Individual instruments playing on their own sound good—but there is nothing quite like the sound of a full orchestra to engage us. The same is true for our life as the church of God. Why would we keep young people in their own groups when we are intended to play together?
In this interview, Gareth Crispin explains why this is so important, what difference it can make, and how in practice we can go about growing a truly symphonic church in which young people are integrated.
Below the video I include key extracts from his Grove booklet in which he explores this. You can buy the booklet here.
Orchestral music is not limited to classical music like Mozart or Beethoven. Orchestras play all sorts of music! They might play some Mozart, but they can also play Taylor Swift. Orchestral music is woven into the fabric of many popular songs—just think of Viva La Vida by Coldplay. The bottom line is that orchestral music is at the heart of movie soundtracks, much popular music, and even some video games. As such, it is at the heart of much of our culture’s daily experience: it is everywhere.
And why is orchestral music so powerful? Because while individual instruments sound wonderful, there is nothing quite like the sound of a full symphony orchestra. Symphonic sound is created by diverse instruments playing in harmony such that the result is greater than the sum of the parts. If you heard all the instruments individually in turn, you still would have next to no idea of the sound that is created when they all play together. Symphonic sound is what is needed to carry the weight of the immersive experiences of films and video games.
So far so musical, but what has this got to do with youth and children’s mission and ministry? Well, that is what the rest of this booklet is about, but in essence, a symphony orchestra is an analogy of what the church should and could be, a way to be church where the whole is so much greater than the sum of the parts, where the music of faith that is created is richer than would be possible otherwise.
About a hundred and fifty years ago, society started focusing more on grouping youth and children together for social and educative purposes. This tilt to the peer group has been covered by several authors recently. My take on it is that peer group ministry has always been a part of church life, but it intensified in the 1700s, beginning with the Sunday School movement. This continued with a wave of youth organizations, including Scripture Union (founded in 1867) and, after the Second World War, Youth for Christ (founded in 1944).
This is the central aspect that underpins many of the building blocks of contemporary society, which include consumerism, social fragmentation, cultural diversity and professionalization. This fuels a focus on peer groups in wider society and then the church. Just think—in a world where who I am is made by me, and other people also have that freedom, our combined sociocultural life becomes diverse. I look out for others that are like me, my tribe.
There are now signs of this fragmentation coming full circle and allowing for more connections between generations. When I was growing up in the 1980s, there was no way we would share cultural references with our parents; there was a divide between Gen X and the Boomers. But now, since everything has become so fragmented, diverse and commodified, it is possible for older people to buy into emerging culture—and equally possible for emerging generations to rediscover and access older cultural products. Just think of how many parents went with their kids to the recent Taylor Swift tour in the UK—they were not simply there as chaperones.
Whilst the church reflecting its surroundings is not necessarily a problem, it does mean that we sometimes miss out on what is best for us. Because of the recent openness to intergenerational relationships, our current era represents an opportunity for the church—a chance to rediscover the power of the symphony and the benefits of redirecting peer groups and family ministry towards the whole church. In this chapter we will combine five elements to see why we should grasp this opportunity, why we need a symphonic sound in our work with youth and children’s.
In 1 Corinthians 12 Paul compares the church to a body. A body is made up of different parts: hands, feet, ears and eyes etc. If all is well, each part has a different function: eyes see, noses smell etc. For the body to function properly it needs all its parts, and it needs them working together. Feet should not say that they are not part of the body because they are not hands. Additionally, a body made up of eyes is not a body—try to picture it, it is just a freaky pile of eyes!
We are creatures, made in the image of God, whose image is scarred by our rejection of God and who he made us to be which means we are separated from God. However, reconciliation with God is possible through faith in Jesus. Paul calls reconciled people, those who are ‘in Christ,’ as part of Christ’s body of which Jesus is the head. Youth and children in our churches have an identity that is at least partially about being a vital part of the body, a key instrument in the orchestra. If youth and children are not Christians, then this is what we are inviting them into.
The eye only really finds out what it means to be an eye once it acts as part of the body—the purpose of an eye is not simply to see, it is to see and pass on the visual information to the brain which then interprets it and decides if any action needs to take place; if it does then the brain does not act itself, it asks the leg or arm to do something. Purpose is linked to relationships with others.
As with a trumpet finding its wider purpose in relation to other instruments, young people and children have been created to find their identity, belonging and purpose from within the symphonic church.
