Intergenerational Worship, Featuring Katie Roelofs

[00:00:02] Speaker A: Hello, everyone, and welcome to our Spark Dialogue podcast. My name is John Simon and I'm here with Ron Devries. Ron, hello. [00:00:12] Speaker B: Hey, John. Good to be here again. You know what? Doing okay. We've had like. And I. People can't see this, but I'm going to show you about this much snow. [00:00:22] Speaker A: So that's a significant amount, I can tell you. Yeah, yeah. [00:00:26] Speaker B: It's not fun. We're starting to get some significant melt today. [00:00:30] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:00:30] Speaker B: Fortunately, we're going to get the freezing again. And I know that's not something that you experience in Tucson necessarily. [00:00:36] Speaker A: Never even heard of it. Right. [00:00:38] Speaker B: But in Alberta, it's a thing. It's a thing. [00:00:41] Speaker A: Down in Tucson, freeze is just an architectural term. Doesn't even. Doesn't even correlate to the temperature. It doesn't ice. [00:00:50] Speaker B: It's something you put in a drink down there. [00:00:52] Speaker A: That's right. That's right. Snow is something you have with, you know, different colored syrups and stuff like that. Yeah, it's just a little treat. Speaking of treat, which is a little, I think, a pretty good segue. Thank you. So, Ron, a couple weeks ago, you and I were chatting about some ideas that we had for the podcast. And we thought, what if we kind of broke down the elements of what worship looked like and talked through each one in accordance to kind of our intergenerational framework, kind of involving different generations in a church setting. And then we thought, let's bring in the best worship expert that we know, the guru. And. And ladies and gentlemen, we have Katie here with us today. Who is that exact person. Katie, welcome. [00:01:42] Speaker C: Thank you, John. That is quite the lead up. I keep waiting for the person who you're talking about to appear on the screen next to us. Because you certainly cannot be talking about me. [00:01:49] Speaker A: I saw you looking over your shoulder. No, no, we're talking about you. Talking about you. [00:01:54] Speaker B: Talking about you. [00:01:55] Speaker C: Honored to be here. Thanks for the invite. [00:01:56] Speaker A: Oh, we're so glad to have you. So we will get into who Katie is and then how she's going to contribute to our dialogue today. But first, let's just share a little bit about. Should we do our kind of. The idea that you had, Ron, just now? [00:02:14] Speaker B: Yeah, if that's okay. Just a little bit of. [00:02:16] Speaker A: That's a great idea. [00:02:17] Speaker B: So we are recording this during a time that churches are beginning to celebrate Advent, so you can kind of get the sense for the timing of what we're doing today. And so I was thinking back to my last Sunday. I was preaching in a church and it was the first Sunday of Advent and it's beautifully set up the sanctuary. You can see the candles sitting there ready to be lit. And one of the very first things I thought about is it's the lighter there. Has it been tested? Because I don't know about you, but I've had those moments where you had the little Joey Grade one is ready to light the candle and there's no lighter or there's no matches or this moment. So have you had those Advent candle fails in your experience in life as a pastor, as a worship leader? I'd love to hear from both of you because I've had them. They're hard to navigate sometimes. But boy, like I said last Sunday, I was looking for the lighters and I had to have somebody point them out to me and they were near the bottom, the bottom of the stand. And I said, how are people going to find that? How are people going to find that? So have you guys had fails over the years with the Advent candle lighting? [00:03:32] Speaker A: Ron? I, I remember I, I had a much safer memory kind of tucked away. But as you started talking I thought of a much more graphic one which I think fits this better. And it was a Christmas Eve service. This was probably three or four years ago. And you know, when you work for a small church, everyone kind of has every role. So we're all kind of tech directors, we're all kind of stage managers. And my head pastor was like, John, make sure we have the scripture references on the slides so that people know where to go. But what was lost in communication at some point was that he wanted each word of the scripture passages because in his mind he wanted everyone in the crowd to read along as well. Okay. And so we started the service and he was like, this is going to be so great. You guys are all going to read along with me. And then we pull up the slides and it's not there. And we literally took like a 15 minute break in the middle of the service so that we could blitz through this. And I'm just like typing and I'm frustrated and everyone's like, haha, John, you know, you look pretty stressed out. And I'm like, I've lost the spirit of Christmas right now. It feels like the worst Halloween ever. This is what it feels like right now. But yeah, very, you know, because everyone has high expectations for these services. And yeah, snafus are a bummer. [00:04:58] Speaker B: I know. Katie, any. [00:05:00] Speaker C: Oh, I've done many, many Advent services and I can give you probably one for every single year because you have to Light the candles multiple times throughout the season. Right. Our congregation like very nicely referred to it one year as the 12 clicks of Christmas instead of the 12 days because of the lighter that you just like, click, click, click, click. How many is it going to take to get it to light? But my favorite story and my most