game changing move because we then had a key person in place who was focussed on bringing the team together and creating and implementing a seamless discipleship process.

We Got In The Same Room

I remember Andy Stanley saying, “If you can’t get in the room, you will never get on the same page.” Which is so true. Early on, our Senior Pastor decided that we needed to work in the same area. So the kids team moved from the other side of the building specifically to be with us. At the time I didn’t think this was overly significant, but I noticed something over time. From barely seeing each other we started to cross paths everyday. We would pop into each other’s offices and say hello and see how people were going. From there conversation evolved to what we were doing in our ministry. Pete also initiated a

We Shifted Our Focus

If we were going to be successful in creating a generational pathway, there were some behaviours that needed to change in us and within our teams.

The first shift we made was to stop poaching and start building. Every ministry area will have more vision than the volunteers they need to make it happen. For us, we would go after each other’s team, especially at the end of the year, and try and recruit for what we had on our heart to do. But we began to shift from poaching to building.

I would sit with people that were looking to serve in the youth ministry and instead of thinking how would I fit them in I would be thinking, ‘Where is their best place of contribution in our church?’—it may be youth but it may not. I was committed to building teams in other areas, not just my own.

The second shift was that we got involved in each other’s activity. There were key moments where the youth ministry needed to be present within the kids ministry. For example, kids camp—making connections with Year 6 students. I also made it a priority to be part of the kids team at special events. I would have the kids camp in my calendar and come on camp to serve the Kids Pastor and team, and connect with students. We did the same with the young adults ministry, they would come on our Senior High camp to serve and build connections with students.

Even in the lead up to camps we would make ourselves available to each other to do whatever was needed to carry some of the burden of the camp. We did this not because we had to, we did it because we wanted to. The truth is, you can do more together than you can apart.

The third shift was that we aligned our curriculum. We started to look at what students need to know, and what they will experience at different stages of their development and we found the Orange resources of 252, XP3 helped put language around what we were trying to achieve. It also created a strategy of what we would teach our 0-18 year olds.

YVQ | Issue 15 | Autumn 2017

handful of other things like getting away together, regular meetings focussed on learning about each other’s ministry area and how we could contribute to its success.

As we got in the same room, we started to get on the same page. We started to champion and pray for each other’s ministry. We got in the same room while planning our years out and worked together to make sure that our ministry areas didn’t clash, but complemented each other. This was great for families and for those who were leading and serving in these areas.

The fourth shift was that we told everyone that would listen how great the other ministry was. It was more than just lip service, we actually lived it out in action. We were committed to building each other’s ministry, not just our own.

The reason why this philosophy of generational ministry became important to me was all because of one night at Orange Conference in Atlanta. I was sitting in a session and Kara Powell from Fuller Youth Institute was speaking. She shared an interesting insight about what happens to year 12s once they graduate. She said 40-50% of young people when they finish their schooling will walk away from their faith. At the time I thought that was a crazy statistic that captured the condition of US students.

But I was unsettled and I couldn’t get that thought out of my mind, so I decided to pull up my computer in my hotel room and look at the life group lists of year 12s for the last 3 years. I started with the most recent list and I would put a tick next to their name if they were still engaged in our church and cross if they weren’t around.

As I completed the first list I could see more crosses than ticks. I added it up, and in the most recent year we had 60% of our students drop off. I was horrified that this happened on my watch. When I did the same analysis of the next two years, I once again got between 45 and 55%.

I was pretty overwhelmed with grief. This was more than just a number, this was someone’s life. I knew that night that something had to change. Something had to change in what I was doing and what we were doing as a team across kids, youth, and young adults. This became my energy and drive to work closely with all of these ministry areas so that no young person would fall through the cracks. Even today I am equally passionate about this, and when I sit with ministry leaders I talk about the power and importance of working in alignment for the sake of this generation.

If there was one thought I would leave with you it would be this: be less territorial and build the Kingdom. Stop trying to build your empire. Stop trying to do something out of alignment with the rhythm of your church. Be a leader committed to generational success.

Because when the kids ministry wins, I win. When the youth ministry wins, I win. When the young adults ministry wins, I win. When the church wins, I win. ●

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Gathering or Dividing?

Writer E. Waldron Barnett

The discourse of generations as a set of competing agendas and separate cultures has grown in credibility, fluency, and popularity. Gen X are renowned as whingers for their cries as the sandwich generation, and point the finger at Boomers for their economic woes; Boomers are accused of being narcissistic; Millennials are accused of being self-obsessed and unreliable, while Gen Y throw up their hands in exasperation at the property hoarding of the previous generations. We’re not sure what to call the next cohort—Founders, Navigators, Regenerators, Bridgers; apparently an MTV survey found 544 names for the post-Millennial generation.1 While we might not agree on the specific labels and reject some of the most heavy handed stereotyping, the sociological idea of defining people circumstantially and characteristically by their age remains a recognised point of reference in social commentary.

Contingent on this rubric of social definitions, ‘Generational ministries’ has also arisen as a popular umbrella term in the past decade.2 It seeks to provide a unifying framework for the collection of age segregated ministries which evolved alongside the secular generational designations during the twentieth century: Youth Ministry, Sunday School, Early Childhood Outreach, such as Playgroup ministry, Young Adult groups, and most recently—as the ‘Boomer’ generation have begun to reach retirement—Seniors ministry. Each of these so called generational streams of ministry has its own history, developing in response to particular social catalysts and political crises. The unique, anachronistic, and independent circumstances of each of these streams is an important historical reality to grasp.

How did we let pursuing relevance lead to a class system of haves and have-nots?

For many Christians, despite sincere desires to shape and structure life around Biblical patterns and Gospel models, the templates of separate age-based ministry programs seem integral and intrinsic to a healthy church community life of vital and relevant worship, discipleship, and mission.

Churches have enthusiastically embraced the notions of appropriate forms of communication for different agegroups, the prevalence of stage theorisation as a comprehensive framework for human flourishing, and the normativity of homo-sociality which shapes so many of our gatherings, and plays through our explanations of why things work or don’t work in churches.

Commonly I hear of families who leave a small church because there are not other young people the same age as their children.

Commonly I observe congregations who have intentionally configured their gathering practice, venue, and resources around the perceived preferences on one generation.

Commonly I hear the humans in our faith communities labeled and defined by their age. ‘Great to see the youth with us today.’ ‘The children were really good in church.’

I am unashamedly eager to subvert these approaches, question their fitness, call for a revision of our language, and propose a reconsideration of the ways in which we conceptualise and practice the community life of faith together.

Why might that be?

There are three closely related reasons.

The first is theological—because God. We are in dark danger of allowing the rule of sociological labels of division to supplant the reconciling reign of the Risen Lord of the cosmos as our foundation. Below, I examine in more detail why ‘Generations’ is a problematic term for a church that looks to Biblical foundations.

The second is anthropological—because humans. The rubric of relevance, appropriate forms of communication, fitness of transmission to various sectors of the sociological spectrum belong to the world of delivery, of provider and recipient, of producer and consumer.

¹www.forbes.com/sites/theopriestley/2015/12/30/why-the-next-generation-after-millennials-will-be-builders-not-founders/#7ee081025ccb

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²Gary L. MacIntosh, One Church, Four Generations: Understanding and Reaching All Ages In Your Church (Baker Books, 2002) stands as one of the earliest codifications of this idea.

