Many champions of intergenerational ministry return us to Paul’s beautiful metaphor of the church as a body of complementary parts (1 Corinthians 12:12–31). It is fitting, then, that intergenerational frontrunner Dr. Holly Catterton Allen uses a similar analogy—the body—to describe how people get “on board” with this work of God.
Throughout her thirty years promoting intergenerational faith formation in academic and ministry settings, Holly has been an evangelist of what is possible when the whole body is engaged. Involving all of us is important for deep and abiding change. This just as true for individual heart change as it is for the church at large. If the contribution of all generations helps the church “grow up” together in faith, appealing to all of a person through their head, heart, and hands opens him to individual transformation—or in this case, to recognizing the powerful work of God available through intergenerational faith formation.
Formation for Integrated People
When we receive through the head, heart, and hands, our learning is naturally expanded. In the framework Holly uses:
- Head refers to how we know; it involves “biblical, theological, sociological, theoretical, empirical teaching.”
- Heart means connecting to our emotions through stories.
- Hands is the tactile, real experience of taking action on what you have learned.
When you receive through all three channels, you don’t just learn: You are changed.
Definitions and Theory
What does the head need to know about intergenerational ministry?
- Formation: It’s more all-encompassing than a ministry directed at someone. For Holly, it’s “about all of us all the time. We’re being formed into the image of Christ.” (So even if we use a shorthand like “intergenerational ministry,” it’s important to recognize that it’s not just ministry from a minister to the recipient, but it’s about more general and ongoing Christian formation.)
- Intentionally: Rather than accidentally including generations, this means we include varied generations on purpose.
- Mutual: Instead of the model of one generation pouring into another, this means there is a two-way exchange of serving and sharing.
- Core practices: While some churches might incorporate intergenerational Christian formation every now and then, the goal would be to do so with regularity.
- Being the body of Christ: Rather than simply believing in the ideal of the body of Christ, the goals is to visibly embody it in the world.
“Intergenerational Christian formation happens when a congregation intentionally brings the generations together in mutual serving and caring and learning within the core practices of the church, in order to live out being the body of Christ to each other and to the greater community.“
Background in Social Psychology
The idea that we need the influence of other generations has convincing support in the world of social psychology. Rather than approaches that emphasize external behaviors or internal thoughts, the sociocultural theory provides a middle way between these extremes by emphasizing how we learn from others.
In Holly’s words, this theory recognizes that “the best way to get from where you are to where you could be is to be accompanied on your journey toward that end with someone who knows the way.” This theory put forward by psychologist Lev Vygotsky is also situative, which means that we learn within real-life situations—by becoming apprentices. For Holly, growing up as a Christian is a lot like becoming a surgeon or a midwife.
“The way to become a surgeon is not just to go read about being a surgeon, and in the same way, we are learning how to follow Christ together. It’s our identity, it’s who we are, it’s a becoming. And becoming alongside people who are at different places on the journey blesses us all, and it grows us up.”
Intergenerational Ministry Invites Us to Know God
Within kids’ ministry, an intergenerational approach takes seriously that children are spiritual beings and not just cognitive ones. Fundamentally, giving children the opportunity to know God is more important than entertaining kids or even imparting biblical knowledge.
Holly, who obtained a master’s degree in child development long before her doctoral work, speaks candidly about her regrets in incorporating “developmentally appropriate” strategies in the 1980s. These strategies, while well-intentioned, ultimately distracted from the most important thing: “My question [now] always is, who is God in this story, and what is he doing?”
The fact that children are spiritual beings means that we need to allow them to encounter the God who wants to speak to them now and not just the God who spoke in history.
The fact that children are spiritual beings means that we need to allow them to encounter the God who wants to speak to them now and not just the God who spoke in history. Intergenerational groups can bring all hearts to grapple with God in a new way, and when the more mature in faith (who can be the children among us!) share their stories, this grows us all simultaneously.
Engage the Heart: Part of God’s Story
Holly’s stories can reach places in our hearts that remain hesitant about intergenerational ministry. Her journey began in a church plant in the 1990s in a small group with about a dozen children and a dozen adults attending:
“All of us together, [we] just prayed together, sang together, prayed for each other, and we began to draw other people in [and form even more groups]. I began to see things in those intergenerational small groups that I had not seen children praying with and for their parents and other adults, children ministering to their parents and other adults, and to each other. I just hadn’t seen that. But it turned out that the small groups weren’t just spiritually formative for the children, but for all of us. They were . . . I would call them spiritual hothouses.”
It was a spiritual hothouse that eventually spread seeds far beyond its walls.
Intergenerational Small Groups
Lately, Holly has been instrumental in starting intergenerational small groups in a different context, but she is still witnessing a depth of growth that seems to outstrip expectations. She describes how a high school student struggling to make the right friends at a new school grew in faith through an older man who is trusting God in his last season. Through the faith of a seasoned believer, a ninth grade girl was inspired to declare her trust in God even in a difficult transition.
Holly’s stories, both her own and the ones she’s collected, can help us all envision God’s larger story, to see the life-giving possibilities available to us when generations and his heart for us collide.