horrifying shows that my procrastination was in full swing one year and I hadn't ordered the candles in time and the ones we had looked awful. And you can't start Advent with awful looking candles. So thank you to Amazon Prime. That could overnight them to my house very, very quickly. But you know what? I bought the cheap tapers, like, so I've learned that Advent candles are like, they're like sushi. Like, don't go for the cheap version because it could potentially make you like very ill. I bought the like really cheap tapers and at first service, 12 inch taper was down to about 2 inches by the end of the service and there was wax everywhere. And we like literally thought that the Advent wreath was going to light on fire because the whole taper burned down in the span of one hour of church. [00:06:09] Speaker A: Oh my gosh. [00:06:11] Speaker C: So note to self, invest in good candles. It is well worth your time and effort. [00:06:15] Speaker A: And note to the audience as well. That's just the first of many takeaways I assume you'll have today. Listener. Oh, yeah. Invest in good candles. [00:06:23] Speaker C: Invest in good candles and just buy a new lighter every year. 348 days later, that thing is still not going to work the same way. Spend the 799 and buy a good lighter. [00:06:35] Speaker A: Wow. [00:06:36] Speaker B: Wow. That's. I wasn't expecting that story, but that's a, that's a really good story. I was actually thinking as you were describing that you know, those, those moments when you go from Sunday to Sunday and then you find out that the wick has gone into the candle wax and you write and you got to dig it out and get it ready. But you haven't dug it out until actually during the service. What's going on? Why isn't this thing lighting? It's because it's embedded in the wax. [00:07:04] Speaker C: Because your hope got buried. [00:07:06] Speaker A: Exactly. [00:07:07] Speaker B: Oh, that's good one. [00:07:10] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:07:10] Speaker B: Oh my word. [00:07:11] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:07:12] Speaker A: Candles are such a finicky. Just maybe there's some deep sermon symbolism that you can unpack out of this for us, Ron. But there's something strange. I remember when I was in high school, we had a performance where at the end of the play, the whole cast is on stage doing a candlelight vigil. And so we all had those little slim candles, but since we'd never lit them before, no one thought to get those little paper rings that keep the melting wax from burning you. So as the end of this play in this very emotional moment, you've got 15 high schoolers up there just really trying to not like show the audience that their hands are burning from this dripping wax that's getting all over their fingers. Oh, my God. [00:08:03] Speaker B: Exactly. Oh, my goodness. [00:08:06] Speaker A: Oh, that's so good. [00:08:07] Speaker B: Thanks for sharing that stuff, John. We got a shout out this morning. [00:08:11] Speaker A: We do have a shout out. So I thought of. I was. I was kind of telling the gang earlier this was a. It's a record label that has a lot of ministry overlap and it's called Humble Beast. And I remember they had like, of a heyday back in maybe like 2015, 2016, because that's when I was just getting out of college and I was really, really into them. But they, you know, the. A Christian record label with a lot of hip hop artists and worship artists and spoken word artists. But they just kind of took it upon themselves to really use their role to advocate for just Christian creativity and artistry and not just worship spaces, but all kinds of spaces. So if you look at website, they have a number of talks about how Christians can use just the act of creativity to, I don't know, kind of just play into what God has made us for, but then also as a way of reflecting the glory of God. And yeah, they've always been very like, we make everything we make, we're going to give away for free. Like, they're just. It's just really cool. And they're not as active as they were back in the day. I know that there's been a lot of changes as far as like the kind of core group behind it, but I mean, it's worth checking out and I think it really connects what we're talking about today. [00:09:26] Speaker B: Thanks for that, John. I am going to check it out. I think that's really, really cool. [00:09:30] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [00:09:31] Speaker B: Just want to remind the audience for a moment who we are and what we do. So as John said, we're part of Generation Spark. And for those of you who are listening, and maybe you're listening for the first time, our main focus is to always try to connect life ministry, the theorizer and the practitioner into an intergenerational conversation. And so when we think about that, worship is a big part of the work that we encounter every week. And it's not just the Sunday Morning or the Sunday evening. It's much broader than that, if I think about worship. But we've got Katie to join us, who's going to help us maybe dissect that a little bit and maybe give us a little bit of food for thought when it comes to what does intergenerational worship look like? And when we think about it, how might we think about it a little bit more deeply? So I'm just going to pass it back to you, John, and you can start introducing Katie. [00:10:26] Speaker A: Yeah, sure. So, Katie, we had a good dive dialogue about kind of your background. I know that you were in D.C. for quite a while, and I know that currently you work as a worship consultant connected with both the Fuller Institute and with the crc. I wanted to ask this when we were talking, but I was