225: 4 Simple Intergenerational Ideas to Stay Connected This Summer

When everything gets inconsistent, connection matters more - not more programming. 

Summer might actually be the easiest time to bring people together in simpler, more natural ways. Not perfect, not polished. Just real moments across ages that help your church feel like a community again. 

If you try one or two of these, you might be surprised what happens.

• Why mixing ages can actually make summer easier (not harder)
• Simple ways to create connection without extra volunteers
• Low-prep ideas that work even with inconsistent attendance
• How this shifts the feel of your whole church

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Transcript

Laurie Graham  0:01 
Hey, welcome to the Small Church Ministry Podcast, where we help volunteers and ministry leaders experience less stress, more joy and greater impact as we share strategies that actually do work in smaller churches. I'm your host, Laurie Graham, let's dive in.

Laurie Graham  0:23 
Hey there. Welcome back to the Small Church Ministry Podcast. This is a place where we not only celebrate small churches, but we recognize the power in them. We believe that healthy churches are not defined by size, and that small churches have some strengths that we don't talk about nearly enough. Today might feel a little different if you're a regular listener of the podcast. Lately, especially, we've been talking through ideas and mindset shifts and deeper topics and principles and strategies as we work with humans and understand each other and build volunteer teams. And today, I want to give you something a little more, maybe practical and doable like this week, because as we're getting closer to summer, we've been talking a lot about summer ministry. We have a conference coming up at the end of the month that focuses on summer, specifically for kids and youth. 

But the reality is this summer gets inconsistent really fast. People are in and out. Schedules are full, volunteers are stretched. It's just a really different kind of season, and sometimes we work really hard to hold it together. In moments like those, our instinct is often to try to add something or fix something, or even keep everything running the way it used to go. But what if the goal of summer wasn't more programming? Now you might be listening and say, Oh, we've already got that down. We have actually, we don't do anything in the summer. I talked to so many small churches like that, especially recently. 

But what if, instead of getting rid of all the programming and thinking we're just cooling off for the summer, no pun intended, what if the goal was actually connection, like, what if this isn't just about everything being inconsistent, but just a shift in what we're doing or the way we're doing it? Sometimes small churches—one of the things that sometimes we begrudge in small churches—is not having enough people in different age groups to segregate each other, like to have a junior high class or a young couples class. 

But something really powerful happens when people of all ages come together, and that's what I want to talk about, because summer can be a beautiful time when attendance is already inconsistent and numbers are a bit sporadic. This can actually be a great time to experiment with all ages together to try some shifts that might be a little different for your church culture. And my hope is that we all start embracing the fact that intergenerational ministry isn't the backup plan when we don't have enough people to separate everything out, it's actually one of the strengths of a small church. And to me, summer is the perfect time to play with this. You know, when older and younger generations and everybody in between get together in the same space, serving together, talking to each other. I know it can feel a little bit disruptive now and then, or a little chaotic sometimes, but something different happens. Faith often starts to feel more natural. People feel more known. 

Some of the walls of division starts to break down if we do this intentionally and relationally, and the church starts to feel a lot more like community, instead of a set of programs, or those silo ministries that I talk about, and this is where small churches actually have an advantage over larger churches. We're not needing to manage hundreds of people across a dozen rooms. 

We can bring people together, mix ages naturally, create moments that feel really personal—not always so polished—but really personal. And this is not a limitation, it's actually a strength. So today I'm just going to walk through four simple ideas, and each of these is built the same way, on purpose. It's not just 'Here's an event and here's how we do it.' It's more about how we can utilize events or coming together in certain spaces to create a different kind of connection. 

All four ideas I'm going to walk through today include a couple main principles. One is that it includes something that every age can do together. The second is that we have a way to mix up roles and responsibilities, maybe a little different than normal. The third is simple relational moments—so intentional connection—I'll show you how it works. And the fourth is a little bit of a follow up, some sort of challenge or invitation that might carry into the next week. So all of these ideas are low-prep, low-cost, nothing complicated, nothing expensive, just things that we could pull off with very little notice and very little prep. And summer, again, is so perfect. So as you listen, don't feel like you need to do all five

Laurie Graham  5:19 
or all four. Just listen for one that you're like, 'Oh, we could try that.' Or, maybe that would be fun, because that's where it starts. Before I jump into the four ideas, though, I don't really want you to take notes or write everything down, because this isn't about getting every detail right. In fact, we can't really program an event in 25 minutes anyway. This isn't about the details. It's about catching the concept of something simple, of something relational, of something easy to step into, not more programming, not more complexity. Try not to add to these ideas, but just keep them simple—a small way to help people of different ages connect.

