How can intergenerational Christian practice foster relationships with God and community by engaging persons of all ages? In this interview we speak with Valerie Grissom, editor of All Ages Becoming: Intergenerational Practice and the Formation of God’s People, about the countercultural and community building work of intergenerational practices.
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Jessica Anschutz: All Ages Becoming is a wonderful resource for church leaders who are engaging in or thinking about engaging in intergenerational Christian practice. As we start off today, share a little bit with our audience about how the book came to be and what it’s about.
Valerie Grissom: I am the chair of the Intergenerate Organization, and we meet biannually. Intergenerate is a movement of academics and practitioners from around the world who come together with the mission to bring the generations of the church together. We honor the ideas of research and those who are in the field doing it together, and bring together theological research, biblical research, sociological research, and those in the field. All those things come together and it’s just a wonderful time. At the conference, we invite all the presenters to share in writing a chapter in a book, and this book is the third in a series of books.
This book is interesting because it was birthed during the pandemic. We had a pandemic conference where we merged with Children’s Spirituality Summit, and almost a thousand people joined us online. It was an interesting time in general, because there was just so much transition and pivoting going on in the church, and all these things that church leaders have been having to do for the last few years. The book was birthed out of that, and as it came together and we started looking at the chapters, we realized a real theme of practice. How we practice our faith in faith communities forms us. The big theme that emerged was intergenerational Christian practice. How we practice together being the body of Christ forms us to be more like Jesus.
This book brings together academics and practitioners from all over the world, and it has a lot of amazing chapters. We start with theology because it’s important for us to think about our theological and biblical foundations. We have some great chapters for both those who are new to intergenerational Christian ministry, and those who are veterans. There’s this beautiful chapter “Circle of Blessing” by Linda Staats, that introduces us to intergenerational ministry. Then, we have sections on reimagining things like discipleship, parenting, family ministry, preaching, and worship, and then we have this great section on case studies where people try to implement things that are very inspiring. We even have a section on stories that include ways that we can embrace change, experimentation, and curiosity, while becoming more intergenerational in our practice. Finally, we have our scholar, Holly Allen, who talks a lot about the future landscape, theses that are being done right now, current trends, and where we’re going with intergenerational ministry in the church.
Jessica Anschutz: Thank you so much for sharing a broad outline of the book. One of the things that I really appreciate about the book is that it has something for everyone.
Valerie Grissom: Yes, it really does. I am so thankful for these authors. These are friends, colleagues, and scholars, who have so many gifts to give us as the church. So, I’m just proud to share them with you today.
Jessica Anschutz: Say a little more about intergenerational Christian practices. What are they?
Valerie Grissom: This book also was very formational for me, as I edited all these chapters together and learned a lot more, I formed my own definition of intergenerational Christian practices. I’m going to read from the book because I want to say it very carefully: “Intergenerational Christian practices are intentionally shared rhythms and patterns of participation in Christian community that foster relationships with God among all ages and help us mutually honor God and one another for the sake of becoming more like Christ.” That’s a loaded definition but note: “intentionally shared rhythms and patterns of participation.” Our participation forms us as the body of Christ. The other thing that I really want to call attention to is the idea of relationships and mutuality, which is at the very core of being intergenerational.
Jessica Anschutz: So, given those components, share with our listeners an example, either from your own experience or one that’s in the book.
Valerie Grissom: My background and area of research is intergenerational worship. We all come at this idea of intergenerational ministry in different areas, realizing this is a pivotal issue for the church. But for me, it comes in the form of worship, and worship is spiritually formative practice. When we come together, we are telling God’s story. So, when we have generations that are not present and not in relationship with one another, the whole story of God is not revealed. I realized that a lot in my research, as I was researching worship. So, I would give that as an example of one way that when we come together, we more beautifully become the story of God and the gospel story in our worship by all the generations present.
Jessica Anschutz: What might that look like? You’ve got everyone present, but how are you shaping worship so that it is engaging everyone?