like, no, I want a good organic answer recorded for our whole audience. Break down what a worship consultant sounds like or what that role looks like. Maybe kind of I'm giving you homework. I'm sorry, like, big picture, like what the philosophy is, or maybe even your personal philosophy of what it means to consult worship. And then maybe like day to day, what that looks like, just, you know, when you clock into the office each. [00:11:12] Speaker C: Day, you know, so we can start with, like, the big picture approach and then kind of go to what it looks like to clock into the office every day. John, I'm going to make the argument that anyone who has served in a church capacity as a worship leader, as a worship pastor, as a worship planner, they're all consultants their own right. So I host worship round tables often, and there are conversations where worship planners come and they sit together like we just did one for Advent. And everybody comes and everybody brings their ideas and they share together largely from experience. And everybody walks away with something new in that moment. All of them are worship consultants as well. So one of the most beautiful parts about being a worship consultant in this particular role, which every day I'm grateful for, every day I wake up and I'm like, this is. This is amazing. It has taken years and years and years. Basically the whole of my life. Maybe we'll get into this at some point in time. The whole of my life of being a worshiper myself and tuning that to be able to be useful for other people in their particular contexts. So every single church is different. Once we start talking about intergenerational stuff, we'll get there too. That, like, every single church is different and every context is different, but there is something beautiful to be learned from every single one of them. And as a worship consultant, I get to bring a. The experience of being a worshiper that sat in the pews, that's led from the front, that's preached from the pulpit, that's done all of those different things combined with the education, that definitely helps. Not going to undermine that. The education has certainly helped, but then a heart for engaging other people to be able to do their own contextual work well, which isn't a mandate of saying, hey, this is what I did, and it worked for me. You should do this, too. It's pastoral curiosity, walking alongside people and saying, how might you be able to do this in your context? What might this look like? It'll look different, and it will sound different in Ron's church than it will in mine. But walking alongside people and helping them to discover worship that is vital and fresh in their own congregation and in their own context. So clocking into the office every day, it's very unique. Right. But a lot of it is our conversations, walking alongside leaders and helping them to be able to do that. Sometimes it's an answer. Right. Like, I need an answer for this particular question about this thing. More often than not, though, they're bigger concepts that allow us to be able to walk together, to talk together, and to be able to discern together. And it's a beautiful thing. Like I said, I'm grateful every day for that opportunity. [00:13:51] Speaker A: Okay. Wow. Well, thank you for explaining that. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I loved the emphasis on kind of meeting churches in their own place, in their own context, and then helping them kind of realize. Because I feel like a lot of worship consultants could just kind of walk into a church and say, okay, ditch the organ. Let's get some lights. Let's get a higher stage. Let's get. Okay, this, this. Barbara, you're not going to cut it. [00:14:19] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:14:19] Speaker A: Smoke machine. [00:14:20] Speaker B: Smoke machine. [00:14:21] Speaker A: Barbara, you're off backup vocals this week. I know you just had a cold. Like, I feel like a lot of people see worship consultant and they almost. To see, like, you know, someone wearing. Wearing like a headset and carrying a clipboard around, just making a bunch of executive decisions on how things should sound. But it seems like there's a lot more, you know, worship isn't just a. Is. Is certainly not a performance. It's something deeper. And it seems like what your role is is kind of connecting with the depth of it. Right. [00:14:48] Speaker C: That sounds more like a wedding consultant than it does worship consultant role, honestly. Looks more like a formational companion, maybe almost like a gardener. Right. Somebody who Is like working within the soil to produce something good that happens slowly over time. So I'd walk into any church and say, you want intergenerational worship. Do X, Y and Z. These are the things you need to do. But those aren't going to bear fruit over time. In the same way that slow, sustained faith, formative practices that are contextual to your unique congregation are going through to take root and begin to grow. No congregation is a one size fits all. [00:15:32] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Before we jump into the intergenerational dialogue, I did have one question, Katie. What do you find most churches kind of like look for in their consultation? Like when you say, this is what I'm here to help with, what are they usually like, oh my gosh, could you please help us with this? Even if it's maybe a request that you kind of have to redirect to something more appropriate. But what a church is usually like look for. [00:15:59] Speaker C: It's so interesting because it comes and goes in phases and it usually tends to be similar across the board and. [00:16:06] Speaker A: Right. [00:16:06] Speaker C: I work at least through the crc. I work with one particular denomination, but I can meet with congregations in Alberta, down to Florida. And a lot of the problems tend to be similar for a season. Right. Like the worship wars of the 1990s, when, like everybody battled over contemporary versus traditional music. Those congrats. Those conversations were ongoing, but then they began to shift. Like the conversations during COVID were so much different and they were so specific to that time in that place. How do I live stream a service? How do I worship at home? Well, with all ages and reach people that are still remote long after everybody else has come back. Like those particular questions around Covid, around safety. It's interesting now that the conversation has largely morphed into burnout and lack of volunteers. And maybe we will get there in conversation around what intergenerational worship looks like. But the primary struggle that I hear right now, and sometimes it's the presenting issue and sometimes it's the primary issue, and sometimes it's working through those things together, is burnout and lack of volunteers, largely in children's ministry. [00:17:15] Speaker A: Yeah. Do you think that just as the struggles around live streaming connected with COVID there's something about this current time that's really contributing to the frequent burnout that we're seeing? [00:17:28] Speaker C: It could be. I've wondered about that too. Somewhere that's somebody's PhD work that they'll do. Analyzing the church post Covid and like the fallout, that wasn't immediately apparent, but people's just general bandwidth, their general engagement with the church, their understanding of what it means to be in community together and what covenantal responsibility to one another looks like. All of those different things are at play. [00:17:53] Speaker A: Sure. [00:17:54] Speaker B: Thank you for sharing that. I'm just going to jump in here for a second because I think what you're saying is really interesting, especially around bandwidth and understanding what it means to be part of a community. John and I are going to be doing an episode. We're going to be diving into Dietrich Bonhoeffer's book Life Together at some point in the future. So those of you who are waiting to hear that it'll be coming soon, stay tuned, stay tuned. But that to me is really an important part of what we're talking about when we think about worshiping as a community together. Right. And one of the things I wonder about, and this may be leaning into this intergenerational space, is this idea that I don't want to commit to too much for too long, especially when in the past we would often ask for, hey, we're saying three years, it's not a long time. People are starting to say I can only commit to two months, I can only. Right. And is that part of what we're seeing and what you're seeing in your work as well, that just short term I might be able to do it for a little bit of time, but I'm not going to commit to a longer term thing because I don't know what tomorrow's going to look like. [00:19:04] Speaker C: Maybe that was the instability of COVID that did that to us. Ron, that's a really interesting insight. Is the way that all of a sudden everything can change at the drop of a hat makes us more and more reluctant to make long term plans a thing. [00:19:18] Speaker B: Yeah, it makes me wonder and I've had a you pastor mention this to me in the past, but membership feels like now instead of a lifetime commitment to something. I'm going to come in and I'm going to subscribe for a year and see how it fits. I'm going to subscribe for three months and that kind of stuff. And so I'm wondering if that makes a difference in terms of the invitation to those who want to or. Or perhaps are being invited into leadership within a church setting, which kind of leads me to think about that intergenerational space, especially with younger and older generations, into participating or leading. So help us understand what is intergenerational worship. If you were to give it some definition and thinking this through a little bit, help our listeners to Understand? What is it? What is intergenerational? [00:20:11] Speaker C: This is so obvious, but it still needs to be said that intergenerational worship has to be intergenerational. I'm going to say that again, that intergenerational worship has to be intergenerational. Okay, so let's say you have a 68 minute service, give or take, and you have three minutes that's dedicated to children's time as a children's message. But the 65 remaining minutes are targeted specifically for adults, led by adults, planned by adults. Can you call that intergenerational worship? Or do you call that we are a church that has an intergenerational moment. Intergenerational worship has to actually be intergenerational. And there's so many different ways. Again, I'm going to go back to context. I'm going to say that for every church, this is going to look different, but there are so many different ways to make sure that your church is incorporating intergenerational practices across the board, not just into your Sunday morning worship, but into just the whole of your church ministry and your worshiping life together. That has to be representative of multiple different generations. Intergenerational worship. It's got to be intergenerational. I know I keep saying that, but it seems so cut and dry and so basic, but I think it's something that we somehow have missed along the way. [00:21:36] Speaker A: Yeah. Are there a lot of, in your perspective or even from your experience, like, are there a lot of churches that kind of do subscribe to that whole, like, oh yeah, we're really