But surely already our Gospel-appraised spirits are troubled by this dis-ordering. Haves and have-nots?

The Gospel will not have it!

The third reason is pragmatic—because time and space and stuff. Faith communities and churches are struggling practically under the burdens of resourcing, connecting, and administering programs and ministries conceived and delivered generationally.

This culture of division has led to tensions between what have become operationally competing expressions of ministry; for leaders, for budget, for air-time and profile in church life, for agency. In a faith tradition grounded in a core theology of reconciliation, these divisions should be theologically embarrassing. We might at least be honest enough to confess they are ethically suspect, integrity compromising, credibility corroding. No wonder a move to unify these age-segregations has arisen. Addressing these divisions theologically, anthropologically, and pragmatically has great merit.

As they are now being drawn together under ‘generational ministry’ there is an attempt to align the strands in a co-ordinated and cohesive strategy. This strategic coherence is both to be commended as a noble effort, but also treated with a hermeneutic of suspicion. Historically various age-based expressions of ministry have operated from contrasting, and at times contesting and conflicting philosophical foundations. It is easy to recognise that coherence isn’t achieved readily simply through structural re-ordering, and that churches would be naïve to think the cultural distinctives of these ministries are blended harmoniously into a homogeneity simply by creating one department and appointing a staff member as ‘generations pastor’ to lead it.

Even if such a managerial move were to easily effect such uniformity, I am not convinced we should be happy about it. Cultural elision for the sake of corporate efficiency and administrative rationalisation is a familiar feature of nineteenth century colonialism and twentieth

YVQ | Issue 15 | Autumn 2017

All around us, political, economic, and social forces fuelled from deep seams of Western individualist philosophy seek to divide and define humans. The world is busy designating ‘target’ demographics and developing ways of persuading the will, co-opting the identities, and creating limits and rules that artificially re-order humans into ascending and descending stacks of ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’.

century globalism and capitalism, and is still the subject of prophetic critique. We do well to raise our eyebrows at how ‘logical’ and ‘strategic’ it appears in this current expression in generational ministries.

In evaluating ‘generational ministries’ and ‘generations’ as a phenomenon taking shape in the discourse and delivery of ministry leadership this anomalous background is important to keep in view. If we exercise ministry under a ‘generations’ structure, what measures are taken to value and preserve the ethos, culture, and theological perspectives of each of the expressions? Who gives leadership to this area, and what is their base culture of ministry?

Do we confidently and regularly articulate how our generational practice is an expression of our best theological claims, giving an account for how we order ourselves is faithful to the Gospel story we proclaim?

‘Generations’—The Name Shaping Ministry Form And Content

The language of ‘generations’ brings its own value content to the process of shaping the ministries drawn together under this banner. We do well to understand the ancestry of the conceptual spirits and philosophical materials that lie behind the labels we have adopted.3 The term ‘generations’ is essentially a sociological instrument for parcelling demographic sectors. It is applied ubiquitously in two separate contexts: social science research and business marketing.

Social Sciences In social science research, specifically in the field of developmentalist theory, age is a lens through which human existence is investigated and evaluated chronometrically. This is the bread and butter of Stage Theory thinking—a movement of sociology that has its antecedents in nineteenth century philosophical protagonists such as Darwin, who used a staged approach to charting adaptation in nature to express a principle of change (which he called evolution) over large spans of history.

It is also found in the historical-political observations, reasoning, and projections of Marx, who construed political movements as an unfolding of stages of collective organisational development. These natural and political meta-narratives found individualised expression in the stage theorists of the twentieth century, Piaget, Erikson, Kohlberg, and Fowler, who each construed an aspect of personhood—cognition, psycho-social identity,

� Social theory of Generations is first attributed to Karl Mannheim’s essay of 1923, ‘The Problem of Generations’. His exploration of the dynamics of social historical contexts on contemporaneous cohorts was not offered as a programmatic recommendation, and in fact was problematized from the start. He viewed generational questions as a helpful explanatory or diagnostic instrument to help unravel motivators and forces shaping political and social movements, especially in light of the upheavals in Europe in the early twentieth century. He strongly resisted the appropriation of his work on generationality by positivists.

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morality, and spirituality—as a process of development through a set of normative stages. The categories of ministry we see gathered under the heading of ‘generations’ mirrors this way of dividing human life—chronometrically. So pervasive is this philosophical foundation in Western thinking that it appears a self-evidently accurate way of describing and categorising human life.

However, we do well to know our own philosophical history and to see its marks on our minds and models of operating, confessing that this way of seeing is a divisive way.

It is a way that attributes status and redistributes significance across human experience, creating asymmetries of value. In these schemes, developmental accruals of skill, facility, agency and individuality are held as the measures of health and flourishing. Failures to reach these stages are construed as disruptions to nature, as anomalies and are problematised, diminishing personhood.

Business Marketing A second way in which the sociological categories of ‘generations’ is powerfully employed is in determining marketing sectors.

In contrast to developmental schemas of personal thriving, the Gospel affirms the least, the lowly, the vulnerable, the young, the fragile, the deformed as participants in the Kingdom, as prophetic revelators of the ways of Jesus, the grace of Christ, the movement of Spirit. We can appreciate sociological categories of developmental stages and the generational frameworks that are used to encompass these constructs as a unifying anthropological narrative that expresses the philosophy of our times, but this must be held up in conscious contrast to our theological narrative.

In seeking to define humans—the honourable and worthy task of the (social) sciences—we create the side effect or by product of dividing humans.

Orthodoxy, Tradition, Habits, And Innovation

As we have observed, a little bit of modern history uncovers the shallow roots of age segregation and thinking in distinct ‘generations’. We must examine how these economic, political, and philosophical currents find expression in construals of personhood, value, and function, and in the configuration of relationships among children, parents, adolescents, adults, second half of lifers in human community generally and in faith communities in particular.

A Worked Example: Children, Education, And A Culture Of Spiritual Need For example, the flexible identity of children as ‘learners’ has become institutionalised to such an extent that the parameters of school and grade levels and yearly progress reports have become synonymous with childhood.

Typically in churches we group children according to their grades in school. We define larger blocks of years and the programs and resources, curriculum, training, cohorts in terms of ‘preschool’, ‘primary’, ‘secondary’, and post-school designation.

No wonder we have become sensitive to the articulating moments between these blocks as vulnerable to points of departure from community, as we hear anxiety over the trend of ‘haemorrhaging youth’ from our faith communities,4 and so we must assess how generational structures embedded in our churches might actually signpost the multiple exit ramps from community.

The alignment of childhood with institutionalised education establishes the economic identity of the child as a consumer, holding parental and societal aspirations for future transformation into a producer/contributor.

There are plenty of social commentators who argue against this model as an unhealthy social construction for the flourishing of children, for the balance of household economics, for the sustainability of parenting and the viability of community.

Those considerations have obvious import in the life of the church—but our first objection to the diminution of children to ‘students’ must be theological. Where children are students in the faith community, they learn as consumers.

A fair portion of current church culture is arguably still stuck in this identity. Those who have grown out of the student-consumer identity have grown out of the church, and not surprisingly, those who are left still behave as if their purpose in remaining in church is to continue consuming the educational product that church provides. Quite aside from this model being patently financially unsustainable, we are left to deeply lament the rending of the body of Christ, the failure to embody the reconciliation at the core of our Gospel story, the diminished activity of all of the gifted saints of any and every age as we are called to serve one another and a world in need together.