Valerie Grissom: First, I would say that I’m not shaping worship—God is. But God enables us to be a part of and participate in that. One of the first experiments that I tried in worship was having intergenerational scripture presentation. So many churches have scripture presented in worship in different ways. Before I even knew what the word intergenerational meant, I thought: “this might be a way that I could bring generations together.” So, I had groups of people come together to share scripture in worship. The very first time that I did this as an experiment, I brought together an elder in our church who serves in the kitchen. He’s a gruff guy, and I didn’t know how he would react to doing a scripture presentation, but he’s super sweet. I also invited a middle-aged lady that served in our church in different ways, but I didn’t know her very well. Because it was the first experiment, I asked my seven-year-old daughter if they would come together and retell the story of Psalm 139, where it talks about God knowing us by name: God knowing the hairs on our head.
We interacted with our congregation, and they led this. They pulled me aside in the middle of worship and said, “Valerie, we need to talk to you.” Of course, I’m going: “Oh, no, this experiment has gone wrong. What’s going on?” They pulled me aside. First, the lady said, “This has been just incredible, as we have been working together to lead this presentation. I have not ever been able to speak the words of the psalm until now. I had a stillborn child, and speaking this together with your daughter and with this man has been just very powerful, empowering me to do that.” Then, the gruffer old man says, in tears, “yeah, this morning, my dog died. I cannot believe that God cares about me, even today. My dog has died, and yet I can share that with these people here, and then I share it with God and God really cares about me.” Then, on the way home, my little seven-year-old daughter expressed awe that these elder generations would share faith with her. She can still tell you all about that—she’s now 15—and that’s just one little itty-bitty experiment. I had 10 other people from that service alone come to me and say: “That was meaningful. I got to participate in the story of God in a different way,” or “I made a decision today about my job by hearing their testimony and how they shared that together in worship.” So that’s just one little bitty slice of the pie.
Jessica Anschutz: What a powerful example of what can happen and how it can impact not only the people who are participating, but also the people who are there to experience it. You’ve touched on this a little bit, but say more about why church leaders should engage in intergenerational Christian practices.
Valerie Grissom: This book has been very transformative for me, and since I edited it, I have been starting to call it the “practice mindset.” A lot of what we do in church as leaders is performative. We have goals that need to be set. We have this feeling that we need to produce something or a get ahead of the game or whatever it might be. This idea of practice is very different. It’s because I’m a musician so I have had to practice many, many, many hours, but the idea of practice, shifting to that from what we normally would do, requires three big paradigm shifts.
First, instead of thinking of this as a program, intergenerational ministry is not the next program or fad for church, it’s the way that God designed us to be. A lot of times people will come and say, “well, how can you be intergenerational, Valerie?” and I say, “it’s going to look different for where you are.” That’s very disconcerting for some, but it is not a program. It is a way of being in a practice. So, that’s a big paradigm shift. Also, along with that comes the idea that instead of seeking perfection, we’re looking at it as a process. Practice, for some, that word is scary because it sounds like it’s not the real thing. As a musician or an artist, we would say the practice is the sum of all you are and what you will become. So, practice is important, and the process and how you practice becomes important in that paradigm shift. Seeing that it’s a faith journey we’re on—the journey of ministry—it’s important. The practice mindset shifts us from the idea of passivity or performance, towards participation. Because I’m a worship leader, I feel that it is vital to the church that we reclaim the idea of participation in our faith and all generations participating in it together.
Jessica Anschutz: I appreciate your emphasis on participation. We do our children a disservice when we send them out of the worship service to children’s church and isolate folks by age group or in silos. It’s beautiful to think about what we can learn and how we can grow in faith together by coming together. I see this as a cultural shift for some congregations if they’re not already there yet. What words of wisdom would you share with church leaders who want to begin the journey to become more intergenerational in their ministry context?
