How can intergenerational Christian practice foster relationships with God and community by engaging persons of all ages? 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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How can intergenerational Christian practice foster relationships with God and community by engaging persons of all ages? In this episode 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.
Jessica Anschutz: Welcome to Leading Ideas Talks, a podcast featuring thought leaders and innovative practitioners. I am Jessica Anschutz, the Assistant Director of the Lewis Center for Church Leadership, and I am your host for this Leading Ideas Talk. Joining me is Valerie Grissom, a certified pastor in the Northwest Coast Presbytery near Seattle, Washington, who is also the chair for Intergenerate. She is passionate about worship renewal, and the editor of All Ages Becoming: Intergenerational Practice in the Formation of God’s People. The focus of our podcast today is intergenerational Christian practice. Welcome Valerie, I look forward to our time together today.
Valerie Grissom: Thank you. It’s glad, I’m glad to be here.
Jessica Anschutz: All Ages Becoming is a wonderful resource for church leaders who are engaging in or thinking about engaging in intergenerational Christian practice. I really enjoyed reading the book and think it is filled with loads of useful and helpful information. But I want to invite you as we start off today to share a little bit with our audience about how the book came to be and what’s it about.
Valerie Grissom: Well, I am the chair of the Intergenerate Organization, and we meet biannually every other year; and it’s a movement of people from really around the world academics and practitioners that come together, all with the mission to bring the generations of the church together. And we honor the idea of research and the idea of those that are actually in the field doing it together and bringing together theological research, biblical research, sociological research, all those things come together and it’s just a wonderful time. And at the conference, all those presenters, we invite them to share in writing in chapters and book, and that’s how this book is the third in a series of books.
This book is an interesting book because it was birthed during the time of the pandemic. We had a pandemic conference where we merged together with Children’s Spirituality Summit, and we had almost a thousand people join us online for that conference. And it was just an interesting time in general, because there was just so much going on in the church, so much transition, pivoting, all these things that church leaders have been having to do for the last few years. And so, it 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—it forms us. And so that is how the book began, and we realized the big theme became 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. I just love that it … we start with theology because it’s really important for us to think about our theological and biblical foundations. And so, we have some great chapters; even, and also just, for those that are new to intergenerational Christian ministry and those that veterans, there are chapters that kind of go overall. But there’s just this beautiful chapter that starts, called “Circle of Blessing” by Linda Staats, that introduces us to intergenerational ministry. And then, we have sections on reimagining things like discipleship, parenting, family ministry, preaching, and also worship, and then we have this great section on case studies where people actually trying to implement things in, that are very inspiring on different topics. And then, we even have a section on stories that include ways that we can embrace change, and experimentation, and curiosity, in the midst of becoming more intergenerational in our practice. And finally, we have our scholar: Holly Allen. She talks a lot about the future landscape and talks about a lot of the theses that are being done right now; and talks about trends and where we’re going with intergenerational ministry in the church.
Jessica Anschutz: Thank you so much for lifting up, sort of, the broad outline of the book. One of the things that I really appreciate about it is that I think it has something for everyone.
Valerie Grissom: Yes, it really does. And I, I am so thankful for these authors. These are friends and colleagues and scholars, and they have so many gifts to give us as the church. So, I’m just proud to share them with you today.
Jessica Anschutz: I want to invite you to say a little more about intergenerational Christian practices. What are they?
Valerie Grissom: So, this book also was very formational for me, as I edited all these chapters together and learned a lot more. So, I formed my own definition of what I call intergenerational Christian practices; but I’m actually going to read from the book—I have it right here 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 a couple of things to really note in there is that: “intentionally shared rhythms and patterns of participation.” So, our participation forms us and in … 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 from one that’s in the book.
Valerie Grissom: Well, so my background and area of research is intergenerational worship. So, I will probably come from that. For me personally, I came to … we all kind of come at this idea of intergenerational ministry in different areas, all realizing this is such a pivotal issue for the church. But for me, it comes in the form of worship, and worship is spiritually formative practice. And so, when we come together, we are telling God’s story, right? So, when we have generations that are not present there and not in relationship with one another, the whole story of God is not being shown, and I realized that a lot in my research, as I was researching worship. And 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 really say that I’m not shaping worship—God is; but God enables us to be a part of and participate in that. As an example, for me personally, 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. And so, before I even knew what the word intergenerational meant, I thought: “this might be a way that I could bring generations together.” And so, I would have groups of people come together to share scripture in worship, and it—for instance, the very first time that I ever did this as an experiment, I brought together an elder in our church who serves in the kitchen; kind of a gruff guy, didn’t know how he would react with doing a scripture presentation, but a super sweet guy, and a middle-aged lady that served in our church in different ways, didn’t know her very well. And I asked my daughter, 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 her head.