� This phrase taken from the research of the Haemorrhaging Faith movement in Canada.

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hemorrhagingfaith.com/ For some Australian engagement with and critique of this research see aejt.com.au/__data/assets/ pdf_file/0011/876728/Hemorrhaging_Faith_Cronshaw_Lewis_and_Wilson.pdf

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“Faith communities notorious use terms like multi-age, multi-generational, all-age, cross-generational, and intergenerational in generalist ways. Most often these terms are used in relation to worship services that depart from the assumed norm of adult orientation.”

‘Generations’—Good News And Many Ways

In the light of these historical, philosophical, and sociological dimensions of the term, there is plenty of positive content to consider.

The broad notion of generations, although essentially derived from a divisive ground, has prompted some healthy reconsideration of how the generations relate to one another.

The rise of the intergenerational movement—also ascending in secular fields where it is needed as much as an antidote to the isolation and alienation of modernity—has accompanied the language of generational ministry, and requires some definition.

Faith communities notorious use terms like multi-age, multi-generational, all-age, cross-generational, and intergenerational in generalist ways. Most often these terms are used in relation to worship services that depart from the assumed norm of adult orientation. Those of us with even a smidgeon of sensibility to church history will recognise this as a novel and theologically problematic departure from the norms of church practice.

‘Church’ carries an essential ethos of gathering, and has maintained important distinctions from other kinds of events, like lectures or parties or workplaces, as places for all possible categories of humans expression to gather in resistance and suspension of any and all dividing categories. Not all categories have been gathered in the equality the Gospel declares at all times across the history of the church. The church has known divisions of gender, class, and race—and so now, age and generation has its day. Though these inequalities, distinctions, and exclusions are recordable phenomena, majority Christian theological witness refuses these cases as normative or representational.

Across the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century, as the norms of church as a gathering for all ages has been displaced by expectations of age specific

programs, addressing life stage needs, capabilities, and interests, the notion that the act of gathering as a diversely constituted group actually functions as a theological and spiritual reality of ontological value, has been set aside.

We note the shift in anthropological focus: those who gather in church come not as those bringing spiritual abundance in themselves, together to form a gathering which overflows in grace and gifts and service from within the corporate body, but rather presents as a graded set of humans in spiritual need.

The shift to an economy of deficit rather than abundance constrains the release and movement of the people of God in gifted service together. It constricts the vitality of the life of mission, choking off the supply of the full resources that the Spirit would grant us. And it misrepresents the story of God, the very good news we share and are called to bear witness to. Salvation’s song is not the huddling of always hungry hoard with hands out to a God still withholding Heaven’s bread, but the commissioning of a creation called to a life in Christ coming into fulfilment in the liberated restored declaration as one of the ultimate uncontested risen Lordship of Jesus.

So in the light of our primary theological allegiances, holding fast to a wholly transformative Gospel we turn again to the range of terms and practices that are gathered under the banner of ‘Generations’.

Multi-age: the presence of a random collection of ages addressed as one, united in one set of activities. In fact the most common form of gathering, in which whole communities as one recited the same prayers, sang from a common hymnody and confessed the creeds together.

This is often enacted for purely pragmatic purposes, and because of its historical roots is considered an antiquated and unsophisticated approach. However, both in light of the fragmentation of community in our context and its sustained and sustaining life through centuries of Christian faithfulness, it bears reconsideration.

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Multi-generational: the presence of two or more generations addressed in parallel—often for pragmatic purposes. A popular genre of ‘family service’ utilised this model, providing tactile activities for toddlers, craft or puzzles for primary ages, adolescents are invited to lead music or readings or prayers, or perhaps coach younger children in their activities, while adults are addressed in much the same way as they are accustomed to. While the intention is that each group is served with what they need, it is often evident that the architecture of the service works on a clear blueprint of what is most familiar for adults, with accommodations for children. The facilitation of these gatherings mostly addresses the generations separately, and rarely enables interaction within the service between different ages. Such services often live a fragile life and suffer a great deal of criticism from almost every sector, not the least parents who find the expectations exhausting and unfulfilling, either personally or as a family experience.

Singles express a sense of alienation, because there is no articulation of how those of various ages might be community for one another.

Cross-generational: the deliberate intersection of two of more generations in ways which honour generational differences and value the various gifts each generation is to the other in mutual interaction. Sunday schools and youth groups are examples of this model. Adult leaders interact with children or young people. We all know that these ought to be mutual encounters, and many of us who have spent years in these contexts recognise that so called ‘leaders’ are as much discipled by the young as the other way around, though sometimes people who

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aren’t involved in those interactions in an ongoing, regular, and frequent way can lack imagination for how this might be the case.

Intergenerational: the practice of facilitating, hosting and celebrating the shared life and connections of all and any generations together—in ways that disempower generational difference for the purpose of more wholly embodying the call of the Gospel to live as God’s reconciled people in the kingdom of God. This form of gathering intentionally erases the divisions of age and seeks to address the gathered community as a diverse group of humans, which is expressed in an infinitely complex and beautiful constellation of personhoods. Intergenerational community affirms our humanness as consisting of many many facets—personality, culture, intellect, education, tastes, age, abilities, interests, gender, faith—and resists the predominance of any one part of human personhood as a false claim.

Theologically the predominance of any one part of personhood—as the Apostle states: Jew or Greek, Male or Female, Slave or Free—is an affront to the totality of Jesus as the one and incontestable Risen Lord of the cosmos, in whose name all tongues confess and knees bow.

My observation of healthy communities is that they are dextrous and at ease with a number of ways of relating together. In small groups based around lots of different aspect of personhood, or theological tasks; in larger cohorts that can temporarily reconfigure and then easily regroup; as a whole gathering making welcome space for all. Here, relationship is understood as a gift that we have in abundance to offer one another in the hospitality of God.

‘Generations’—Isn’t That A Biblical Term?

Perhaps you have been troubled by how deeply I have engaged in the world of secular philosophy, citing the voices of modernity—Darwin and Marx, and the stage theorists.

Isn’t ‘generations’ a Biblical term— might we not be drawing on a heritage received through scripture, rather than secular conduits?

Naturally, as a Biblical scholar I would be thrilled to trace the trajectory of ‘generations’ thinking from scripture into the theological reflection, intellectual architecture, and operational culture of the contemporary church.

Although ‘generation/s’ appears in the Bible a couple of hundred times, its meaning in the ancient texts and contexts is discontinuous with the meaning it is being given now.

In Biblical texts the notion of ‘generational’ is inextricably linked to the system of patriarchy, and speaks to both a social system of authority and a theological framework for perpetuity of life beyond death.

The ongoing proclamation of future generations is held as the future hope of life for the patriarchs of Israel, bypassing theologies of eternal life in a spiritual reality.

Secondly, the language of generations in Biblical materials presupposes not a division of young and old but a unity of life as God’s people. Texts consistently promote the place of young and old together in faithful covenant keeping, law observance, sacrifice and festival celebration, and suffering in the wake of unfaithfulness. Our attention to the term generations ought

Thirdly, the language of ‘generations’, whether drawn from ancient Biblical patriarchal societies or contemporary sociology, carries the implicit imperative of procreation as a key identity marker.

