Cultivating Generational Discipleship Opportunties

How are you fulfilling Titus 2? Psalm 145:4? How is your older generation pouring into, teaching, and discipling the younger generation? While this can happen organically, with kids, sometimes you need to create opportunities. This episode will give you tried-and-true ideas to see this become a reality in your church. 

#generationaldiscipleship #titus2 #intergenerationalministry #intentionalkidmin

Transcript

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Welcome to the Kidman Huddle with Amber Pike, where children as ministry leaders get equipped, encouraged, and empowered to disciple with intentionality, growing God's kingdom one child at a time.

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Welcome back to the Kidman Huddle. As you go through the Bible, you see God's plan for discipleship. Actually, we're going to stop for just a second and see if we have a smudge.

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Okay.

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Welcome back to the Kidman Huddle. As you read through the Bible, you see God's design for the passing on of faith. As much as I love children's ministry, that wasn't his original design. It was through discipleship, through families passing on their faith, mom and dad, grandma and grandpa passing on their faith to kids. And then we also see this through the generations. This is how the church is supposed to be. We are supposed to see, like Psalm 145, 4 says, In Titus 2, we see this example of the older generations teaching and instructing the younger generations. We need this in our churches. For too many years, we've had silo ministries, sometimes even separate buildings, where the kids and the teens are never with other generations. Maybe there's some leaders pouring into them, but they're never mingling. My current church, when we first started attending there, someone asked me, do you just have the one kid, right? I'm like, no, I have a daughter too. They saw my son with me. I'm like, no, I have a daughter. Like, oh, we never see her because they had it set up when I started there where the kids were in a separate building, the entire church service. So they weren't there mingling before. Our kids are missing out on amazing relationships, on discipleship opportunities when we have them segregated. We need to see, we need to cultivate opportunities for generational discipleship to happen. I am a product. Thank you so much. And I lost both of my grandmothers, who I was close with when I was 10. And I remember that year. It was about six months apart. And I remember when I lost, I think, my grandma, who I called Grandma. She was the second one. I lost my grandma first, then my grandma. And a lady from my church, her name was Miss Mary Nell, she said, it's okay. I'm your grandma now. And she would introduce me to others as her granddaughter. I would go to her house in the summer. She was just an amazing seamstress. And we would do sewing projects. And she taught me how to make all these amazing things. And I spent just so much time with her. I had a slew of older ladies that poured into me and loved on me growing up. And when we were about teens, my mom questioned, okay, do I need to pull my kids? There's there's not a youth group happening for them. And she talked to the interim pastor at that time, and he's like, no, they're right where they need to be. And let me tell you, we are right where we needed to be. We did not need some fancy youth group. We needed to have relationships. Statistically, that is one of the things, and all the statistics that are trying to see what is keeping a child in the faith and in the church, one of the commonalities in all of those studies is that someone other than mom or dad cared about them. Well, You likely have a church full of older members who have a lot of love and care to offer to your kids and to your teens. But we sometimes need to be intentional with helping these opportunities arrive to where we can cultivate these relationships. Now, they absolutely can happen organically. My son, when he was about four or five years old, he picked this man out at our church, Mr. Richard, and Mr. Richard was his buddy. And he absolutely adored Mr. Richard. And Richard was one of the checkers at the end of church that would make sure the airs turned off and all the lights were off. And little like five-year-old Reed would go and grab Mr. Richard's hand. Mr. Richard was never a volunteer in the children's ministry. I don't know if he liked kids, but Reed said, you are my person. And Reed would hold his hands and go check all the lights with him. My son has hugely benefited from all these relationships that he just cultivated organically. But sometimes we need to be a little intentional with that. Let them happen organically, absolutely. But then have some opportunities for the older generation to pour into the younger generation, which is what God commanded. So I'm going to give you some examples of things that I have seen work, maybe some ideas that you can springboard off of. The first one is a VBS idea. I'm in the midst of VBS as I'm recording this. So you're going to see a couple of VBS things. But we have a verse person. At my last church, I did this with teens, and they would wear a very silly hat. And if you saw the person in the silly hat, you got to try to say your memory verse to them. And if you got it right or wrong, if you at least attempted, you got a treat. Well, at this church, I have an older lady who is in her 80s. She uses a walker to get by, but boy, does she have a heart to serve. So she can't be chasing after kids. She can't be standing long periods of time. She pretty much needs a job where you can park her, and then she's good. So she is our verse lady. Miss Jackie has a bucket with candy and a sign. Do you know your verse? And the kids will come over to her at recreation and snack time, and they will try to say the verse to her. And I took the most beautiful picture I absolutely love. And she just loves on these kids. They are getting to form a relationship with Miss Jackie. She is loving on them. She's practicing God's hiding God's word in your