intergenerational. We have the two minute kids lesson and you know, on Easter we have the kids skit and stuff like that. Like, is that kind of just maybe a failure to really define it? Well, that's kind of inhibiting a lot. [00:22:01] Speaker C: Of churches maybe to define it. It's interesting that we were just talking about COVID because this is one thing that I've noticed post Covid as well, is that a lot of churches, they realized during COVID how ill equipped they were to have all generations worshiping together in their sanctuary or over the livestream. It was a way of opening up your eyes and kind of removing those blinders to be like, oh wait, actually we aren't equipped to do this. Well, our services are very, very much targeted and focused at our adult, which, let's be fair, is intergenerational. It just is like intergenerational, just segmenting off like the bottom half of the age group, but that people were generally Ill equipped to be able to do that. And so now post Covid, all of a sudden, everybody is trying to figure out how best to involve all people and like, include all people in worship for the whole of their services. Not necessarily sending children out for a children's program of sorts, but actually dwelling together and worshiping together. And people are starting to against some, like some major theological problems along the way. What kind of sermon are we going to have? What kind of music are we going to sing? When we do all of these practices that have become near and dear to the congregation's hearts, we realize that some of them are not necessarily intergenerationally friendly. So in a lot of ways, all of a sudden, it feels like things are getting turned upside down and churches are starting to have to reevaluate and ask some pretty hard but hopefully very fruitful questions. [00:23:38] Speaker A: You mentioned that. Yeah. When you mentioned the kids program, I was curious. You mentioned that you've consulted with a wide variety of churches from all around North America. And I know that churches can vary on a very wide spectrum in terms of they completely integrate, so they don't have a kid's room, they stay together the entire time. And then other churches that make have, you know, the kids are here for the first five minutes, then they're taken off to kids church and they come back at the end of service. When you work with churches that kind of have this, why these wide differences to them? Are you kind of like catering to those specific settings, or do you kind of steer them kind of in one direction over time? Like, what does that look like? [00:24:26] Speaker C: I will say I'm very reluctant to steer a church in any one direction because I don't feel like the hands behind the wheel that should be doing that work. Right. [00:24:36] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:24:37] Speaker C: Walking into a situation with a church. So anyone who's listening right now, walking into your church, you're the expert in your context, you're the historian in your context that knows what has worked and knows what has not worked. For many churches who have children's programs where they send their children off to some kind of children's worship, good work happens in those spaces. I'm going to say that that good and beautiful work happens in those spaces. My children are a product of that themselves. And they still remember all of the good lessons that they learned from those times when we light candles, speaking of all the Advent candle failures, but every time we light a candle, there's a short litany that said, when those candles are lit in our children's worship, and they remember that that's something that's going to stick with them. And I actually hope and pray that when they're 72 years old, they still remember that every time they see a candle lit. And so I'm loath to say that, like, oh, you know, you're doing it incorrectly, because I think for every church, those are conversations that you need to have and you need to discern. And so whether you do children's programming, whether you all stay together in the sanctuary, all of those things, you're the expert in your context. But what you don't get a pass on is thinking deeply about the how and the why. [00:25:50] Speaker B: I'm not going to push back on what you're saying, but I'm going to throw out a thought. One of the things that I've seen in the research around youth and young adult ministry, and I think this is leaning into children's ministry as well, is this idea that for probably at least a generation or two, we've thought about, and this may be the first time you're hearing this listeners, and maybe not, but this idea of the Mickey Mouse ear philosophy of ministry. So in youth ministry, Mark Devries actually named that as something that, and Fuller's touched on it as well, this idea that we've segregated some of that ministry space, that worshiping ministry space, into a separate location. Right. And so rarely then does the young have this opportunity to intersect with the older generation for worship. And for a lot of years that was thought of as that's the way we do it. I remember talking to a pastor probably about 10 years ago. We were talking about the importance of relational connections and learning and living together. And one of the things he mentioned to me was I remember a 12 year old coming up to me after a message and giving me a gift and saying, thank you for the message. And so this pastor kept this little gift on his desk. And so as he was writing his messages, he was thinking, I've got to connect with that 12 year old too. I've got to connect with the 8 year old who's still sitting in the sanctuary as well as the 85 year old who's