A generation is defined not solely by age, but by child bearing. A generation is created with contemporaneous childbearing, and is bounded by the points at which that cohort themselves procreate. Needless to say this kind of focus on child-bearing generativity as an identity marker is ill-fitting in twenty-first century Australia. The age for becoming a parent varies greatly across the multiplicity of cultures present in our society, shaped by ethnic, religious, and socio-economic factors. Further, with the wealth and stability of Australian society, mitigating the need for high birth rates to maintain population, the occurrence of both men and women who do not procreate is relatively high. In many sectors of Australian life, not bearing children is unremarkable and in the scope of normative adult status.

For the church to present itself as a generationally ordered sub-system puts it at odds with these sociological trends. Where the church is struggling to remain a credible participant in the discourses around gender, sexuality, and marriage legislation, a heavy emphasis on generational thinking perhaps further isolates us from the public square conversations. There is no theological reason for the church to hold to a normativity of procreation, particularly when both Jesus and the Apostle Paul are obvious examples of lives well lived in repudiation of imperative generativity.

Here then we see three reasons to be careful in our use of the language of Generations: One: keeping at least arm’s length from implicating ancient systems of patriarchal order that cannot be effectively or realistically implemented in our contemporary context, even if we wanted to, which we probably don’t when we consider the institutions like polygamy and slavery that accompany patriarchy.

Two: avoiding the exploitative ethics of the marketing demographics which deliberately isolate age groups, destroying the connections that create the possibilities

of shared resources and interdependence of wisdom and energies, wonder and experience, and create dependence on consumption in place of community connections and collective life.

Three: recognising the subliminal narratives of family patterning and the distribution of theological constructs of enduring/everlasting life that inhabit the notion of generations, which run against the grain of most orthodox Christian understandings of the meaning of the death and resurrection of Christ as effecting the terms and provision of eternal life for the world, thus liberating humans from the imperatives to assure their own longevity through procreation, and replacing procreation as our hope with new creation.

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not be re-worked to divide or put asunder what God has joined.

Recovering Lost Skills And The Art Of Being

Theology is foundational—it must be our starting point, and we should not move more than arms reach from our theological centre, keeping our bearing clear and true—but theology is not enough. Or rather, holding our theology clear in our heads or dear in our hearts is not enough; it must engage our gears and steer our anthropology—how we speak of humans—and our action.

So there is much work to do in recovering clear articulations of our Gospel story that transcends human differentiation. There is much work to do in re-learning how to be together—to see one another as whole human beings, to be open to encounter on the basis of the full richness of human diversities, not only through the lenses of age alone. Our practice in community must be driven by our theology of being, of humans as bearers of the image of God together, and as all, young and old beset with the burden of life bounded in a world struck through with the knowledge not only of good, but also of evil.

Our practices of relating, communicating, celebrating, confessing, peacemaking, healing and justice seeking as the followers of Jesus in community must be ordered by this theology that affirms the present, current, vibrant, essential participation of each member of the community of faith as a contributing constituent. We cannot be the reconciled people of God without reconciling our generational divisions and submitting generational identities to the Lordship of Jesus. ●

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Ministry As A Family Writers Geoff & Ros Cox

Think of ‘family life’ and what immediately springs to mind? It might be seat-of-the-pants chaos, or perhaps order and routine bordering on the monotonous. If your experience of the family journey is anything like ours, ‘family life’ will probably sit somewhere along that spectrum at any given moment of any day or week, except for that precious, fleeting moment early on a Friday evening—the moment of the week when you collectively realise you have survived another one.

indelible mark as we experienced first-hand the transformative effects of delving into the Bible in a strongly relational context. Countless leaders over the years had modelled the way of Jesus for us.

In the midst of these thrills and spills, have you ever considered how God could use your experiences of family life for the Kingdom? What would it look like, for you and for others, to embark on ministry as a family?

Since taking that step in 2010, our experience of doing mission as a family has been richly rewarding.

Participating as a family within a larger team context has meant that we and our children have been immersed in a temporary but intensive Christian community with all the pressures, joys, encouragement, and spiritual nurturing that comes with the experience. It has also meant, conversely, that our team is invited into our family. There are no pretences. As a family, we come and live as we are. It is this window into the normality of family life that we trust can better inspire our whole team as we minister to children, young people, and their families.

In many ways the ministry path we have taken as a family is nothing extreme, and we would not claim to be a paragon example. In another sense, though, that is entirely the point.

Over the years, we have both received training in and developed experience with various fields of Christian ministry that has enabled us to serve in ways that reflect our particular individual gifts and interests.

That is a healthy and indeed Biblical thing. Yet as we grew as a family, our way of doing ministry did not necessarily adapt in response to these changed circumstances. As good and uplifting as our various personal ministries were, and continue to be, it is our decision to engage in ministry together which we believe has brought most joy and richness in our family’s spiritual growth.

Both of us had grown up as participants and then volunteers with Scripture Union (SU) and their Family Mission (SUFM) holiday programs. This had left on us an

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When it came time for us as a family to consider doing ministry together, our thoughts soon turned to SU missions due, significantly, to the value they place on family engagement.

We joined an SUFM team as a family, small children and all.

Each of us brings on mission our individual personalities and gifts.

One of the many things which excites us each year as we anticipate a new mission experience is the prospect of a fresh canvas about to be filled in ways which reflect the colours and shades of the team’s many parts.

Yet for every opportunity we may have to exercise our particular ministry gifts, there are many more opportunities simply to connect with people on an everyday level.

Our mission context is that of a temporary community within a

temporary community. We live and move among campers and beachgoers, presenting a mix of activities including age-specific small groups and larger-scale family events.

We find that being a family on mission enables us to support the work of the team by operating in spaces on the periphery of programs, where onlookers and passers-by may be willing to share their time in conversation. Sometimes, but not always, this will open up avenues for spiritual dialogue. Even in the absence of overt Gospel opportunities, we know that God works as we are present in this way. Being a family also serves as a point of connection with campers at a time in their year where their own family situation is front and centre.

Equal to the support we can provide to the team as parents, our children do likewise with their participation in the thick of the program. It is a joy to see our children learn and grow from the example of missional living and service in all its depth and vibrancy. Yet as well as absorbing, we find them contributing in ways all of their own. For sure, their natural spontaneity sits well in the mission context, however we also truly sense our children working in partnership with their fellow team leaders, particularly as the Bible is opened with groups of children and stories of Jesus’ own life and ministry are shared and explored.

Of course, ‘doing ministry’ is not always a walk in the (caravan) park.

But the truth is that neither is ‘doing family’. What we learn from our experiences with one naturally feeds into and refines the other. In doing so, we greatly sense God’s leading as we seek to make a difference both in our family and in his world. ●

Writer Brendan Petty

Faith is a slippery concept. It’s difficult to scoop up and hand over to someone else, and it’s nearly impossible to clearly define and compartmentalise into a 10 week teaching series. So how can we possibly hope to share it effectively with the next generation?

If you’ve been involved in youth or children’s ministry for a while, you’ll have realised the importance of sharing life with those you lead. It’s through regular mentoring conversations, shared experiences on camps, day to day communication on social media, and other chances to ‘do life together’ that others get to see the practical realities of our faith and the impact it has on the way we think, feel, act, and relate.

The trouble is that, often, when we all turn up to church on a Sunday, these principles get shelved for a few hours as we split off into various age-specific ministries for some teaching about faith in an educative way, as if it’s not slippery at all, and as if the 20th century’s methods of education in schools will be effective at downloading everything we know about faith into the minds (and then hopefully hearts) of those we lead.

