How to Create Intergenerational Worship that Engages and Inspires All Ages

By Rev. Greg Ward
Unitarian Universalist Metro Atlanta North Congregation
Roswell, GA

Does your Unitarian Universalist community offer intergenerational worship services? Do your services consistently engage people who yearn for intergenerational community and worship? Do they invite and intrigue those for whom intergenerational services are a “necessary inconvenience”? If you answered “no” to any of the above, move over, you are in good company—with me and most every person (young and old) in most every congregation in our Association.

Some Background

I grew up UU. I also grew up somewhat curious, smart, precocious, talkative, energetic, impatient, and with some traits of ADHD—just like many of our congregation's children. We had intergenerational worship in the church I grew up in. But it suffered from worship schizophrenia. The service, by and large, tried to remain true to a typical, traditional Sunday service—with challenging intellectual rigor, the use of reason, and very little in the way of cheap sentimentality. There were offers, a nod to attending children like me, which were well-meaning attempts to reach my younger interests.

However, the juxtaposition of children's elements often seemed unrelated and confusing, like stabs in the dark. The result often felt either confusing or condescending. Even when these offerings were age appropriate for me, they often came after I had already tuned out from sitting through too much adult material. To be perfectly blunt, most of it wasn't engaging, funny, relevant, or memorable (except the parts where I was reprimanded for not sitting still—those were memorable).

But sometimes I was lucky. Sometimes, there was intergenerational worship that did work—and worked well. I got a chance to really become captivated and transformed by worship because it made room for me and spoke to me. And I enjoyed doing that with my parents—not only because I got to be with them in the service (which felt like something important), but because I could see that my parents were enjoying it too. And we all got to talk about it at home—together. The experience of being together in worship, amidst people of all ages, enfolded me in the whole idea of community. I “got it.” And it led me to want more of it as I grew up. That experience taught me about myself, my aspirations, and my community.

Stories and Story-Telling: The Heart of Intergenerational Services

I learned from people like Tom Owen-Towle and Ric Masten that there are critical elements necessary for making intergenerational worship engaging for all ages. When I incorporated these elements into a systematic approach, I found that engaging, relevant, and transformative services are not only easier, but more fun as well.

In my years of ministry, I took opportunities to explore and experiment with what I had experienced as successful in my youth. I examined what I remember to be powerful in those worship services—the kinds of stories, the kinds of music, the kinds of ritual, the kinds of lessons—and began figuring out ways they fit together and flowed and complemented one another. I also considered and included wisdom from human developmental psychology as well as drama.

So, what's behind it all? Simple. It is stories. But as we begin to think of how to adapt stories to worship, we may begin to see that nothing is ever as simple as it seems.

Stories are the oldest and most popular medium for transformative teaching in human history. Since the Paleolithic era, people have gathered together and shared stories as a way of educating, informing, and building community. Whether they relay history, cultural norms, or morals, stories—and storytelling—are remarkably well suited to reach across a wide body of audience perspectives and needs. Stories are particularly effective at stretching to reach all ages.

This method of intergenerational worship takes advantage of the fact that all stories include the same basic elements. These elements are:

• identification with characters (protagonists) and their goals
• establishing a premise of conflict threatening protagonists and their goals
• exploration of context, issues, and resources to find resolution to conflict
• exploring the drama of unsuccessful attempts to resolve conflict
• discoveries, epiphanies, or “aha” moments
• resolution of conflict and glimpsing the future applications of what was learned

The beauty of stories is that they operate on so many levels. There is the immediate level of the characters and the conflict they encounter, as well as the metaphorical level of who/what the characters represent and conflicts in the broader human context. One story holds many different “stories” for those experiencing it. Within the same story, smaller children can enjoy the characterization, the drama of the conflict, and the resolution. Their attention will gravitate to the costumes, animated action/movement, simple slapstick humor, and the natural emotion within the conflict and resolution. Older children and youth will identify with the developmental lessons being portrayed, the moral imperatives being explored, and the humor of seeing usually very serious adults they know in less than serious, even vulnerably accessible, roles. Adults will appreciate the metaphorical and conceptual application of ideals to the universal human context. And they, too, may enjoy the possible humor of seeing the president of the board of trustees play a toad!

Intergenerational Story-Based Worship: Transformative Experiences

The objective of an intergenerational worship service must always be to convey a relevant, transformative message. At the same time, it should also allow congregants to see new facets of each other, often more humble, more human, or more accessible. That opens new opportunities for being in relationship with each other and with the church. Participating in intergenerational worship is good for both new and “old” congregants. It is a great way to allow people new to the church to be known by others. These are the very people who need exposure—for others to see them as approachable. And, of course, it is a truly welcoming forum to get the children to participate in thoughtful, engaging ways.