Valerie Grissom: Those of us that are really looking at intergenerational ministry would say, it’s not a step one, two, three, or “you have arrived” when you’re at the certain space. That’s important to emphasize. I would just encourage first, knowing what intergenerational means. For a lot of people, intergenerational means there’s children in the room where all the generations are present, and intergenerational is so much more about relationships and mutuality in the church. So, beginning to get an idea of what it means to be intergenerational is key. I’ve been working with Chris Barnett, and he has been using some resources from the Uniting Church of Canada, and he’s talking about being intergenerational. One of the things that he really emphasizes is that we are all at a starting point already. So, we don’t have to feel like we must throw everything out and start over again. You don’t have to have all the generations present in the room to be intergenerational. He talks about the idea of being “monocultural” or “monogenerational,” where you’re focusing on one generation room. Or are you “multicultural” or “multi-generational,” where all the generations are in the space. Or moving down that spectrum, you are “cross-generational,” where you’re starting to have those relationships kind of bounce around, but nothing transformative is happening. Then there’s this deep sense of relationship, mutuality, and intergenerational faith formation, where we focus on generations sharing in mutually together, and we’re valuing one another. Each gift is honored and valued in the space, and we are participating together in faith. So, a big thing for me is knowing what it means to be intergenerational.
I love the movie What about Bob? So, I would encourage leaders to take “baby steps.” A lot of times leaders think they need to get it all done right now, but it takes one little step at a time. So, thinking “I’m monogenerational. How can I be a little bit more multi-generational or cross-generational? What are little steps I can take, recognizing that God has given so many gifts in the room right now? How can we use the gifts that God has already placed in our space, and how can we make little shifts towards that?”
I encourage leaders to embrace this practice mindset because it gives you the freedom to realize that we’re not trying to do one thing. Maybe it’s in the practice: you can experiment, you can be curious. Our book has a whole chapter on leadership where we can take on by Breen Sipes ideas of “leading with curiosity and experimentation.” There’s an awesome chapter by Jim Merhaut, on reinvention. When we need to make big changes or little changes, the idea that even that process can be spiritually formative for us. If we take on a practice mindset, we can do that. If we must do one, two, three, then that’s when we realize we could either look at ourselves as a failure or go, “this is impossible. How can we even begin?” So those would be some of the things I would say to leaders.
Jessica Anschutz: I appreciate those insights and thank you for highlighting some of the chapters in the book. I want to turn our attention to the chapter you authored, “Story Sharing as a Practice of Intergenerational Being.” You talk about how congregations can practice story sharing in intergenerational ways. What might that look like?
Valerie Grissom: Story sharing is what I did my doctoral thesis on. I did a lot of work around intercultural worship, and I realized that it was inherently intergenerational as we practice that together. Story sharing is so powerful for congregations. I’m in a ministry where healing and reconciliation is needed right now. We have found great power in story sharing. Story sharing brings people together and reaffirms our own identity, and it also reaffirms the identity that we have together in the body of Christ. It puts us in the story of God as we share our stories with one another. So, it’s very powerful.
I discovered the power of sharing between cultures. A lot of times we assume so much about different cultures, whether it be an age as the culture or ethnicity or whatever it might be. A lot of times we can have assumptions in the room, but when we start sharing with one another, as we find out sometimes our assumptions about one another are wrong and sometimes we find out we have more in common, or we get to know that person so much more deeply than we did before. Story sharing is just so powerful. What I realized is that it’s how we facilitate sharing of stories. I’ve seen where story sharing is powerful, but I can see where it can be even more powerful when we do certain things to set up an atmosphere where we honor and respect the stories in the room. Even the way we make it possible for people to feel they can share their stories.
I talk a lot in this chapter about “setting the table;” this idea of being intentional. Everything we do goes back to practice. I’m going to keep saying it repeatedly, so I hopefully don’t drive you crazy with “practice.” But when we practice, you can practice something wrong. My teacher used to say “perfect practice, we need. Perfect practice makes perfect.” She didn’t mean “Oh, it has to be absolutely perfect,” but it’s more of the idea that if I practice not paying attention to finger numbers for piano, or whatever it might be, then I have to re-practice it to get it right. When we come together for story sharing and we facilitate, we can teach one another how to share in the practice of story sharing with one another in formative ways. That comes down to intentionality, setting the table. I talk about initiating boundaries, honoring, and verbal guidelines. I’m big into the idea of sharing in mutual invitation style, because I live in Seattle where it’s very multicultural, and we might want to be invited to the table, and one culture may not be the same in another; so, how we would want to be included. So, working hard to invite people into the story sharing in authentic and relational ways is important.