The oft-quoted instructions to parents in Deuteronomy 6 give us a helpful framework for sharing faith with our children. Moses implores parents to “talk about [God’s commandments] when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.” (v7-9, NIV) Actions are powerful, though they can be ambiguous.

Words can bring clarity, yet they can be empty. Actions and words together—on the road of shared life—are a powerful way of sharing your faith with others.

Let’s narrow this in for one element of faith that we hope to pass on: the development of lifelong worshipers. This brings us back to church, where it’s probably a Sunday.

How can we best use our few short hours together to grow lifelong worshipers of our children, youth, and adults?

For several generations now, the explicit inclusion of children in worship has revolved around a very concrete imitation of the (powerful) scene in Matthew 18 where “[Jesus] called a little child to him, and placed the child among them. And he said: ‘Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.’” (v2-3, NIV) You’ve probably experienced it—all the children are called to the front of the church where they sit and listen to a ‘children’s talk’ which is at its best a clever, multi-layered delivery of a powerful message through which

God speaks to all ages that are present, but at its worst is an awkward, clichéd porridge of poor theology and simplistic moral assertions. There are other places that Matthew 18 can be more accurately replicated, for example, in the midst of the politics and power games that we adults can sometimes get caught up in.

My favourite Psalm is 148, which speaks of everyone and everything praising the Lord, including “young men and women, old men and children” (v12, NIV). This can guide the way that we include both children and adults in our weekly church time. What better way to develop lifelong worshipers than to worship together and explain what we’re doing along the way? Instead of taking the children out to learn about faith and worship, let’s have a go at it together and learn from watching each other.

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Life Long Worship

For the last few years at Doncaster Church of Christ, we have had a short All Age Worship time at the end of our morning service each week, where the adults, kids, and their leaders all join together in a worship activity.

We can’t claim that every week is a ‘success’, but it’s become the most valuable part of the morning for each age group and always ends with at least some laughter, interaction between generations, and a positive vibe leading out of the service into the week ahead.

Some of the principles we apply when preparing for All Age Worship are things that we really should be considering in all our worship too, so it’s helped us in other areas beyond just those 10 minutes.

• Make no assumptions about knowledge, ability, experience.

• Try to engage all learning styles—visual, auditory, kinaesthetic.

• Ask open questions rather than closed ones (e.g. instead of “Does God love everyone?” we can ask “What do we know about God’s love?”).

• Learn children’s names, so you can address them with the same respect that you would for an adult.

• Avoid jargon, and always assume there are visitors present.

• Make it participatory. After all, we’re primarily gathered so that we can all engage in worship, not to warm the seats and pay the bills!

Give it a try—and remember that creativity will always be a bumpy road. ● | 15

Diverse, Yet Still One Church Writer Tim Walter

Our culture is complex. On one hand, we have access to limitless knowledge through the internet and our phones. On another hand, we have a lack of resilience and a rise of anxiety levels. With such diversity of pressures, of course we focus on our ministry area of choice. We dive deep into youth culture and how to run the very best youth ministry we can; we put energy into our leaders and into pastoral care in and through the issues youth face today. Cultural differences add an entirely new element to the conversation, and what about children’s ministry; won’t a successful kid’s ministry feed up into youth? Who has time to even think about kid’s ministry when you are a youth pastor?

Intergenerational ministry is hard work. Thinking across the age spectrums and how to intersect them so that they benefit everyone takes a lot of head space—to even for a moment imagine what it would be like to lay a multicultural filter over intergenerational ministry is enough to make even the strongest of ministry warriors cut and run. However, this is what we are looking at today in this article.

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If you’re looking for some theological gems from a well-researched scholar, then I apologise; that is not me. However, God has truly blessed the ministries I have been a part of, and while not every idea works, God has been faithful through it all and I have been blessed to be a part of some amazing growth in both generational and multicultural ministries. These insights are from the school of hard knocks; some came easy, others where fought for over years and years of ministry, so please hear my heart that if you are doing it tough or beginning this journey, it can be a long road but well worth the results for the Kingdom.

I was privileged enough to spend the past eight years as the Children and Family Minister at Epping Church of Christ in Sydney. This Aussie suburb has become so culturally diverse that the last census places Anglo Saxons in the bottom 10% of the suburb’s population. This means that our church became so culturally diverse that our playgroup was made up of more than ten cultures.

My wife and I had the only blonde children in the group, and would often have our children’s photos taken with visiting families or grandparents from overseas. Where would you even start with a ministry like this? How would you make it intergenerational—how does it join with youth ministry, seniors’ ministry, etc?

Firstly, lots of prayer. God created families not just your age-focused ministry. Pray about what you have and where God wants you to grow into. For Epping, it was Children and Families—despite a solid youth group and a fantastic young adults ministry, Sundays saw three children sit on the floor each week.

So years where dedicated to holiday programs, schools ministry, after school programs, and Sunday mornings services. We came to the realisation that parents needed to be in on the conversation. As Reggie Joiner talks about in his book Think Orange, we have 40 hours of contact a year with these kids and youth, and parents have 3000 hours.

How can we use our time to tap into the 3000 a little better? Families became key!

Something amazing took place.

Firstly we discovered some principles that transcended culture. One was the value of family. When we involved families, we had a far greater diversity of families than when we targeted a singular age.

Family Training events worked to some degree, as did family BBQs and events, but it was the church services which took us by surprise.

When we focused in on Mother’s day, we would make it a ‘family friendly event’. It was an intergenerational experience. I was so proud of our teams when we broke attendance records twice doing this.

How did it look? Each special service we would create a ‘fun’ feel outside with something for the kids (for example, a jumping castle).

We would set up our tea and coffee outside with tables and chairs, meaning that kids could play, parents could sit and catch up over a coffee, and we had a number of families walk in off the street due to the appeal of the atmosphere that was created around families. This also appealed to a cultural diversity as many cultures love the family feel and where drawn to these mornings.

The second principle was food. It’s not rocket science, but sometimes we need a reminder that people connect over food. Cultures also connect when they come together and share their foods. Our playgroup would end each term with a ‘bring a plate’ meal, which would mean that we had a choice of Indian, Korean, Chinese, Australian foods, and everything in-between. Now when I say playgroup I’m not talking the normal 4-7 mothers and kids; I’m talking anywhere between 70 and 100 people in the church hall every Wednesday of the week. We had a reputation for being a loving playgroup who welcomes all.

But how do you go from a large playgroup to an entire family in church worshiping Christ? Firstly, we need to acknowledge the structure of the church. We were a siloed group of ministries happening

It begins with thinking across the ministries; celebrating the different ministries and working together. For example, your youth are going on a camp, why don’t some of the young adults come as leaders, why don’t some of the worship team go? If you are a smaller church, why doesn’t one of the elders go? We were designed for community, it was and is God’s plan for us to do life together.

I strongly believe what has crept into our church community is the world’s model of organisation; we have compartmentalised our church, kids’ ministry, young adults, worship ministry, grounds roster, etc… the Early Church did everything together; young adults ministry was kids ministry as they worshiped together, cared for each other, and shared life together. We see glimpses of this with Jesus at the temple as a 12 year old in Luke 2, which also shows the family focus as his parents ‘assumed’ Jesus was with his extended family for over a day as they travelled home. There is tremendous strength in a child looking up to a teenager to see the kind of person they wish to grow to become, and the same applies with teenagers and young adults. To have our older members mentor the younger, and the joy someone later in life gets from seeing a child come to know Christ… it sounds great! But let’s face it, that’s almost impossible to implement in today’s church where we are all together all the time. So can I suggest that we hold this idea firmly but implement it lightly.