probably paying, paying the majority of his salary, right? So there's this. But there is this tension that exists within the leadership of our churches, recognizing that we are being called together, this life together. And part of that is in pure learning environments, but also in the larger body of the sanctuary. So how do we navigate that space? How do we live into that space of recognizing the importance of preaching that connects with that 10 year old with the 85 year old, that worship connects with the 8 year old and the 85 year old so that we truly become or model this idea of intergenerational ministry. [00:28:09] Speaker C: I wonder when the last time a pastor sat down with a focus group of 8 year olds and read the sermon text that he or she was planning to preach for that Sunday and said, what do you think? What questions do you have? What do you notice? I noticed the grass is green. Ah, yeah. The grass is green in scripture once, right? Like it's named asking curious questions. I wonder the last time that pastor sat down with a focus group outside of a group of adults or fellow pastors who have theological educations and actually talked with and engaged and asked questions about preaching and about the Word. Because if we believe that the Word is alive, it's sharp and it's living and it's active, it's sharp and it's living and active just as much in an 8 year old's heart as an 80 year old's heart. [00:29:00] Speaker B: Yeah. What do you think? And so as I'm listening to you, I wonder what the space of mentoring looks like in this context. [00:29:09] Speaker C: Oh, I've got a good story. Can I share a story? [00:29:11] Speaker B: Yeah, we love stories here. [00:29:13] Speaker C: So our church started this thing that we call Spuds. We needed a good name for it and Spuds just stood out and it totally stuck because there's so many good spud jokes, right? But it was a spiritual buddy program that we called Spuds. So once our children were done with their children's worship, which is like ages 3 through second grade, first or second grade, they would get an adult spud and this would be an adult in the congregation who said, this is a child that I'm going to walk with and I'm going to, to not necessarily mentor. I'm just going to befriend. I'm going to be their spiritual buddy. And so the children, once they were done with children's worship, once it came time for the sermon, they would go and sit with their spiritual buddies for the remainder of the service. And spiritual buddies oftentimes, like, would come up with something ahead of time, right? Like they would have like an activity or they could just be like a conversational partner, right? To like ask a question like, do you know what that word means? Okay, here's what that word means. That was a big word, but just somebody to sit by and somebody to companion with. And here's the beautiful thing about it, is my son got a spud when he was in third grade, he just did his high school interviews. He just started high school this fall. And I sat in on his interview, and the interviewer asked him, name one person in your life outside of your parents who has been significant to you. And you know who he named? He named his spud. [00:30:37] Speaker B: I love that. [00:30:38] Speaker C: As the person that meant the most to him. That during COVID continued to call him weekly and engage him and have conversations with him and build Legos over Zoom and just talk to him about life and about all of those different things. And I can't tell you how meaningful that has been, particularly for our family, to have that experience for my son. But I wonder what that could look like, like, on a larger scale in a congregation. And maybe you don't find somebody that's willing to commit to somebody for six years like this dear. Like this dear gentleman did with my son, but what would it look like to commit to be somebody's spud? And not just to commit to be a spud, but to commit to follow through on covenantal promises that you made to that child at their baptism to help them and to nurture them, to grow in the faith, developing those connections that make children not feel secondary. Right. Like, this is not a secondary service that now, all of a sudden, they have to sit through. They're engaged, and they're active participants. [00:31:42] Speaker B: I just love that I want to use that word, if that's okay to share with our people, because that's such a beautiful picture. But is that trademarked anyway? [00:31:53] Speaker C: No, but then we had. Our little kids were tater tots. [00:31:56] Speaker B: Oh, right. [00:31:57] Speaker A: Oh, totally. The potato just kind of keeps going. [00:32:02] Speaker C: Our elderly or the twice baked. I mean, it's fun giving, Right? It just keeps on giving. [00:32:07] Speaker A: Oh, my God. [00:32:08] Speaker B: Who were the mashed? Were there any mashed? Because that would be so. Yeah. Interesting to me. [00:32:14] Speaker A: The mashed may have been under church discipline, Ron. [00:32:16] Speaker B: Oh, right. Okay. Right. We won't go. [00:32:18] Speaker C: The clergy could be the French friars, Right? [00:32:21] Speaker A: True. Yeah. That could be good. Yeah, I. I love pretty much everything you've just said. I mean, really, I. I'm glad we're recording all of this, because this just, like, just fills my heart with hope of, like. Because I. I attended a baptism maybe two weeks ago, and it struck me hearing, like, just like you mentioned, the. The covenantal nature of it, where it's like, hey, we've got this kid, this little baby, who we're acknowledging as part of God's family, and we're gonna. We're to challenge the parents like, hey, you know, do your darndest to, you