Jessica Anschutz: Thank you so much for giving us a taste of that. I want to talk a little bit about the title of the book: All Ages Becoming. In the introduction, you talk about the current tension, uncertainty, and generational discord, as well as the realities of being in a post-pandemic time. You raised the question: “what is the church becoming?” My question for you is, “what do you hope the church is becoming?”
Valerie Grissom: Well, I must give a little background here to this story. In the book, there are a lot of images of butterflies. This book was birthed during the pandemic and then finished as we were emerging out of the pandemic. During that, so many things happened for me personally. I lost both of my parents to COVID in the middle of the pandemic. So much grief and loss around that, not just for me, but for people in the church. Church leaders were seeing all the different ways of reacting in this time, and we still are. I was in a workshop yesterday where we were talking about how we are still figuring this out together. We went through this huge, enormous, communal time of transition and grief, and we’re still coming together in that as well. But in that process, God gave me this image of the butterfly and grief. I have really been thinking about how we are all in different places and that’s okay. We’re all being transformed by God, but we sometimes must go through these dark spaces like a cocoon; or we are that bumbling caterpillar that’s clumsy, and we’re not figuring it out. I realized that image goes so well towards the church. As we think about practicing being intergenerational, we’re all in different stages, and that’s okay. But we have this hope, Romans 12:1 says that “we are being transformed,” and that the word “transformed” in Greek means “metamorphosis.” The idea that God is transforming us to be more like Jesus, and so, there is an end hope, an end goal, that we are becoming more like Christ. It looks different for a lot of different people, but we have this hope in Jesus.
Jessica Anschutz: You did in a very beautiful way, and I appreciate you tying in the reference to the butterflies, which come through for those that have read or will read the book. In the conclusion of the book, you talk about how becoming is both a challenge and an invitation. I want to invite you to share a challenge and invitation with our listeners, as they seek to lead intergenerational practices.
Valerie Grissom: Well, I would love to change the word “challenge” to “encourage” because this time and space for so many church leaders has been so challenging. I would love to encourage you, that you are a gift to God’s church, first. God has placed you where you are for a time such as this, as it says, and you are becoming. We are all becoming. I just want to encourage you to not lose hope thinking “this is too hard,” or “I don’t know if I can do this.” I had a church leader recently say to me, “I feel like I’ve just been pivoting, pivoting, pivoting, and now I’m pivoting again.” God sees you, knows you, and loves you, and you have been given to the church as a gift.
I also want to encourage you that this is vital to the church, and it is counter cultural. It’s a culture change to become intergenerational. It is not the norm in our churches to bring generations together. Church and 4-H are the only two places I know in our culture where we really work to bring the generations together. I talked to a friend yesterday, who said that he is being asked to come into workspaces because they need intergenerational help because they are trying to work together but have been very siloed. This is a counter cultural thing that you are doing, so think about how you can take on aspects of this “practice mindset” as you think about what it means to “become.”
There is this saying that a lot of liturgies include at the end of communion, or as you come to take communion, “become what you receive.” I encourage leaders to realize that we already have the gifts of God right here and in our spaces. Receive what God has already given to us, and one of those gifts is our generations that are present in our midst, in our groups. I encourage you to look out to see the gifts God has, and receive those deeply, receiving all the gifts in our space. I encourage you to become—to see, ask, what God is challenging you to become in the future. It may take some great steps; it may take a lot of experimentation. We might have to reimagine how we do things since it’s so countercultural and it’s a culture shift. It takes patience and endurance. I do encourage you to “become what you receive.”
Jessica Anschutz: That’s beautiful. Thank you, Valerie. Again, the book is All Ages Becoming, and I hope our listeners will check it out.
Valerie Grissom: It’s been a delight to be here. Thank you.
All Ages Becoming: Intergenerational Practice in the Formation of God’s People by Valerie M. Grissom (Abilene Christian University Press, 2023) is available at ACU Press Books, Cokesbury, and Amazon.
Related Resources
- The Benefits of Intergenerational Christian Formation featuring Holly Allen
- Intergenerational Ministry for the Post-pandemic Church by Doug Powe
- Why Intergenerational Ministry? By Liz Perraud
Photo by PhotoGranary on Lightstock