Structures that Support Intergenerational Worship

Working with and maintaining structure is vitally important to the experience and success of intergenerational worship. Maintaining ritual and honoring all the essential elements of liturgy regularly used during worship will ensure success. This means that every congregation needs to adapt the story used in the service—whether they are writing it themselves or taking a script from the website—to their own liturgy. The elements of liturgy that must be in any worship service are:

• chalice lighting/welcome
• call to worship or hand of friendship
• joys and concerns
• offering
• meditation or prayer
• benediction

The reason that we have liturgy is to satisfy the human need for ritual. Often, our Unitarian Universalist congregations are startled to realize how much ritual we incorporate into worship. But ritual need not be religiosity or godly language. Ritual is any intentional pattern or repetition of order or wording. We rely on ritual for familiarity and comfort. We set up patterns in our worship for the same reason we set up patterns in our life—so that we can turn our attention to matters deeper than routine. We don't need to attend to the familiar, and that allows us to open more fully to that which is new and in need of more processing.

In worship we are comforted by hearing familiar phrasing and by experiencing things in an expected order. When something is omitted or done out of order it startles us. It means our attention is not able to focus on the message or on our job as worshippers to reflect upon, internalize, and apply the message to our lives. Without ritual we are too busy wondering what will come next and how to be ready. Thus, traditional phrasing in the chalice lighting or joys and concerns during an intergenerational worship service is reassuring. Repeated routines and words also allow children to learn some building blocks from the adult worship community of which they may become a part.

Putting the Service Together

The parts of a story and elements of ritual within many of our worship services provide a convenient way to structure the service. The elements of liturgy provide more than rhythm and familiarity—in an intergenerational story-based worship, they offer crucial divides between the story sections. Those divides are important opportunities to pause and invite people to digest, reflect upon, and deepen the meaning of the message being conveyed.

This method of intergenerational worship always depends upon two voices carrying the service forward. The first voice is rather obvious: the narrator, who is charged with presenting the context of the story, revealing the thoughts and motivations of the characters, describing the plot as it unfolds, and doing all the voices. Sometimes additional people aid the narrator by just doing the voices of the characters—this eliminates the need to memorize lines and allows the people in character to just mime the action, drastically reducing the need for rehearsals. The second voice is the service leader. This is the voice that helps the congregation process what the story is saying. It is the voice that clarifies the metaphor being offered. It is the voice that helps tie the drama of the character's transformation to our own experience. It may help us consider our values or our relationships with events happening in the world around us. Or it may help us consider our relationship to the very people we are sitting with in our religious community.

The narrator guides the journey happening around us, and the service leader guides the journey going on within us. It is easy to imagine, therefore, how a story can be experienced on multiple levels. This allows the service to be not only engaging for different ages of people, but engaging on different levels for the same people.

Intergenerational worship is enhanced by the singing of hymns. I advocate for hymns that are simple, are easy to learn, and can be sung without the need to read or hold a hymnal. One of the things we don't often think about in our churches is that a truly intergenerational community is differently-abled. Not everyone in the room will be able to read. But everyone in the room can generally sing. And yet singing together is incredibly bonding. Therefore, it is very important that what is sung is melodically and lyrically simple.

Some think that a hymn must be complex to be challenging and rewarding. But try singing “Motherless Child” after you find out that the protagonist has just lost his mother. Or sing “There Is More Love” at the point in the story when it appears that all hope is gone. It's not the complexity of words that makes a hymn challenging. It's the complexity of the lesson the hymn is pointing to.

The best songs for intergenerational worship are either simple rounds or what we know as “zipper” songs. Zipper songs are the ones like “Peace Like a River” that involve a simple substitution of one or two words into a repeated phrase. It's the easiness of the melody and lyrics that invites people in. It's the power of the message and the context that allows for the transformation to take place.

Make Worship Invitational

Good intergenerational worship is invitational. It is all about making room for you—whoever you are, wherever you're at. Insert yourself within the liturgy—within the story—within the community—so that you can experience the transformation you came to church to find. And do it as a family. Not only as a family comprising the people you live with, but as one comprising the people you covenant to live for.

Intergenerational worship can be remarkably inviting, rewarding, and engaging. It can be effective not only as worship, but also as a form of community building. I invite you to explore the website  and imagine how it might reinvent or revitalize what you are currently doing or provide a light toward what you could be doing in the future.

Reverend Greg Ward's website, www.uuintergenerational.org , is an excellent resource for this method of intergenerational worship. The site contains background materials as well as a large number of full scripts available for use. Several scripts address issues relevant to our spring liturgical calendar, including Earth Day, Purim, and Flower Communion.