Intergenerational Insights: The Age-and-Stage Ministry Mannequin

This text is a part of a collection on Intergenerational Formation Insights written after a literature evaluate by the Roots & Wings: Intergenerational Formation Collective grant crew within the spring of 2025.

What Is the Age-and-Stage Ministry Mannequin? 

The age-and-stage mannequin refers to a ministry that teams members of the church group into separate formation, worship, or fellowship experiences primarily based on age and life stage. Examples of age-and-stage ministry embrace age-segregated Sunday faculty, youth pilgrimages, and preschool worship.

The age-and-stage mannequin has its roots within the Sunday Faculty motion, which started within the eighteenth century as an academic alternative for working class kids who had been unable to attend weekday faculty. As entry to public schooling expanded, Sunday Faculty shifted its focus to spiritual schooling. On the flip of the 20 th century, public colleges started to combine learnings from developmental psychology, and non secular educators took be aware. Church buildings started to show kids, youth, and adults “in keeping with the strategies of contemporary pedagogy,” as John Westerhoff, III says in “Will Our Youngsters Have Religion?” (3). Church members had been grouped collectively by age or life stage similarity (preschoolers, retirees, and many others.) and the educating was tailor-made to fulfill the perceived wants of that particular group. [1]

What Are the Limits of the Age-and-Stage Mannequin? 

The age-and-stage mannequin of ministry may be efficient. Many people have constructive examples from our personal lives and ministries, resembling main a small group for different youth throughout a diocesan occasion whereas in highschool and serving as a Godly Play mentor whereas working as a kids’s minister. The presents of this mannequin embrace:

• group constructing amongst friends
• supporting meaning-making round particular subjects resembling parenting
• accommodating developmentally acceptable modes of studying
• lessening age-based energy dynamics

Nonetheless, analysis of the final a number of a long time paperwork that the age-and-stage mannequin of ministry is inadequate as a major mode of religion formation. In “Intergenerational Ministry–A Forty-year Perspective: 1980–2020” Holly Catterton Allen and Jason Brian Santos discover the shift from the age-and-stage mannequin towards intergenerational ministry from the Nineteen Sixties by way of 2020. Drawing on books written by Christian formation specialists, analysis from the Nationwide Research of Youth and Faith, the Faculty Transition Mission from Fuller Youth Institute, and a five-year examine on the religious lives of 18–29-year-olds from the Barna Group, they conclude, “Because the Millennial era got here of age, it turned clear that age-segregated efforts had didn’t move on the religion in the way in which that had been anticipated” (515).

When the age-and-stage mannequin of ministry is major, folks of all ages forego alternatives to:

• type deep cross-generational relationships with a variety of different Christians
• expertise polydirectional studying – studying throughout generations that’s mutual and reciprocal
• mentor others
• construct a way of connection to the church group and the physique of Christ past their small group

What Is the Various?

Incorporating strong alternatives for intergenerational ministry can provide an alternative choice to religion communities the place most ministry is age segregated. Intergenerational ministry deliberately brings two or extra generations collectively in worship, service, studying, or sharing “to be able to stay out being the physique of Christ to one another and the higher group” (“All Ages Turning into: Intergenerational Apply and the Formation of God’s Individuals,” 58). To be really intergenerational, the ministry have to be characterised by reciprocity, mutuality, and the empowerment of all individuals. Intergenerational ministry is much less a brand new manner of being church than it’s an previous manner, maybe the oldest manner, modeled by the traditional Israelite folks and the early Christians. It’s not a program as a lot as it’s a tradition.

Moreover, a number of advantages to intergenerational ministry throughout age teams are enumerated by practitioners and within the present analysis. As chapters 3 and 9 in “Intergenerational Christian Formation” clarify, these advantages embrace:

• cultivating a way of belonging
• navigating issue and loss
• supporting transitions between life phases
• offering distinctive alternatives for character development
• strengthening religious practices and connections
• providing a greater use of assets inside the congregation

What Steadiness Ought to We Search between Age-and-Stage Ministry and Intergenerational Ministry?

Of their foundational ebook, “Intergenerational Christian Formation: Bringing the Entire Church Collectively in Ministry, Neighborhood, and Worship,” Holly Catterton Allen and Christine Lawton Ross suggest that fifty–80 % of congregational actions be deliberately intergenerational (38). This leaves ample room for church buildings to proceed to offer significant formation, fellowship, and worship experiences for particular age or affinity teams whereas discovering new and artistic alternatives for intergenerational ministry all through the liturgical 12 months and in a wide range of contexts. In spite of everything, we study to be disciples not from a ebook or a program, however in group, in relationship, by following Jesus, all ages collectively.

Be aware

1. A critique of the schooling-instructional paradigm utilized in church buildings is warranted. For instance, an academic mannequin of ministry could successfully educate about God, however does it assist us know God or stay extra totally into who God created us to be? This critique, nevertheless, is past the scope of this text. For exploring this query additional, we extremely suggest “Will Our Youngsters Have Religion?” by Westerhoff.

References

Allen, Holly Catterton, et al. “Intergenerational Christian Formation: Bringing the Entire Church Collectively in Ministry, Neighborhood, and Worship.” IVP Educational, 2023. 

Allen, Holly Catterton, and Jason Brian Santos. “Intergenerational Ministry–a Forty-Yr Perspective: 1980-2020.” Christian Schooling Journal 17, no. 3 (2020): 506–29.

Grissom, Valerie, ed. “All Ages Turning into: Intergenerational Practices within the Formation of God’s Individuals.” Abilene Christian College Press, 2023.

Westerhoff, John H., III. “Will Our Youngsters Have Religion?” LifeLong Studying Lab Assortment. Morehouse, 2012.

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