In some ways this biblical-theological reflection ought to be sufficient, but there is also sociological data that supports the importance of the family and the church, and specifically seeing a movement from families to the church.
In recent years, significant initiatives such as the Kitchen Table Project and Parenting for Faith have grown out of wider research demonstrating the importance of parents and carers in the faith lives of youth and children’s. The wider research includes the Church of England Church Growth Research Programme published in 2014, which found that ‘The reason for decline in affiliation and attendance is the failure to replace older generations of churchgoers. The problem is not adults leaving the church: it is that half of the children of churchgoing parents do not attend when they reach adulthood.’ This and other reports fuelled the growth of thinking about the importance of parents and carers in the faith lives of youth and children. This has been a welcome move.
At the same time there has also been research on the importance of intergenerational relationships. The Sticky Faith Project in the USA (in 2011) and the Church of England report ‘Rooted in the Church’ (in 2019) are two examples of data that suggests that the faith of youth and children’s is in some ways connected to the wider church and that always separating them off is not the best idea. The growth of Messy Church has demonstrated the power of intergenerational relationships in UK mission and ministry. This too has been a welcome move.
There is something about the involvement of youth and children in the church that is crucial for their ongoing faith development, and that (like the conclusions of our biblical-theological reflection above) a lot of the impact of parenting is the extent to which parents launch their youth and children into the church. Or, in the language of the orchestra, there is something about playing in the full orchestra that really ce- ments what it means to be a trumpet. If the trumpets do not take time to think how they will connect to the rest of the orchestra, or if they are not allowed the opportunity to participate meaningfully, then when it comes to it there will be no symphonic sound. Without experiencing the power and intricacies of the whole orchestra, many will put down their trumpets and play no more.
In the twentieth century the focus on working with youth and children in peer groups was a significant development in youth and children’s mission and ministry with many positives. In the first part of the twenty-first century the increasing focus on the family and wider intergenerational relationships has been a welcome development. Perhaps the next challenge for the church is to think carefully about how these different foci fit together.
The idea of the symphony does ultimately prioritize the whole gathered intergenerational community, but as it does so it sees a crucial role for peer groups and the family. Peer groups and the family should be nurtured to do what only they can do but also to do that with a view to the trajectory seen in the Bible and affirmed by sociological analysis, the eternal move towards the gathered church. Because we live in the now and the not yet of the new creation, we cannot place all our emphasis on the intergenerational gathered church, and working towards it in the here and now will not be without problems. However, we have explored above some theological and strategic resources to help with this process, a way to accommodate youth and children’s in our church communities, and some idea of how to make that happen operationally.
In the central section of the booklet, Gareth explores all the ways that churches can work intergenerationally, and consider the importance of leadership and the role of the Bible. You can buy the booklet for £4.95 post free in the UK from the Grove website here.
I’ve read the article but not watched the video. It seems to me that the answer is via the homegroup, which should be a mixture of all ages and of all stages of faith from new to seasoned.
This is another example of why homegroup should be seen as church, and the (weekly) meetings in which homegroups come together should be regarded as secondary (not necessarily weekly!) That was the New Testament view of church.
Perhaps also children, once they are young adults, should not be in the same homegroup as their parents.
Anton – how about their grandparents? Somebody over the age of 90 recently told me about his own introduction to the Christian faith, which worked very well. When he was a teenager, he went along to the Fishermen’s meeting hall that his grandfather attended, where (he informs me) he learned everything of importance about the faith and grew in the faith, by listening to the fishermen talking.
The fellowship sounds like exactly the sort of thing that you often advocate here. There wasn’t anyone designated ‘leader’; all of them came along with a word, or a prayer, or a song. One very important aspect of it was the way they interacted with each other; they were always gentle and respectful, nobody butting in, everybody letting the other person go first, etc …. Apparently they disagreed with each other, but the tone was always so gentle and respectful that you wouldn’t actually know they were disagreeing unless you were listening very carefully.
The important thing (of course) – they all acknowledged that they were sinners; they looked at the cross and saw Christ collecting the wages that they deserved for their own individual (personal) sin – and they acknowledged that they deserved these wages (all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God; the wages of sin is death). They saw their own salvation in the resurrection. In other words, their profession was Christian. There wasn’t anything intellectual or scholarly and, indeed, they did have difficulties with some of the big words in the KJV – but this seemed to be irrelevant – they had the one pearl of great price.
