Growing Together: The Gifts of Intergenerational Worship

This article is part of a series exploring three popular models of worship engagement for children. In this article, Executive Director of the CFC, Dr. Mimi Larson introduces the three models and advocates for inclusive, intergenerational worship. 

Often, when I talk with pastors and ministry leaders about children in worship, I hear similar questions.  Should children be included in the community’s worship service, or is it better to have a separate age-appropriate activity? Can kids really understand what is going on in the service, especially when we talk about difficult things? And then there is the fact that children wiggle and giggle.  Do children, especially young children, have the capacity for reverence in our worship services?

These are all important questions to consider, and churches often answer these questions based on their theological, developmental, and contextual understandings.  A church might reflect theologically on God’s desire for his people to gather and worship him.  They know that the Bible provides countless examples of children participating in the rituals of the faith community and consider how this example impacts the modern practice of engaging children in worship. Other churches might value how developmental theory has impacted how we understand the ways children learn. These churches create an age-segregated ministry that promotes what they consider the “best” environment and practice for a child’s learning.  Some congregations might assess the needs of parents or other congregational members, recognizing that children might be a disruption or can become bored in a church service.  These are important needs to consider.  How can we encourage and help adults worship?  But to answer this question well, we also must ask if we do this at the expense of children’s needs and belonging.

Three models of engaging children in worship

As churches wrestle with how to best engage children in worship, they often employ one of the following models.  The inclusive model of worship is where children are fully incorporated into the community’s worship experience and children stay for and participate in the entire worship service. The opposite of that is the exclusive model where children attend their own age-appropriate programming.  This might be a children’s worship experience or a Sunday School class. Some churches embrace a third approach, a hybrid model that attempts to take what is best from these other two models.  Here, children participate with the worshipping community for part of the time and then move to an age-appropriate activity that either continues the worship experience or provides Biblical education.

While I value the intentionality of all three of these models, I believe it is important for a church to embrace the inclusive model where children worship alongside adults in the faith community.  I value the inclusive model because of how it engages the entire intergenerational faith community, encourages a child’s ability to make meaning of faith, and casts a vision for children of what it means to be a Christ-follower.

Engaging the intergenerational faith community

First, It is important to understand that worship is a verb and not a passive experience.  As one scholar wrote, “It is not something done to us or for us, but by us.”¹ Worship is an intergenerational and participatory action of God’s people in response to his love. It is also a hospitable act where a group of people – with a variety of differences including gender, ethnicity, education, economic, marital status, and age – gather together to worship God. Despite our differences, we are bound together through worship.  When we remove children from this formative experience, not only do they lose the connection to a larger faith community, but “the church comes dangerously close to embodying an anemic vision of who belongs among God’s people.”²

Encouraging meaning making

It is also important for us to understand how children make meaning of their faith experiences.  “Children do not passively absorb information about God.”³ They are active meaning makers, and their experience, exploration, and environment within the worshipping community shape their spiritual transformation. Children discover who God is and their place in God’s story through their experience with God’s people. They are asking questions and observing us, watching how we live as Christ-followers.  This leads to curiosity, imagination, and wonder, which provides a fertile ground for exploration and meaning-making. A hospitable environment, where children are accepted as they are and welcomed so they feel they belong to God and his people, provides space for children to not just learn about God but, more importantly, to capture a vision of who they can become.

Becoming Christ-followers

A place of belonging becomes fertile ground for becoming.  We often approach faith formation through a lens of direct instruction and information – that the more information we learn about God and the Bible, the more spiritually mature we become.  But transformation is not the accumulation of information.  As children rest in their belonging to God’s people and participate in communal worship acts, their Christian identity is nurtured.  By experiencing the faith of the people around them, they learn what it means to follow Christ in a broken world.  They see faith in action, and this shapes their understanding of God, his people, and their place in God’s story.

Embracing a high view of children

Here at the CFC, we understand that not every strategy works in every context. Children might not understand everything we do in a worship service.  They will struggle to pay attention and participate well. But let’s be honest, don’t we all?  While the full inclusion of children in worship might not be possible with every church, what is important is embracing a high view of children.  The inclusion model values a child as an active, vital part of the worshipping community.  Here, children learn how to worship among the people of God.  They witness what we value and proclaim.  They begin to identify with the worshiping community.  It is here among God’s people where children are apprenticed to the faith.