This may mean that we celebrate our cultures, have families lead us in worship one morning with worship from their country of heritage, create space for children to pray over the church, ask some of our older members to come to youth group and share their story.

These glimpses of intergenerational and cross cultural community can break down not only walls but can open conversations and opportunities to for those in our church to connect naturally.

Leading The Culture Shift

Obviously, these things don’t happen on their own.

It takes leadership and intentionality to do well. It also takes some deep thought and focus. I remember conversations about how we can become more multiculturally focused, which resulted in making sure we had different nationalities represented on stage across our worship team each week where possible.

Our language changed, and we tried even having some different translations in our weekly newsletter. We also made an intentional shift in our language from the front

of the church. If a baby was crying we would verbally acknowledge that saying, “parents please don’t feel bad about your child crying, that is the sound of a church with a future.” This helped families connect with our church, which was the strongest growth point early in the ministry season at Epping. The verbal family value came from all those on stage. The Senior Pastor would stop the service as our children went out to the children’s church—as numbers grew this took more and more time to have them move down to the hall from the church service, words such as, in a joking manner while rolling eyes, “we just have to wait for allll those kids to walk down to the hall…” then, with a smile, “… who can remember when we had 3 kids down there? How blessed are we to have such an amazing number of children!”

Or, when a teenager was baptised, we would show photos from the youth night where it took place and have everyone cheer and celebrate a life dedicated to Christ.

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within a church, each clawing for its piece of the pie, all wanting more room, all wanting resources, money, and leaders. This causes a ‘win at all costs’ style mentality against the other ministries where what we really want is partnership and unity form within the church.

Making sure that we as leaders also are leading the shift, be the first person to meet the new people. A simple coffee with a new person from any culture makes an amazing connection.

Cultural Awareness

One thing we found when we started to look into how to evangelise and disciple was a lack of awareness of other cultures. One night shocked all of the staff, when a young woman accepted Christ and we didn’t know how to answer the questions she was asking about faith and why Jesus would do what he did. In the experiences of our staff, thousands of people have made decisions to follow Christ, however the cultural filter which the questions came from made our experiences totally irrelevant.

We found that while some actions and practices are universal, there are some things that need further thought and research when it comes to multicultural ministry, so that out of ignorance we don’t close a door to faith or discipleship. Double check the roles of males and females in the cultures you are working with, the family dynamics, and customs.

We found that learning how to say “hello” in a native language not only was fun, but also allowed a fun conversation to take place.

We read in the New Testament that the Gospel is for everyone, all nations, all ages, all stages of life. A willingness to bring back the dynamics of community in and through our church with a sense of intergenerational connections and multicultural diversity is what Jesus had in mind, as he only sees one Church. ●

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A Blank Page Writer Sue Allison

What do you do when you have a completely blank page? No tradition you need to carry on, no existing youth program to follow. ‘You can do whatever you like,’ says my senior pastor. Sounds like a dream, doesn’t it?

But where do you start?

We had seven teenagers at Red Church 15 to 18 years of age when I came on staff twelve months ago.

All but two of them were connected to a youth group from a different church. Most attended our morning service with their families, plus the one guy with no faith tradition who just wandered in off the street wondering what happened in a church.

The question I asked was, ‘What does God want to do here at Red Church?’ Here, today, in this culture, with these people. At Red we have a saying—we want to raise ‘Red Hot Disciples’—and this filters through the whole church regardless of age. So with the youth this meant that we weren’t focused on being attractional or running a fun Friday night thing-to-do. The number one aim is that we had was to raise disciples who are passionate about their faith and who allow their faith to shape their life as they navigate a fast changing world where absolutes are unpopular. If we could raise Red Hot Disciples, then they couldn’t help but multiply themselves.

In It’s Just a Phase—So Don’t Miss It1, Reggie Joiner and Kristen Ivy give us three ideas that will help us disciple teens: • Practical applications rather than just theory. How does my faith affect the choices that I make each day?

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• Ask them questions rather than defend and explain your theology. Encourage them to think about what they believe rather than convince them about what you believe.

• Make it experiential—give them an opportunity to do something that is important and will create change. They love to engage in making a difference.

We gathered the youth together for a couple of hang out events just to get to know each other over the first few months. At the end of last year one generous family from the church lent us their holiday house and we went on a ‘camp’ weekend away together. Let me say for those of you who have organised camps before, there was something really relaxing, flexible, intimate, and low cost about just having seven kids and six leaders in a holiday house for the weekend. The kids knitted together as a group and their passion for God and level of Christian maturity was inspiring.

Reflecting on the outstanding leadership quality of our youth after camp I wondered, ‘What could God do with this amazing group of teens if they really committed to each other in Christian community? What lifelong relationships could be formed

where they continue to encourage each other regardless of the personal journeys God takes them on?

How could we encourage them to sharpen and deepen each other’s faith? What adventures could we go on that would foster radical discipleship that would test their faith and encourage them to have a passion for the world around them?

With only seven teens to cater for we could tailor-make a discipleship program just for them. So, to borrow an Orange phrase of ‘Starting with the end in mind’, I worked backwards and thought about what we would need to do to form these Red Hot Disciples.

At our first meeting this year we offered them a challenge to buy into the adventure together. The main deal would be a fortnightly discipleship group and from this core we would form the experiences we would embark on.

The foundation would be a strong community that would be committed to each other’s life journey and committed to encouraging each other in faith. Our fortnightly focus would be on developing a strong Biblical worldview. To know what the Bible says so that they can apply it to their current circumstance, be challenged, be encouraged, and be comforted. This was not to be through teaching as such, but exploring the Bible together, asking

¹Joiner & Ivy (2015) It’s Just a Phase—So Don’t Miss It: Why Every Life Stage of a Kid Matters and at Least 13 Things Your Church Should Do About It, Orange: USA.

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questions and expressing thoughts. Each meeting we seek to foster in the teens a love of God, a desire to know God intimately, to sit in his presence and know his voice.

And lastly we want to empower our teens and grow a passion for them to be influencers. We want them to know they carry the authority of Jesus to bring Heaven to Earth, and that they have a heart to draw their friends and communities closer to Jesus.

We have one male and one female Grade 6 student graduating from kids’ ministry this year. We felt the gap between these two kids and our existing youth was too big to connect them in, and so we are setting up mentors for these kids individually. Hopefully as we gain more junior youth we’ll transition the mentoring into small group ministry.

We don’t have a lot to report yet, as the year is young.

All the youth have committed to meeting fortnightly for discipleship. Some have also chosen to stay connected with the youth group they were connected with before they came to Red. In the Easter holidays we’ll meet for fun and to build community, but we are looking to create opportunity by the mid-year holidays for them to engage in a serving/missional activity together. We have three incredible leaders who are sold out on raising disciples and tonight we are meeting over dinner to build our connection, pray, and dream.

There are many ways to start from a blank page in forming a youth program. Three main factors contributed to our direction: the heart of our church for Red Hot Discipleship, the incredible maturity of faith and leadership qualities in our teens, and the awesome, experienced leaders that wanted to be involved. I’m excited for what God has drawn together and the journey ahead. ●

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Anchors In A Time Of Change Writer Ann Fair It was a defining moment for me.