So we're just going to walk through four ideas. I've seen these in different ways and different times. I'm just going to give you a simple take on that. Okay, so the first idea is just a Sunday breakfast, nothing fancy, nothing complicated. It could be donuts, muffins, coffee, done. It could be eggs, if somebody likes to make eggs, but we don't want to complicate this into a potluck, or into, I don't know, a pancake stations. The point of this is to be super, super simple. Now, the difference as to maybe what's been done in the past, maybe at your church, maybe every single Sunday, is we want to go past feeding people and help them connect instead. So mix up some of the roles. Have the youth bring or set up the donuts. Have children help to greet, maybe pair them with an adult. Have adults maybe handle coffee, or certain families handling cleanup, not your normal ones, maybe some olders help feed the youngers, or the youngers serve the olders. Mix up the service roles that are usually happening, because now people aren't just showing up, they're actually overlapping and inner relating. So it's not just a regular donuts and coffee. 

We're intentionally mixing different ages on purpose. Another thing I would do is, I would call this something about community. I shared before on podcast that we had an all-age event, and I used to call it Family Day at a church that I attended for quite a while—and as soon as we changed the name 'Family Day' to 'Community Day'—all of a sudden we had a beautiful generational mix, because when we called it 'Family Day', although to me, that was all ages, that was everybody, that was the church family, the people who didn't see themselves as part of a nuclear family, thought it was just for families with littles, or people who had children, so play with the name a little bit. Call it a community breakfast, or a community Sunday. Do something fun with breakfast. And then, if you're sitting at tables or maybe you're milling around, have one simple question, whether it's on a table card in the middle or something that's handed to people, and just ask this, 'What did you love doing in the summer as a kid?' Or 'What are you looking forward to this summer again?'. It's a question everybody can ask—whether they are 92 or 9—what do you love doing in the summer? Get people talking, and then maybe, if you're at table groups, have one person share. Just take one minute say, 'Hey, somebody from each table. Share one thing you learned about somebody else at your table.' That's it. And if you want to add a little follow up connection for later, have a simple prayer card moment. Give everybody a piece of paper that says, 'Pray for me this summer. Dot, dot, dot.' Let people fill it out. Just fill in the sentence. That's it. Put their name on it, toss them in a basket, mix it up, and everybody grabs one before they go. And all of a sudden you have people leaving with another name of somebody else of a different age, mixed up. They can pray for them during the week and even connect the next week. 

So remember, connection doesn't stick because of an event. It sticks because it continues. So that's why a simple idea like this, don't overthink it. Don't overplay it. Simple questions, simple connection and some sort of follow up. Okay, that was idea number one. Quick idea number two, some sort of church cook off. It could be a chili cook-off, it could be a barbecue. It could be dessert. Now, how is this different than a potluck? Because potlucks get old. We get tired of them. It's same old, same old. As soon as you announce a church cook-off, people who don't usually make things—all of a sudden—they start thinking of their favorite recipes. Now, if you remember, one of the things I said at the beginning was this was going to be an activity that everybody could do. So what about the kiddos on this? You could actually have a kids dessert table. Encourage the kids to make something simple—whether they're 16 or 6—display

Laurie Graham  10:19 
it, celebrate it. Have a cook-off. So what about prizes? You don't need to do prizes. You could do prizes. You could have a clap-off. But keep it simple, that's what we want to do. Maybe you want to mix up some teams—pair kids with adults—it doesn't matter. You can do something like that, if you like, but just the fact that you're having a cook-off with different ages, making it easy for kids to participate is so great. So, a connection moment could be something like this, grab your food and sit with somebody you don't usually sit with. Mix it up. Now, I realize that doesn't always work, depends on your church culture. We don't want to force people. We don't want make people to feel uncomfortable so that they wish they hadn't come. But you can encourage it. You could have a little game about meet somebody tonight that you don't know well, and follow up and ask the question, 'Who did you meet that you didn't know very well?' Fun enough, right? This isn't about who wins a cook-off, it's about who connects. 