We interacted with our congregation, and they led this. And they pulled me aside in the middle of worship and asked: “Valerie, we need to talk to you.” And of course, I’m going: “Oh, no, this experiment has gone wrong. What’s going on?” So, they pulled me aside. And first of all, the lady there, she 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. And then, the gruffer old man, he says to me: “yeah, this morning, my dog died.” And he says, in tears, “I … 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.” And then, on the way home, my little seven-year-old daughter just expressed awe that these elder generations would share faith with her. And she can still tell you all about that—she’s now 15; and that’s just one little itty-bitty experiment of how … and then of course, I had probably 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 got: “I made a decision today about my job,” someone said that to me, just 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 really powerful example of what can happen and how it can impact not only the people who are participating, but the people who are there to experience it also. So, 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 almost this feeling that we need to produce something or a get ahead of the game or whatever it might be. And this idea of practice is very different. Maybe 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, kind of changes us in three ways, three big paradigm shifts.
First of all, instead of thinking of this as a program, intergenerational ministry is not the next program or the next fad for church, it’s the way that God designed us to be. And so, a lot of times people will come and say, “well, how can you be intergenerational, Valerie?” and I would say, “it’s going to look different for where you are.” And 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, right? Practice, for some, that word is scary because it sounds like it’s not it’s not the real thing. I would argue, as a musician or an artist, we would say the practice is the sum of all you are and what you will become. And so, practice is really important, and the process and how you practice becomes important in that paradigm shift. So, seeing even that it’s a journey we’re on, a faith—the journey of ministry, it’s just really, really important. And the other thing with that practice mindset is that it shifts us from the idea of passivity, or performance, towards participation. And I, I just feel (maybe it’s because I’m a worship leader), but [I feel that] it is so vital to the church that we reclaim the idea of participation in our faith and all generations participating in it together.
Jessica Anschutz: I really appreciate your emphasis on participation. And, I think we do our children a disservice when we send them, you know, out of the worship service to children’s church and isolate folks by age group or in silos. And I think it’s really beautiful to think about what we can learn and how we can grow in faith together by coming together. I absolutely see this as being 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 that journey to become more intergenerational in their ministry context.
Valerie Grissom: Yeah, first of all, this book, and just all the others, we would recognize those of us that are really looking at intergenerational ministry … like I said before, it’s not a step one, two, three, or “you have arrived” when you’re at the certain space. So, I think that’s really important to hold up. But also, I would just encourage a, first of all, a few things. First of all, just knowing really what intergenerational means. For a lot of people, intergenerational just means there’s children in the room where all the generations are present, and intergenerational is really so much more about relationships and mutuality in the church. And so, even just beginning to get an idea of what it means to be intergenerational is really key. I have really appreciated the new resources by Chris Barnett. I’ve just been working with him on a thing, and he has been using maybe some resources from the Uniting Church of Canada as well, and he’s talking about being intergenerational. But 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 have to throw everything out and start over again. All of us are—and you don’t have to have all the generations present in the room to be intergenerational. He talks a lot about the idea of are you “monocultural,” which would be, or “monogenerational,” where there’s only just, you’re focusing on just one generation room. Or are you “multicultural” or “multi-generational,” where all the generations are in the space; or are you, moving on down that spectrum, “cross-generational,” where you’re starting to have those relationships kind of bounce around, but nothing really transformative is happening; and then there’s this really deep sense of relationship, and mutuality, and intergenerational faith formation, where we are focusing on generations sharing in mutually together, and we’re valuing one another. Each gift is honored and valued in the space that we’re at, and that we are participating together in faith. And so, I think that would be a big thing for me is actually knowing what it means to be intergenerational.
And then I would also encourage leaders that … I love the movie: What about Bob? So, I’m going to say “baby steps” because a lot of times I think I need to get it all done right now; and a lot of times it takes just one little step at a time. So, maybe thinking about “okay, I’m monogenerational. How can I be a little bit more into the multi or cross as I make that? … What are little steps I do to start where I’m at right now, recognizing that God has given so many gifts in the room right now, where we’re at. How can we use those gifts that God has already placed in our space, and how can we just make little shifts towards that?”
And also, I would just 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. Like, our book has a whole chapter on leadership where we can take on by Breen Sipes ideas of “Leading with curiosity and experimentation.” And also, there’s a chapter by Jim Merhaut, which is awesome, on reinvention. And when we need to make big changes or little changes, the idea that even that process can be spiritually formative for us. So, if we take on a practice mindset, we can do that. If we’re … if we just have to do one, two, three, then that’s when we realize we could either look at ourselves as a failure or go, “this is just impossible. How can we even begin?” So those would be some of the things I would say to leaders.