As I sat in the hairdresser’s chair, I listened to the chatter around me as a group of 16 year old girls had their hair done for their formal ‘Leavers Dinner’ (In Tasmania high school goes to Year 10, and then students move to a different campus). They discussed in earnest the finest details of their plans for the evening. Most had already been to have their ‘mani and pedi’, and were off to have their makeup done after the hair was finished. Dresses were discussed— style, length, colour—and the terror they felt at the prospect of turning up in the limo in the same dress as someone else. And then the conversation continued to lingerie. It had to be hot. Because tonight was The Night. It was accepted that most students would go to after-parties where the cool parents would have supplied barrels and bottles, and the teenagers would get smashed and hook up (the Tasmanian version of schoolies, but two years younger).

McCrindle Research recently explored the rise of schoolies week in the Australian culture.

“In the span of a generation, celebrating the end of Year 12 by attending a schoolies week has emerged as a rite of passage. However, Australian parents have mixed views of how the celebration is played out, and a third of parents state that they would not allow their child to participate in a Gold Coast type schoolies week.”1 Only 7% of surveyed parents claimed to have ‘no concern’ about their children attending schoolies week—and yet this is the default ‘rite of passage’ for our young people?

There is no doubt that young people today face many challenges which the generations before them knew nothing about. Research into new issues such as the impact of social media, the rise of mental health challenges, the weakening of resilience as a negative by-product of over-zealous parenting, and increase in a sense of entitlement from parents attempting to compensate for broken marriages or time-poor parenting.

Our teenagers want independence and autonomy to make decisions, but they are mostly dependent on their parents for a roof over their heads, and money in their pockets.

They also tend to be over-confident in their own abilities, but quick to expect help from parents when they get into difficulties. Parents, on the other hand, are feeling increasingly anxious about the dangers that their offspring might fall into, and increasingly powerless to steer them in the right direction as their own influence wanes in favour of peer group, the media, and society in general. Having their teenagers dependent on them for longer helps parents feel they can keep an eye on them longer.

In so many other cultures, the end of childhood is marked with rituals which define the individual as a young adult. Some of these may seem barbaric to us in the ‘developed’ world, but help the family and the community to view the young person as stepping towards or into the rights and responsibilities of an adult. Even with our neighbours across the Pacific (the USA), the usual pattern is for teens who leave high school to choose to do further education in a different state or city,

and the necessity of ‘leaving home’ and establishing themselves in a new community and environment is a Big Deal. With the high level of city living in Australia, a large proportion of teenagers and twenty-somethings study or work from their parental home, saving money for their future. With house prices so high in our bigger cities, this is a common practice.

So at what point in Australian life do we see a tangible shift in responsibility, from parent to child, happening? Or is the lack of clarity on this making it harder for everyone?

And is there anything our faith communities can offer in this situation?

At the same time, statistics indicate that “more than 50,000 young people each year are leaving the Christian faith and deciding that they have ‘no religion’.”2 A collaborative group of Australian Christian organisations have formed Here2Stay (The Bible Society, Compassion, Focus on the Family Australia, Scripture Union Queensland, and Willow Creek Australia) seeking to address and arrest this trend, and have identified two foundational principles— Family/Household Nurture, and Generation Connections—and eight ‘pillars’ of long-term spiritual formation in our faith communities.

One of these pillars is ‘Anchors/ Rites of Passage’.

Anticipating, honouring and celebrating with children and young people ‘transitions’ and ‘rites of passage’. This is something we need to be intentional about, it needs to

¹www.mccrindle.com.au/ParentsConcernedwithSchoolies_McCrindleResearch_Oct2014.pdf ²Hughes P. (2007) Putting Life Together: Findings from Australian Youth Spirituality Research, Christian Research Association.

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Why are Rites of Passage so important in the faith formation process?

Here are three reasons…

1. There are anchor points throughout the Bible for memory and understanding.

2. They anchor us in our culture—who we are and where we belong.

3. Many young men and women are making up their own rites of passage.3 In the infographic ‘Church Attendance in Australia’4 McCrindle reports that when asked about life priorities, Australians rank their relationships (family) as having the highest priority, followed by emotional and mental health, and then vocation, with spirituality in a poor 6th place.

Perhaps there is an opportunity here for the Church to offer support to parents in the form of celebrations and anchor points for young people to experience (with their parents), for both the spiritual formation of our emerging Christ-following adults, and also encouraging the healthy social and emotional transition to adulthood of the children in our neighbourhoods.

What would this look like exactly?!

There are already a small number of providers of this kind of service in the secular marketplace.

The Rite Journey (theritejourney.com) offers programs to schools—either a full-year engagement with a school, usually at Year 9 level, or a one-day event for students to experience with their parents.

Fathering Adventures (fatheringadventures.com.au) offers father/child experiences which could be seen as rites of passage.

for the boys and princesses for the girls!). Each event will include preparation of a love letter by the parents to their teenager, a statement of honour and appreciation of the parent/s by the child, an outdoor challenge element to complete together, and a significant group ceremony to mark the leaving behind of childish things.

“When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.” (1 Corinthians 13:11, NIV) We believe that events like this have the potential to serve several purposes: • To deepen the engagement of our teenagers with the God of their parents and the community of the church, and slow the drift of our young people away from their faith;

YVQ | Issue 15 | Autumn 2017

be public and an event or experience that can become an anchor in a person’s life. This anchor can become something that helps them to stay on track with God when times are tough.

• To strengthen bonds between parent/s and child at a stage when these relationships often become chaotic; • To provide another way for families in our community to engage with and view the church as a supportive partner in raising the next generation.

• To offer parents some scaffolding in the letting go of their young adults, and the children some clarity in the pathway toward healthy independence.

Ultimately, our desire is to see our youth move through this transition with loving but respectful guidance which will set them up to thrive in adulthood, and develop a faith that lasts.

We may not replace schoolies altogether, but at least it’s a great start! ● Door of Hope would love to hear from any other churches who are also exploring this concept. Please contact ann.fair@door-of-hope.org.

A group of leaders at Door of Hope Christian Church in Launceston is exploring what a ‘rite of passage’ celebration might look like in our context. In the first instance, we are focussing on separate events for males and females in Year 9, or equivalent age, specifically for our church family with a view to trialling it as a broader community event in 2018 (and no, it won’t be warriors � here2stay.org.au/8pillars/anchors/ � blog.mccrindle.com.au/the-mccrindle-blog/church_attendance_in_australia_infographic (2013)

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Care For The Spiritual Nature Of The Child Writer Vivienne Mountain

What does care for children look like? Certainly it means we care for the physical life. Children need food, exercise, and physical protection. As well as the physical, we care for the intellect; we teach and encourage children to grow in understanding. Then there is care for the emotional life, helping children to manage fear, anger, sadness, and confusion. We help children to grow in social skills and empathy for others. Finally we need to care for the spirit or soul of the child.

Why Is Children’s Spiritual Nature Important?

The word Spirit is from the Latin ‘Spiritus’ meaning breath. A similar meaning is attached to the Greek ‘Pneuma’ and the Hebrew word ‘Ruach’. Caring for the spiritual nature of the child therefore is central to life, like protecting their ability to breathe. In our lives we are aware of spirit as the breath of life, an indication of vitality and energy. We experience ‘spirit’ in the wonder of the first breath of a new born baby, the ‘kiss of life’ of a surf life-saver, or the last breath of life in a loved one.