Sometimes, I think we try to overcomplicate things, or we completely avoid them, because we've made it so complicated in our head that it just isn't enough. These are all simple ideas that can be pulled up very quickly with very short planning and prep time that bring people of all ages together. Okay, idea number three. We're going to talk briefly about all-age worship that actually works. Now this is what sometimes people call 'Intergenerational Sunday' or 'Community Sunday'. But let's be honest, a lot of times that just means that kids are in the room and we hope it goes okay, or that the pastor is pulling his hair out, or her hair out, or that we have a glorified kids sermon that maybe is a little longer, or something, or maybe kids are handing out bulletins, okay. I want to just put this in a different frame of mind, especially for summer. Maybe you already do an all-age worship every Sunday, or once a quarter, or on fifth Sundays, but summer is a really great time to play with this a little more and try some ideas you haven't tried before. Again, attendance is usually lower in the summer. It's a little bit sporadic. It makes it really fun to engage with new things—to try out things—and when it works, it can be really powerful, not because it's impressive and overplanned, or you had this idea that's never done before, but actually because people are engaging together and enjoying it. 

So I'm going to give you a couple simple ways to make all-age worship work without totally overthinking it first, just build the whole service around one simple theme, not five ideas and not five points, not a scattered service, but one a theme like gratitude or serving or trusting God, or even who God is. Make it a simple point that can be emphasized in every element of the service—whether it's a song, a short teaching, a question, a response moment—you're not trying to do more. Remember that like, don't overthink this all-age worship. We're actually streamlining it, simplifying it, and staying focused. The second thing I would toss out there for an all-age worship is very how people engage, very like make it different. Not everything has to be sit and listen. We can definitely engage with a short object lesson, and not even just for kids. We can engage with a visual, something people see, or even something that's handed out like a piece of green fabric to remind people of growth, or a simple response like write something down, say something out loud, raise your hand, move a little. 

But we want to really vary how people engage, because people connect in different ways. So give them more than one way to engage. And this isn't just about looping in the children. This is also true for adults. The third thing I would throw out there for an all-age worship is make it participatory, instead of performative. Now by performative, I don't necessarily mean that people are upfront performing, but participation means that instead of everything coming from the front, we pull in people by asking a question and actually letting them answer, or having a child help and hold something even out in the congregation, or inviting a short response moment. But the more people who participate of all ages, like, don't even break it down into age so much, but the more people participate, the more engaged they stay, and the less they check out. And the fourth thing I want to

Laurie Graham  15:16 
mention is to mix roles across the ages. We did this with the donuts. I think we did this with the second idea, as well. But when we mix service roles in different ways that aren't predictable, a lot of connection happens, and it doesn't have to be big. It could be a child or a teenager leading a prayer. It could be a teenager, a child, someone reading that doesn't normally read. It could be adults supporting or adults who have never been upfront or answering in different ways, being the ones to speak out, mixing different roles across the ages. It matters so much more than we think, because now it's our service, not something we're watching and not theirs. This could be who hands the offering plate, if you do an offering plate, who gives announcements, anything creative that mixes up the roles throughout different ages. 

And a fifth thing, I would say is, if you do have parents in the crowd, help them stay engaged with their kids. This is a really big one. Instead of separating or apologizing for kids being there or being loud or squirrely, just normalize it. Normalize it. You can even say to parents from the service, if your kids have questions, that's okay. Feel free to answer them. Feel free to talk with them. When families experience this together, right—whether it's during the sermon, during a children's area, or a children's message, or worship time—things stick differently. We don't want to be shushing kids or managing kids, children, teens. We want to be including them all right. 

And the last thing I'll mention about all-age worship is just keep it simple, and sometimes keep it shorter. You don't have to do everything. You just need a clear idea, an engaging moment or two, and one way that people can respond. So take a risk this summer if you haven't done all-age worship, all-age worship doesn't need to be impressive at all. It just needs to be engaging, and that is easy and it's free. We just have to be intentional. If this seems a little hard to picture your church, and I realize more churches are doing all-age services than ever before. 

But if you have never done this, or if you want some great new ideas for this, we actually have a couple sessions happening at the conference on April 25 that go deeper into this. Natalie Frisk is teaching on summer Sundays all-age worship that actually works. She is a curriculum writer who has dug really deep into how to make engaging worship for everyone. This is a special focus of hers recently, it's not just about including kids, but designing it well. And, Allie Cole from Group Publishing is also joining us and doing a session on mixed age ministry that works really well in small churches. So both of those sessions would be great if you have not heard about the Small Church Kid Min and Youth Ministry Conference coming up this coming Saturday. If you're listening to this live, you want to grab a free ticket at smallchurchsummits.com. We love our online events. You're going to love them too. They're so on point for small churches everywhere. So grab a ticket at smallchurchsummits.com or you can actually get the link in the show notes too.