know, affirm the goodness of God in this child's life. But then there's that moment where you face the congregation and you're like, all right, you guys are all witnesses to this. And I always thought to myself, man, like, I've never been to a baptism that didn't in some way reinforce the responsibility that the community has to the children of our. Our. Of our. Of our spaces, of our. Of our communities. But then I'm like, but, gosh, we don't really structure anything in the church often or often enough to reinforce that. To actually give someone room to say, as a result of this promise that I made to this child and to their family and to God, this is how I'm going to follow through with this. And. And I do think that as leaders in the church, we do have a responsibility to say, we've got to create avenues for people to follow up on what we're on, what we believe in, on what we're agreeing to. So I think that's such a cool and creative way to do that. I really commend you guys for being a part of that. That's so cool. [00:34:07] Speaker C: Let me follow up, though, and also say in response to what you just said, John, that we don't do it in a way that weaponizes our baptismal vows, that says, you made promises to these children, so now you have to go and take care of them. The baptismal promises. The beauty of the baptismal promises and the vows is that it's always responsive to what God has done first, the work that God has done in and through the life of this child, this baby, that before they knew anything of it. Right. And it's the gratitude response of the community based on what God has done. And there should be something in that that produces some amount of joy. Right. And I kind of wonder, like, if intergenerational worship and intergenerational ministry in general, we've kind of lost that overall tenor of joy, joy and gratitude, and instead it's turned into a More of a mandate, Right? [00:35:00] Speaker A: Sure. [00:35:01] Speaker C: Mandate and a guilt. [00:35:02] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:35:03] Speaker B: And that's the hope that we don't do. Right. Is not to weaponize it and not to make that people feel guilty about it. I do wonder if sometimes they need to be reminded of that experience of joy that comes from that beautiful relationship of just walking alongside your spud and learning together in beautiful ways what a joy that would be, and to hear the lifelong remembering for your son of that connection that's My hope for all our young people, right, that they're going to have a spud in their life that will encourage them, walk with them, support them, pray with them, not because of duty, but because of genuine, a genuine response to the love and grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. [00:35:49] Speaker C: And you know, that's like the big way, that's a big way to do it. But there's so many small, low hanging fruits that would be wonderful ways for listeners, for churches, for people to start to just grab one of those small, little low hanging fruits to start to build that community in organic way. This is a fun one. So I'm going to share it. It was something that just came up the other day. But thinking about like always send kids back to school and like some people do the blessing of the backpacks or they say a prayer blessing over parents and students. But here's an interesting idea is what would it look like after the first or second like week of school, maybe the first month of school, have all of your school aged people, they don't have to just be your children either. Your school aged people, college age and down draw a picture of your classroom, right? And so you picture like a four year old in her crayon, picks up her crayon and draws a really, really bright and vibrant picture of her classroom. And you have a high schooler who's into graphic design who like perfectly builds it out, right. You've got an 11 year old boy who builds it in Minecraft blocks. But like pictures of their classroom, put them up on a board in the sanctuary, have an adult take a picture down for the year and pray for that particular child, child in their classroom. Hang that picture as a reminder of like, I'm going to pray for this child in this classroom for the rest of the school year. Whenever I see this picture, I'm going to pray for that student. I'm going to ask that student, how did it go in the book corner today? How did it go in your 3D printing lab today? Building community in small but faithful ways. [00:37:22] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:37:22] Speaker B: So that they encourage and receive this idea of the sense of belonging. Right. In the sense of I have a place here, this is my home as well. Oh, so good, Katie, this has been wonderful. What about any scriptural intersections with this mindset? Right. When we think about intergenerational ministry, I've been thinking a little bit about that. We're all in some way theologians and pastors and what are some of the. We've seen some scriptural intersections into this space that might help us really lean into this in some way. [00:37:58] Speaker C: I think you could find them across the whole of Scripture if you start looking for them, if you start looking at worship practices, even look at ancient Israel's worship practices, they didn't segment out, they didn't target at one particular group. It was all of the whole body that participated in those Psalms of ascent. It was all the whole body that offered up their first fruits, that came before the Lord to offer sacrifices of praise, that wept with those who wept. I think we can see examples across the whole of Scripture from Israel through the Psalms, through all of their experiences