Engage the Hands: Intergenerational Experiences
Although emotions, intellect, and experience are all necessary for deep and abiding change, it’s the hands that are key to transformation. Hands can get us “on board” to begin with and then cause us to jump into the fray from that same place of conviction.
Holly explains that it’s often the actual, hands-on experience that can be a kind of adhesive that attaches to knowledge and emotion. The experience can cause you to seek out the theory and the stories underpinning intergenerational ministry as well as anchor them to real life. Alluding to her experience of small groups in the 1990s, Holly says, “I began my journey seeing it. It was an experiential beginning for me.”
How Does One Person Do It?
If you are just starting out, as an individual ready to dive in, Holly recommends first doing by—ironically, learning. Finding books or resources about intergenerational ministry is the first step. Then, once you want to engage on another level, it is important to find kindred spirits who share your excitement.
When you invite more generations into the place you are serving, you can make deliberate shifts to prepare the way for more sweeping change.
For Holly, “If you talk about it a little bit with people, there’ll be someone [who will say], ‘I’ve been reading about that! Tell me more!’ ” After finding people who share the vision, Holly encourages each person to try to make a difference where she is situated, even if the whole church isn’t yet on board: “If you’re the children’s minister, you may only be able to affect the children’s ministry, but you can [make a difference there].”
When you invite more generations into the place you are serving, you can make deliberate shifts to prepare the way for more sweeping change.
How Does a Church Do It?
To accomplish larger changes in a church, Holly observes, “Eventually, to change a church, to move a church, it’s gonna have to be part of the leadership.” With leadership buy-in, you can then go on to build positive, intergenerational “touchstone moments” that involve the whole church.
This doesn’t require ambitious programs. Leaders can often adapt events the church is already doing to make them more intergenerational. For instance, if your church has a meal together, you can “tweak it a little bit” and give everyone a colored flower associated with their age cohort. Then, every table can be invited to make a bouquet as their centerpiece with all of the colors represented. With a little more intentionality, churches can foster more intergenerational relationships and experiences organically.
Of course, it is always worthwhile to plan separate intergenerational events, even if they feel like a big undertaking. Holly describes hosting a Passover event at a new church with the expectation of 200 attending. Instead of 200, they had all of 650 people sign up! While it seemed an impossible task, the culmination of a night of reading and interacting over the theologically—and sensorially—rich Passover meal was a group dance of the hora, a traditional Jewish folk dance.
“It was astonishing. I had asked some emerging adults [to lead the dance]—16 counts to the right. And then 16 counts back, and 16 counts to the right. And so we did that together. It was marvelous. It was the essence of intergenerationality, because everyone participated at the same level.”
It sounds like an unforgettable celebration and one that is sure to stoke desire for more intergenerational interactions as a community of believers.
Engage the Holy Spirit
Ultimately, even when we are ready to roll up our sleeves and bring others alongside us in this journey, the work doesn’t depend on our hands alone. We start with the conviction that this movement comes from the very heart of God, coming from Scripture and his desire for unity.
In Holly’s words, what should fuel us is “that deep understanding that this is not a fad. This is who God calls us to be. We are the body of Christ, not just the adults. We’re the whole body of Christ. I think he always intended for us to be together more of the time.”
This confidence about God’s desire for the generations to be reunited is what propels us. Though it may feel difficult on our own, with God, the miracle has already become flesh.
This confidence about God’s desire for the generations to be reunited is what propels us. Though it may feel difficult on our own, with God, the miracle has already become flesh. And when we know this is God’s work, we rely on the leading of the Holy Spirit for his timing. Holly’s parting words to us feel as if they are coming from an older friend’s hard-earned treasury of wisdom:
“Trust in the slow work of God. It’s been 30 years, and running ahead did no good, pushing, pushing, pushing. You can’t make people join you where you are. But it’s a slow leading, it’s an encouraging. In Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s words: ‘Trust in the slow work of God.’ ”
If we hadn’t felt the tug until now, surely hearing Holly’s earnest desire to shepherd younger believers as they pursue this call brings home the heart of what would be lost if we neglected God’s leading.
Head, Heart, Hands, and the Greatest Commandment
It is no coincidence that the apostle Paul and Holly Catterton Allen gravitate to the image of the body working together to capture what wholeness looks like. It is also in terms of the holistic person—heart, soul, mind, and strength—that Jesus describes what our love for God should look like.
In Mark 12:28–34, a teacher of the Law asks him to weigh in on a technical dispute among Jewish leaders, a dispute about hierarchies within the Law. Instead of descending into divisions and details, Jesus refocuses on the very core of the Law. Reciting a Deuteronomic text that was as familiar to his audience as breathing, he returns us to the heart of it all, the uniqueness of the one God, who is worthy of all of our devotion: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one” (Deuteronomy 6:4).
Because he is the God who rescued the Israelites from Egypt and brought them into the Promised Land, and because he is the God who rescues us from sin and death and gives us the Holy Spirit and life with him, he is worthy of all of our worship.
Loving the God who first loved us looks like yielding head, heart, and hands to him. When we do so, he promises to make whole our bodies and his body, dwellings for God himself.