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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.” And you talk about how congregations can practice story sharing in intergenerational ways. What might that look like?
Valerie Grissom: Yeah, well, so story sharing is what I actually did my doctoral thesis on. I did a lot of work around intercultural worship, and so, I realized that it was also inherently intergenerational as we practice that together. Story sharing is so powerful for congregations. I know right now I’m actually in the midst of a ministry where there is needing a lot of healing and reconciliation right now. And we have found great power in story sharing. Story sharing brings people together and gives people … reaffirms our own identity, but it also reaffirms the identity that we have together in the body of Christ. It puts us in the story of God as well, as we share our stories with one another. So, it’s very powerful.
For me, I discovered too, 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 so much more in common, or we get to know that person so much more deeply than we did before. So, story sharing is just so powerful. So, I can’t say enough about it. As far as this chapter, what I realized is that it’s how … we facilitate sharing of stories. For me, 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. And even the way with it, we even make it possible for people to feel they can share their stories.
I talk a lot in this chapter about “setting the table.” I call it “setting the table,” but it’s really this idea of being intentional. And really, everything we do when, if we just … and this goes back to practice. I’m going to keep saying it over and over again, so I hopefully don’t drive you crazy with that word “practice.” But when we practice, you can practice something wrong. My teacher used to say “perfect practice, we need. Perfect practice makes perfect.” And 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, like for piano, finger numbers, or whatever it might be, then I have to re-practice it in order to get it right. And so, 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. And that really comes down to intentionality, setting the table. I talk a lot about initiating actual, like, boundaries and honoring and verbal guidelines. And I’m really big into the idea of sharing in mutual invitation style, because I live in Seattle where it’s very multicultural, and how we might want to be brought to the table, and one culture may not be the same in another; so, how … how we would want to be included. So, even just working hard to invite people into the story sharing in authentic and relational ways is really 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 challenges of our present reality: the tension, the uncertainty, generational discord, the realities of being in a post-pandemic time, and 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 have to give a little background here to this story. You will probably see in the book, lots of butterflies, images going through this book. As I mentioned before, this book was birthed during the pandemic and then finished after, as we were emerging out of the pandemic. In the midst of 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 me, but people in the church, church leaders seeing all of the different ways we were reacting to this time, and we still are. I still … was in a workshop yesterday where we were talking about how we are still—we’re still figuring out together. We went through this huge, enormous, communal time of transition and areas of grief, and we’re still coming together in that as well. But in that process, I really was thinking, God gave me this image of the butterfly and grief, really been thinking about how we are all in different places and that’s okay; that we’re all being transformed by God, but we sometimes have to go through these dark spaces. Maybe it’s a cocoon; maybe we are that bumbling caterpillar that’s really clumsy, and we’re not figuring it out. And I realized that image goes so well towards the church. And as we think about practicing being intergenerational, we’re all in different stages of that, and that’s okay. But we have this hope, knowing, in Romans 12:1, it says that “we are being transformed,” and that word “transformed” actually in the 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. Yeah, so I, I hope I answered your question.
Jessica Anschutz: You did in a very beautiful way, and I appreciate you tying in the reference to the butterflies, which come through the book for those that have read the book or will read the book. As we wind down our time together, today, I want to fast forward a little bit to the conclusion of the book, where you talk about how becoming is both a challenge and an invitation. And 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,” if that’s okay, because I think this time and space for so many church leaders has been so challenging. And so, I would love to encourage you, that you are a gift to God’s church, first of all, and that God has placed you where you are for a time such as this, as it says, and you are becoming, we are all becoming, and so I just want to encourage you in that. That you not lose hope thinking “this is too hard,” or “I don’t know if I can do this,” or 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.” And so, I want to encourage you—that God sees you, and knows you, and loves you, and that you have been given to the church as a gift.
But I also want to encourage you that this is vital to the church, and it is counter cultural. You had already mentioned that it’s a culture change to become intergenerational. It is not the norm in our churches to bring generations together. I find that only church and 4-H are the only two places I know in our culture where we really work to bring the generations together. I know, even, I just talked to a friend yesterday, who said that they are asking him to come into workspaces now because they need intergenerational help in workspaces because we are trying to work together, but we have been very siloed. So, this is a counter cultural thing that you are doing. But I also want to encourage you in that to maybe think about how you can take on aspects of this “practice mindset” as you think about what it means to “become.”
And then, I also say in the book, but there is this saying that they say at the end of communion, or as you come to take communion, a lot of liturgies, that says “become what you receive.” And I would just 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 would encourage you to look out, to see those, to see the gifts God has, and receive those deeply, receiving all the gifts in our space. And I would 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. And so, it takes patience and endurance. So, but 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.
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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
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- 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
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