well into the New Testament as well, of what it means to worship as a community and as a body. I think intergenerational worship has a lot to say about breeding empathy among our communities as well and seeking to understand, but not only to understand, but to live and to dwell with one another. That good tabernacle language from the Old Testament, what it means to tabernacle with one another, to make a home with one another, to live in community in such a way that we are. We can dwell safely with one another. So, I mean, I could give you very, very specific examples, but like, across the whole of scripture, I think you see it and you see that, yeah, the Bible makes the case for, yeah, intergenerational worship all the way. All the way. [00:39:20] Speaker A: Katie, do you have any resources, whether it's books or websites or podcasts, but just anything that if someone is like listening to this and they're just like, gee, I want to dig deeper into this, anything that you'd recommend. [00:39:35] Speaker C: So one thing that's great right now is that the Lilly foundation has given out many different grants specifically around engaging children and worship. And if you start to follow some of those projects that are in a five year long cycle, you can see some of the beautiful work that's starting to happen as a result of those grants. Some of them are focused on songwriting for children that what are better ways to incorporate, like, shorter songs, shorter, more memorable songs that can be accessible to all ages? Another big question is neurodiversity in worship, particularly for children with autism or on the autism spectrum or anxiety adhd. And there's grant work that's happening there. So these grants that, like I said, are in a five year cycle, these are great ones to start to follow. I'm tracking them already and I can't wait to see what fruit they bear for us. [00:40:31] Speaker B: Katie, you also published something around the top 100 songs, worship songs recently, correct? [00:40:42] Speaker C: I did, I did. [00:40:44] Speaker A: Oh, wow. [00:40:45] Speaker C: So it was an Ecumenical vetting of the CCLI Top 100. So every six months, the CCLI changes their Top 100 songs, contemporary songs that are sung in worship. And we had a group specifically with a Reformed accent, largely CRC folks, that did a vetting of this. And intergenerational was one of the things that we included out of, like, the many different ways you can look at a song and kind of start to analyze it. Intergenerational was one of them. Because there's some songs, I will argue, that are unsingable for children. [00:41:17] Speaker A: Wow. [00:41:17] Speaker C: Or at least very, very difficult to sing for children. [00:41:20] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:41:21] Speaker C: And there's others, I will argue, that are very congregationally difficult to sing for an older generation. There's ways that song diet congregations typically only have 200 songs that their congregation can sing and know well at any given moment. And once you take away the Christmas songs and the Easter songs and the Thanksgiving songs, that number dwindles quickly. The bulk of your diet should be able to be sung intergenerationally. [00:41:51] Speaker B: That's awesome. I didn't know that much work went into that. That was awesome. [00:41:55] Speaker C: Thank you for that. [00:41:55] Speaker B: That was. [00:41:56] Speaker A: Is that, like, available to the public? [00:41:58] Speaker C: It is. It's on the. Maybe we can drop a link after the fact into the notes. [00:42:02] Speaker A: Yeah. Put it in our show notes. That would be awesome. I would. I would love to look at that myself, but I'm sure our listeners would, too, so that'd be sweet. [00:42:09] Speaker C: Yeah. It would be fascinating to look through. I'd encourage listeners to do that with their own song diet. If you are like a song select person, you can pull up all of the songs that you've sung over the last year and what you've reported and do a quick vetting project of your own diet of congregational song and look at it through an intergenerational lens, see where you might have holes, see where you're overloaded on one side. Where. Where. Yeah, all of those things. But encourage, highly encourage people to be thoughtful about what they sing. [00:42:37] Speaker A: Yeah. Because it's so good. Well, I think it's about that time, huh, Ron? [00:42:42] Speaker B: Yeah, I think so. Katie, this was so good. Thank you for joining us. If you feel like you want to join us anytime in the future, I mean, that would be so much fun, right, John, Maybe we can dive into it. [00:42:53] Speaker A: I feel like we've got so many more things we could talk about. [00:42:55] Speaker B: Oh, totally, totally. [00:42:57] Speaker C: So, yeah, we did kind of the bird's eye view today. Right. Of, like, the bigger themes, but I'm like, there's a lot of other. There's a lot of other practical things. And you're great conversation partners. [00:43:06] Speaker B: Would you be willing to would you be willing to come back? [00:43:09] Speaker C: Yeah, definitely. [00:43:11] Speaker B: Take a deeper dive? I love that. [00:43:13] Speaker A: That would be. [00:43:14] Speaker B: Any final thoughts, Joe? [00:43:15] Speaker A: Just what you said, Ron. This has been a great conversation. Katie, thanks so much for your time and listeners. Thank you guys so much for your time. Time. I hope that if you're driving that you travel safely from wherever you're going to wherever you're headed. And if you're just cleaning the house, I hope you don't forget that spot right by the stove there. Thank you, guys. God bless you. We'll talk to you later. [00:43:35] Speaker B: Bye.