hearts. This is a wonderful opportunity you could do on Sundays. You could do on VBS. Have kids practice the verses with older members. They will pour into them. They will love on them. They will give them a treat. It's a great way to break down some walls. I have one kid who's a little... She was a little apprehensive about Miss Jackie because Miss Jackie has wrinkles. And this child's not around a ton of older people. And at first, like... But once she's got to know her now, she's okay with it. Because... We set up an opportunity for her to be close. This is a wonderful thing for your less mobile senior saints. Another idea is to have them fill in in events. We did a pancake breakfast family event during Sunday school one day, and my mom came and she made all the pancakes. Okay, are there things like that some of your older members could do? Can they serve in a capacity, not just as a volunteer, but in a way they got to pour in? So she was there passing out pancakes to the kids, building relationships. Is there a task like that where they can be involved, but also pouring into the kids? One, it's going to take some stress off of you. Maybe it is something that's sitting down. So what if we had someone making the pancakes, but then we had an older, maybe less mobile person who's sitting at the table, dishing them out? That could absolutely be a job where they get to form relationships. One year for VBS, I had an older lady go through, because you know how older ladies tend to have a lot of friends. She picked out people and approached them and asked them to intentionally pray over all of the names of our children registered for VBS. Prayer is a great way we can get our older generations connecting to our youngers, praying for them. Oh, that's huge. So kind of springboarding off of this, one year, several years ago, I did a Pray for Our Kids campaign. And I had this whole board. Every child that was in our ministry, I had their picture, their name, and their age. And congregation members would take a card, an envelope of this child, and they were encouraged to intentionally pray for this child. Now, I left it up to the people whether or not they wanted it to be anonymous or whether they wanted to reveal it. They could give cards. I included addresses too. They could include, you know, do some happy mail, some snail mail. Some of them would leave little gifts. Okay, can you get some prayer partners? Knowing that it's realistically going to be a little more one-sided, but that's okay. The older generation can be pouring into the younger generation. This could be a huge campaign you do, or maybe you're just, hey, I've got a group of older members who want to pray for our kids. Here are our kids. We would love for you to stop by. Come at Sunday school and say hi. Come and pray over them. Invite them to come in and pray for the kids, over the kids, with the kids. Maybe you have someone who rotates out every week for your midweek and the kids can come and pray with, give prayer requests to. Prayer is a great way, especially for those with some mobility issues that can't be chasing after the kids. They can absolutely pray. Don't discount someone because of their age. Leave it up to them when you approach them with an opportunity. So we have a gentleman who is 81 years old. Now, you would not tell it by looking at him whatsoever. He is 81 years old. And when I approached him last year about teaching VBS, I'm like, I could teach it or, and he's like, no, I'm teaching. He's a favorite teacher, even though he is 81 years old. So do not discount someone just because they are older. He has been, he was my VBS teacher when I was a kid. He has been teaching for so long. It is just in his blood. The kids adore him. He is not flashy. He doesn't use a lick of tech in the classroom. He has us decorate for him. He's not that kind of teacher, but man, relationally, he pours into it and loves on these kids. And he's 81. So do not discount them from service just because of their age. Kind of leave that up to them. If you go and approach someone about plugging in in a certain area, ask them, hey, do What are your limitations, both mobility or ability to stand? You know, what accommodations could you make? Do they just need an extra chair and then they can do it? Do you need to make sure that their classroom has no steps to get to and from it? What kind of accommodations can you give them so that mobility-wise, endurance-wise, all that, they're good to go? But just because they're older doesn't mean they're still not ready to jump right in. As a Baptist member, we are all about the food, right? Baptist potlucks. So another idea that you can do involves church mealtime. If your church has any sort of meals, some of your older members might be using a cane or kind of those, the walkers on the wheels that turn into the seats. I don't really know what they're called, a scooter walker thing. They might have those. Well, it's a bit difficult to juggle your plate with that. Can your kids be helpers to the elderly? So then your children are getting to serve, but they're also getting to form relationships. It's breaking down some walls. It's that familiarity. Can they hold the plate through the line for the older generation? Can they go ask them, could I bring you a dessert? Do you need a refill on your drink? It's awesome to see your kids rise up to the occasion of serving. Give them the opportunities. However, some kids are just shy. My daughter gets very shy around people she doesn't know. We do an ice cream social at an assisted living, it's not assisted living, sorry. It's a low income disability apartment complex. And so we go twice a year. We do a summer ice cream social and a Christmas caroling punch celebration thing. And my two kids will go and help serve cake. And their job is to make, or the ice cream for the ice cream social and the cake at Christmas. Their job is to go and help the people who might need cake, ice cream, punch, brought to them. And my daughter sometimes gets very shy around talking to an older person she doesn't know. You might have kids like this. So maybe you and your volunteer team are going to go with them, but encourage the child to do the talking. You