Bob's Blog

Small groups are a great way in connecting your church, especially since people in and outside the church yearn for community. Most small groups are done by choosing to gather with friends or by similar age grouping (parents with young children, senior saints, etc...), but a weakness in this is that the church becomes segregated by age-level communities. Churches that are mixing their small groups generationaly are finding that it is strengthening their church. One of the benefits is sharing faith from one generation with another. This is a great way of passing the "torch" of Christianity from older to younger. Here are some insights that will help you process multi-mix generations for your small groups:

• Benefit of life experience from older adults.
• Benefit from energy and passion of younger adults.
• Provide a natural conduit for mentoring the next generation of leaders.
• Provide child-rearing assistance for younger adults.
• Provide application and the sense of being needed for older adults.
• May be linked by geographical location.
• May be linked by interests or hobbies.
• May be linked by a desire to study a particular book of the Bible.
• Strengthen the overall ministry of the church.
• Provide needed group care and pastoral type shepherding.

Recently, I met with some of our church's college age people to see if I could get an answer to a question I had. Our church is going through a time of reevaluating our ministry and I wanted to see how they and those of their generation felt about church. We met in our temporary rented office, which I tried to make as "artsy" (my CD player playing contempo worship) as you can considering where we were meeting. I brought some pizzas, a few drinks, and a note book to record the night and for the next couple of hours we talked about the church.

With college-age you never know what you're going to get but these guys came ready to share. They were open and honest and loved to laugh. Their views were insightful and well thought through. In fact, I was really encouraged with what they had to say. They no doubt knew what they liked and didn't like about the church. For me, the best part of the evening was getting to know four individuals outside of Sunday morning.

It's important to know what younger people are thinking about their church. I always hear from older church attenders,"how can we keep our young people?" and my answer to their question is ask them what they like or don't like about their church. The key is to ask with the willingness to listen. Some of their answers I had heard from other college-age groups but some of what they shared was new to me. There are a number of churches (buildings) in our area that are up for sale and some congregations will most likely dissolve, but I have a hunch that if they would have asked this simple question to their young people, they might have avoided the final outcome of their church.