My problem with the article here (as with much that I see here) – I don’t see it grounded in the basics of what the Christian faith is all about – I don’t see ‘conviction of sin’ mentioned; I don’t see any mention of the cross, what it is all about, etc …..
Jock,
Perhaps Gareth will speak for himself, but this is a discussion about people who are already Christians, not about evangelism.
I have known Catholics who are Christian and Catholics who aren’t, and it quickly showed in our interactions. I believe the earth is billions of years old (and I regard Genesis as authoritative and not as ‘myth’) and I have been happily in congregations with young-earthers. If they brought up the subject in discussions then I explained and defended my viewpoint, but I did not start such discussions. I respect their concern for scripture. I heard online a debate about the Christian view of Israel between David Pawson and Stephen Sizer, and it was cordial. Real Christians recognise their unity.
Anton – well, I’d say that everything about the church should be about evangelism. So if we’re talking about inter-generational issues and what to do about integrating ‘young people’, this should be grounded firmly and explicitly in redemption – how a change of approach will bringing each person to an inward acceptance that the cross should, by rights, be the wages of his sin.
I therefore like the description that was given to me about this Fishermen’s fellowship on several fronts. Firstly, someone who really has inwardly accepted that the cross is, by rights, the wages for his sin, has a certain level of humility and isn’t pushing himself forward – just as the people in that fellowship were always bending over backwards to let the others contribute first. Secondly, the young guy (the teenager back then who is now over 90) understood the value of listening up to the wisdom of those of his grandfather’s generation … and this has stood him in very good stead.
Are the measures proposed in the article going to do the same for the teenagers of nowadays so that, in 70 or 80 years time they’ll be looking back appreciating what the church did for them and how it brought them forward in the faith?
It’s interesting that, in this context, you bring up different understandings of Genesis. The important thing here is that the issue you mention is actually orthogonal to God’s plan for redemption, while the opening chapters of Genesis actually tell us an awful lot about God’s plan for redemption – and that is what the church should be dealing with.
Basically – everything about the church is (or should be) about evangelism.
Jock,
Everything the church does does ought to be for the building-up of its members and the evangelisation of non-members. The conversation between Ian and Gareth is about the former.
Anton – well, as I indicated, I disagree with you – since I don’t see this ‘building up’ clearly defined in the article. There are generalisations and nice sounding phrases, but to give concrete meaning to them would require going into the realms of what you term ‘evangelisation’.
I come from a background where we took the view (which I think was correct – and I still take this view) that exactly the same message brings people to faith in the first place and builds them up in the faith after they have come to faith – so I fundamentally disagree with the dichotomy you are making.
To spell it out: exactly the same discussion that Ian and Gareth had could have been had by two people who are keen on building up their church, but where they *don’t* take the view that the central point is inward acceptance by the believer that the crucifixion was the wages for his own personal sin. Back in the 1980’s there was an awful lot of this – it was called ‘cheap grace’ back then. I’m not accusing Ian and Gareth of this – but I am saying that there should be something definitive in their discussion so that we have no doubt that they are talking about building up *Christians* – rather than people who like going to ‘evangelical’ churches.
As I pointed out, the teenager in the scenario I described was very content to sit and listen to the wisdom of those of his grandfather’s generation – and that (at least to me) looks like the Christian mind-set; I’m wondering if *Christian* young people really do want to be pushed forward.
So you believe in preaching to the converted?
Anton – no – I never stated this and I gave you no reason to infer this.
I said quite clearly that it is exactly the same message that brings people to faith that builds them up once they are in the faith.
That was the case with me – the same preaching that brought me to faith built me up as a Christian once I was in the faith.
Anton – on reflection, actually, you’ve got what I wrote precisely the wrong way round.
I’d say that all preaching should be done as if it is to those who are *not* converted. The same message that brings the conviction of sin and makes people aware of the radical evil in their own hearts and minds is the message that brings joy and comfort to those of us who are in Him (His death – the wages of our sin; His resurrection, by which we know that our sins are forgiven).
So – preach as if you are preaching to those who have not come to faith – and you’ll find that you are building up those who are in the faith.
Intergenerational midweek groups is one of the (seven I think) things identified in the booklet.
The church growth movement talked about cell, congregation, and celebration as the three ‘levels’ of church, derived from the NT.
I don’t think there are three levels, only two. In the NT there is one ekklesia in a single town, and it meets regularly in homes (each presumably led by an overseer (episkopos), and irregularly as a large gathering.
Or Episkopi
Blog won’t let me use Greek alphabet!