On the other hand, the word ‘spirit’ is commonly used to relate to strong collective feeling, such as cheering at a football match or demonstrations of a school spirit.

Roehlkepartain, King, Wagener & Benson (2006) have edited a Handbook of Spiritual Development in Childhood and Adolescence with contributions from 72 social scientists. They state that the concept of spirituality is broad and complex—it has “multiple domains… it is like the wind, though it might be experienced and described, it cannot be captured” (6). Protecting the spiritual nature of the child is vital. In our age where emotional and mental dis-regulation are a major concern, there is a growing number of scholars in various disciplines who consider the nurture and development of spirituality in children is a major theme in healthy development.

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From the original Latin root of the word, spirituality can be identified as part of the inner life, a motive force found in human beings. The basic dictionary definition shows the original Latin root of the word Spiritual: “Of or pertaining to the spirit or soul as distinguished from the physical nature” (Macquarie Dictionary, 1981, 1661). In this sense spirituality is a deep part of being human. It is part of the unique human consciousness as in “a wellspring of love and wisdom” (Hart, 2003, 2) or “awareness sensing… mystery sensing… value sensing” (Nye, 1996, 146 ).

In our contemporary society spirituality can be conceived as being outside of the religious traditions, however it usually involves an awareness of connectedness with God,

“A desire for connectedness, which often expresses itself in an emotional relationship with an invisible sacred presence” (Tacey, 2000, 17).

Another definition of children’s spirituality as ‘Relational consciousness’ comes from extensive research in the UK. The definition of ‘Relational consciousness’ (Hay and Nye, 1998, 113) speaks of children’s innate awareness that they are connected, a God-given knowledge that they belong. Children are aware of being in a relationship with others, they are open and trusting. They have a delightful connection with nature, a relationship with little beetles or caterpillars or responding to the wagging tail of a dog. Finally there is an awareness of God, the divine who made us and loves us. As Christians we recognise children’s spirituality as coming from our creation by God. It is “an instinctive capacity to respond to our creator” (Nye, 2009, 9). It is part of the life of the child, it is already there, a quality to be nurtured and cherished, rather than something we need to teach.

Finally we recognise the spirit of the child as linked to the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, God who is active in the world.

“In the beginning…the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.” (Gen 1:1) “When [Jesus] had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit…’” (John 20:22) How Do We Care For The Spiritual Life Of Children?

In recognition of the early work of Rebecca Nye (2009, 41), we can identify six ways in which children’s spirituality can be nurtured. These aspects can be a check-list to help us in our ministries care for children.

Space

Personality

Imagination

Relationship

Inner life

Trust Space—Is There Space In Our Church For Quiet, Mystery, And Listening To God? The world of the child is busy with school, friends, activities, and play. As parents and leaders we should practise finding some quiet space to balance the hectic

modern timetable. In many secular schools meditation and mindfulness are now being included in the curriculum in awareness that children need some quiet space in order to help them concentrate and learn. In our church worship and youth work, space to be still and recognise God with us is one way to foster the spiritual nature of our children. From my research I was impressed by one youth group where they had a special ‘God space’.

It was a quiet time where children were encouraged to listen for God’s ‘voice’ and make some kind of response with art work (Mountain, 2014).

Personality—Do We Recognise Each Child As Unique, A Child Of God? Children come into the church with different temperaments as well as different experiences of life. As we recognise their spiritual nature we are sensitive to the various ways in which they respond to life. Bible stories will resonate differently with each child and often they will show distinctive differences in how the Holy Spirit brings the Bible alive for them. As leaders and teachers, the inner spiritual life of each child should be appreciated. There is no need for strong authoritarian forms of teaching—‘This is what the Bible says…’—rather, we can trust that God is working in them through the Spirit—‘I wonder what the bible story says to you…?’

The method of Godly Play (Berryman, 1991) shows this respectful attitude to the growing faith of children.

Imagination—Can We Encourage Wonder And Creativity?

As we are created ‘in the image of God’, creativity and imagination are gifts that we all possess that should be nurtured and encouraged. Young children are still “fresh from the hands of God… encompassed by the love of God,” (Rahner, 1997, 39) and imagination is a strong aspect of their spirituality. As children tell stories and they interpret ideas through art they are engaged at a deep imaginative level. It is a great shame if adults laugh at the imaginative ideas of children; rather, they can join children in the fun of ‘make believe’ and ‘what if…’ So much of the teaching of Jesus relied on imagination. Parables invite us into the situation urging us to be involved, to make sense of the story and to look for meanings. Or we can look at the symbols in our worship—the candle, the cross, the dove. Each one requires us to use our imagination to make sense of these symbols as part of our Christian spiritual experience.

Relationship—Do We Recognise Children As Fellow Disciples?

As we saw in the introduction, relationship and a sense of connection is part of the definition of spirituality.

Modern psychology also supports this idea. Children are born into a family, they need love and compassion to grow in emotional regulation, social and mental health.

Research into early attachment to a care-giver shows

how the brain develops as children experience loving understanding (Music, 2011, 68). As Paul reminds us, as disciples we are all part of the body, with Christ the head.

The body cares for each part, recognising and respecting the differences. Our relationship with each other is part of our relationship with God. Inner life—Can We Relate To The Feelings And Deep Spiritual Concerns Of Children?

It is easy, natural, and good for us to engage with children talking about external things: ‘What grade are you in at school this year?’, ‘How is basketball training going?’ We do need to build relationships with children in this safe, easy way. However, if we are to care for the spiritual nature we are challenged to go deeper: ‘When I was at school I found friendships difficult—is that true for you?’, ‘We all feel guilty when we do stupid things’, ‘I think knowing what to do with anger can be tough’, ‘When my grandmother died it felt like the sun stopped shining’. Sharing our own deep feelings and experiences with a child can be an enormous encouragement. To know that they are not alone in their particular difficulty gives them courage and hope.

Trust—We Need To Nurture Trust, Hope, And Love; Eternal Qualities.

Building trust with children is a difficult task, yet it is at the centre of relationships and spiritual care. The young child’s early trust can be quickly shattered—people let them down, laugh at them, tell them lies, or ignore their needs. To re-build the early spiritual nature of trust is the transformational task of the church. The stories of Jesus are based in his trust of God and leads to his love and acceptance of people and his certain hope for the new Kingdom coming. One important way we show trust is through prayer; we can pray with children and ask them to pray for us. Research shows that children do pray, even children not brought up in a religious environment.

“Prayer is something to do when you can’t do anything else” (Mountain, 2016, 89). Prayer has been shown to be a way for children to cope with the difficulties in life, a way to keep trusting.

In conclusion, we affirm that the spiritual nature of the child is important and should be nurtured and developed in the church. This is not a new task but is based in our scripture and history, we are seeking the Kingdom of God and the Holy Spirit has been given to us to enliven our spirits. The Church is called to live out the faith in care for the weak and vulnerable, to care for the spiritual nature of children. It is possible that this mission of spiritual care in the Church can also give us an opportunity to engage in the ongoing wider discussion regarding the importance of spirituality in the secular society. ● Bibliography available online at churchesofchrist.org.au/youthvision.

YVQ Annual is a Christian art journal for young and emerging artists to be published in November 2017.

If you are a young and emerging writer or artist, you are invited to make a submission to YVQ Annual for a chance to have your work featured in this year’s anthology of essays, short stories, poetry, and visual art. churchesofchrist.org.au/yvqannual