Okay, idea number four, and this is the last idea I'm going to wrap up with, just have a backyard or a park night. So pick a park if you're in an area where the weather can be somewhat predictable. Pick a park or a yard and just tell people to bring their own food. That's it. You don't have to overthink it. Don't have to overprogram it. Just tell people to bring their own food and add one shared activity. Now you want to make it somebody that something that all ages can do. So this might not be kickball, it might be something more like frisbee, or chalk drawings, or simple games that all ages can do, and sometime during the evening, just say, 'We're starting a game in a few minutes. Anyone can jump in.' Don't make the games complicated. Don't have a lot of equipment. Just make them simple. And can you have more than one game? Of course, you can. But just keep it simple with games that everyone of all ages can interact with and even be helping each other with. Maybe there's one simple moment that's a welcome, or a short prayer, or 'I'm glad you're here'. But again, we want to create a connection challenge—something that actually mixes people, or has people sharing ideas, or talking in ways that they've never talked before—so an obvious question at a park night or a backyard night could be, 'What was your favorite game growing up as a kid', or 'How did you feel about sports as

Laurie Graham  20:13 
a kid?' Or even having a panel at this one, and finding four older people or four younger people or four of each and asking questions like, 'Were you the one that was picked first or last?' Now you want to set them up well so that they're not embarrassed, but somebody who has, like, lived through this, like, I would be the first person to share in front of everyone. I was picked last for pretty much everything. And one thing that this does you know what your experience was growing up, and did you play outside? And what was life like for you when you were five? What are you looking forward to this summer? Weren't you? Any kind of questions that can mix things up and build connection so that people of all ages see, wow, we have a lot in common. What do we have in common? And mixing it up and again, always be encouraging people to meet somebody. Have just go meet somebody you don't know very well. Like, let's just take a minute to introduce ourselves to somebody we don't know well, and you model it and even teach it. Say, just go up and say, 'Hey, my name is this.' When we all do it together, it's a lot easier. 

So intergenerational activities don't need a whole lot of structure. They just need some intention. And I know I've said this a few times throughout this podcast, but I just need to say it again. These aren't complicated ideas. We don't need to get into a mode where we are overprogramming and overplanning and feeling so burnt out and exhausted because of all the planning and the supply getting. We don't need to do that—especially in the summer—when people start interacting across the ages and we mix up, even in small ways, the roles that are given, the leadership roles, the helping roles. When we partner an older and a younger together, when we mix family units with other family units, when we're filling in missing gaps in our own families with other people from our church, something shifts and churches start to feel a lot less like something that we attend and more like something we belong to. 

So again, these weren't complete program ideas that you need to take notes on. These are just concepts. So what concepts stood out to you that you could use this summer or even next week, it would be so easy to throw together a backyard night. Hey, next Friday night, we are going to meet at so and so's house. Bring your own food. We're going to play a game together and see what happens for all ages. A community backyard night. Again, I would stay away from the word 'family'. It tends to leave people out. We want 'all ages'. We want singles. We want married. We want family units. We want olders, youngers, middles, in between those college kids who are back on for summer break. We want them all. 

If you want more simple ideas like this that are realistic and doable, definitely check out the free Kid Min and Youth Conference. It is a special summer ministry edition. It's happening Saturday. It's free, it's practical. It's built for exactly this kind of season. Grab a ticket in the show notes if you're able to join us next week, we are starting a short series on the podcast that's going to be really helpful. It's actually born out of the series that happened just a month or so ago when we talked about volunteers, and it's kind of a follow up, people were really asking for more. We say all the time we need more volunteers. But what if that's not actually the problem? We're going to be looking at what's really going on underneath that, and as we talk about it, it's going to change the way we think about pretty much everything, about building teams, building ownership and so much more. 

So again, that's next week on the podcast, same time, same place. Thank you so much for being here with me today. I hope you got an idea, a concept, something that stands out to you that you could try in any ministry area that you're serving in as a volunteer in a small church, you are part of the backbone that holds your church together. And instead of feeling the weight of that like, oh my gosh, I can't take a break, oh my gosh, my church needs me, oh my gosh, we need to change so much. We need to do better, if we could take that load of pressure off and start enjoying the community and the ministry and the experience that God has put around us in a different way to make ministry a little lighter, a little more intuitive, that intentionality instead of overprogramming.

Laurie Graham  20:59 
One thing I'd love to leave you with today is that in order to have more impact, we don't need to do more things. We might need to be more intentional about how much impact we're getting from the things we're already doing. But simple is sometimes better. Less is often more. So let's take the weight of programming and planning and overshopping and overdoing it off and have a lighter summer. All right, I will talk to you again next week on the podcast. Thank you for being here as always, be a light.