know, maybe practice what we're going to say. Okay, we're going to go and ask, would you like lemonade or iced tea? Or we're going to practice, okay, would you like me to bring you some cake? It's okay to feed it to them. It's okay if the kids get really shy and all they do is just carry the cake and you do all the talking. If you have the volunteers, a couple of families who are willing to help kids do this, it's a wonderful time to let the kids serve the adults. Walls are breaking down, relationships begin to be formed, and then you begin to see, okay, now they're going to talk in church time. Now they might say hi. We want to see that naturally happening, but sometimes we need to help it get there. That's another thing that I highly recommend. If you have kids completely in a service time for the entire time of church, rethink that. When are they getting to form relationships with the rest of the church body? When is that intergenerational discipleship happening? Where is that corporate worship happening? Are there times when your kids are with the entire church worshiping together? They need to be I am old school in that we have everybody together in the sanctuary for the opening, the announcements, the first, I think, three songs, scripture, and prayer. And right before the sermon starts, we go to children's church. But my kids have been there. They have worship. They have had the opening time to where they are talking with the church body. So now our church body doesn't question, hey, do you have another kid? Just the one kid? They see our kids very loudly because they're They're running around, and our church loves it. They love seeing these kids, especially because it was a church for a while that didn't have a lot of kids. There wasn't that life in the church. Now there is, and the elders love it. And those relationships that we've been forming, plus my two kids are just, they like old people. So my kids are talking to their people every single Sunday. But now I've seen my kids are bringing their friends to go and talk to their people. Have times where your kids and your teens are with the whole church body in worship. So I highly, highly recommend you do not have them for the entire hour every Sunday in their own room, in their own building, in their own wing. If you do, and that's your thing and you can't change it, when throughout the year will you have corporate worship? Will it be on the fifth Sunday? Will it be once a month? How's that going to look? There needs to be times when kids are sitting in there. It's also really great for training and how to worship because at some point they're going to be teens and those teens will no longer be in the children's programming and they need to learn how to sit through a sermon. I've recommended it before. I'll recommend it again. The book Parenting in the Pew by Robbie Castleman. Excellent read. You should read it. Okay. Last idea. I'm sure you have ideas as well, but just of my, for this episode, the last idea is to switch to a full family program. event plan. I, unpopular opinion, no longer do just kids events outside of VBS. The events I do are full family events. Why? Because I want intergenerational discipleship happening. I want to be equipping mom and dad to disciple at home while I'm doing these events. So that's what I'm doing. And I have seen the beauty of having grandparents present at events. You can easily do this. So I have a Lego event, my Lego and lunch event. And when I did it at my church, I One of the parents couldn't come, so grandma brought her kid. And then we have a great-grandma who is helping to raise her great-granddaughter. This lady's in her 80s, and she was building with Legos. She may have never built with Legos in her life, but she was building with Legos there. It's awesome. At the pancake event I was telling you about, my mom was helping answer. This was the Sticky Time Faith event where parents are sharing their faith. They're giving their testimony to their kids. And my mom, who... I'm ratting her out. She actually kind of scoffed at my event. She's like, oh, no, that's boring. And the attendees loved the event. And my mom got to join in and she actually kind of retracted her thinking that it was a boring event because she got to share with her grandkids. She had six of her grandkids in that room between kids and teens that she got to share part of her testimony with. This is a beautiful thing when you can cultivate that to happen. Include grandparents in your events. Maybe you're going to have a special dinner. Maybe you just, hey, grandparents, bring your grandkids to this event. Create a culture to where if mom and dad has to work, if it's grandparents raising, whatever, that they are included, welcomed, and excited to come. My next event, you better believe it's going to be a full family event. I'm really excited about it because we're going to be making some pie. It's fall themed. It's going to be fun, exciting, and I'm hoping that I have grandparents coming. So there's a couple of ideas for you. I would love for you guys, if you have just great generational discipleship happening in your church, I would love to hear about it. This has just really been on my heart this week, just seeing my kids go up to Miss Jackie and just excited to tell the verses and talking with her and her talking to them. And I'm just... I love this. And I love this about my church. I grew up in this environment. And I'm back at the same church I grew up in. I don't know if you all knew that about me. This is the church that I was born and raised in. Went away to serve in the ministry for a couple decades. And now I'm back at my original home church. And it is such a generational discipleship, positive church. There is intentionality in it. I want to make sure there are opportunities for my kids to talk with older generations. And then I get to see it just naturally happening. This isn't just a good idea. It isn't just a great volunteer source. This is how God designed the church to be, how faith to get passed on from one generation to the next. So how are you going to intentionally create opportunities for this to happen? And remember, Kidman leaders, what you do matters.