Yes, you can paste Greek text in.
Yes, Penny is right: monarchical episcopacy was a later development.
This is an issue that I am currently getting to grips with myself. I am newly installed as the Chaplain at St Marc’s, Grenoble (Cof E, Diocese in Europe). The church is an ICS member and is therefore evangelical in outlook. We have an interesting congregation, approximately a 60/40 mix of African/European. Of the African contingent there are 20 or so youngsters.
Up to now, the main services have followed the pattern of: Service of the Word (Sundays 1and 3) and Communion (2 and 4). The church has used the classic model of youngsters in for the first song(s) and opening prayer and then off to their ‘activities’, coming back for the last prayers and songs.
While I understand this is the classic model, I do find it unsatisfactory. Other churches I have been associated with that send their youngsters out this way often find that aged 13 or so, and often after Confirmation, the young people disappear, never to be seen again except, possibly at Christmas or Easter (less so).
I am convinced that this is because we do not involve them actively in the services their parents attend and so, when they come of age to take part in these services, they would rather do something else instead. Why should they join the parents? It is an alien environment to them.
My own feeling is that the youngsters we have need to be part of the whole that is going on around them. I am therefore planning to have at least one Sunday where the older youngsters take the lead in a service that is genuinely suitable for all ages to get something from. Where will the leaders of the future come from, if not from active experience of their faith?
Will this lead to chaos in the Sunday Service? Probably, but dare I say it, it could be fun too. Oh, fun in a Sunday service; we couldn’t possibly have that, could we? Or could we?
Yes, this is the cliff edge age.
Interestingly, in the booklet, Gareth is pragmatic. There will need to be times of peer group meeting—but other times of integration.
I agree, John. I suspect the Christianity that the youngsters get away from the main congregation is typically rather dumbed down, too.
The leadership realised that the vulnerable ages where outside church and at schools, and where internet access and a potential move to university, brought in Sunday evening services and follow-up teaching to address questions raised in contemporary life.
Questions that may not be able to be addressed, answered within the family and social settings.
Apologetics and theology, scripture and worship.
I am inclined to agree with Jock.
Long before home groups were a glint in someone’s eye
I recall that there was Sunday school and Morning & Evening Service
In S S there were enthusiastic teachers inculcating enthusiasm.
In the other services, among the lay preachers were simple godly preachers
Full of godliness, so much so I exclaimed “ I want what she has got”
Upon joining several independent bible studies I came across leaders and teachers even closer to God.
So much so I prayed for a double portion of the Spirit that was upon them.
One of the bible study groups that I attended was for late-teens but still led by a very godly man who similarly immersed us in the Scriptures.
Days of Heaven on Earth! Very much like Jock’s Fishermen.
Home groups have been a bit of a curate’s egg, much akin to Social Media [which I fear will have much to answer for on “that Day”] where most have an opinions but little of conviction.
In inviting people to join our family [as opposed to the Household of Faith perhaps.]
How do we define Family? And what relevance does it have for today’s young people?
Ask any school teacher and many will tell you that many children come from dysfunctional families.
Hence some children chose to join gang-families or resort to drugs for a sense of peace.
Why join our family in particular?
What does our family look like? well perhaps like many secular families sometimes
One side wants to build the family and the other is pulling it down or undermining it, Anti-family seeing The biblical foundations of marriage as paternalistic and genderless.
The irony being that two men/women want a surrogate child to “make them a “family” [?]
Without a Lord and Master ,a faithful Father and a divine conforming Spirit and faithful teachers the outcome/ issue will be a house built on sand easily disposed of .
Not only are people just brought to faith there is a need to be “built up” in our most Holy Faith and elders willing to “travail in birth until Christ be formed in us, that kind of teacher I have obseved are the quietist, least controntraversial and confrontational, but the most earnest in prayer.
Alan – I’m inclined to agree with much of what you say – and when you comment, it often seems to me that we’re singing from the same hymn sheet.
But to the question: why join our family in particular? The family (by which I presume you mean the Saviour’s family) is – to be brutally honest – a bunch of maladjusted misfits. That is a lesson we learn from the book of Genesis, where the people of God (think – for example – Jacob) are a bunch of rotters. Absolutely none of them are examples of pious, clean living, examples to be followed – except for the fact that they believed in Him. What brings us together is conviction of sin. We ‘join the family’ because (and only because) we understand that we are sinners – and have nowhere else to turn to other than the cross. We are a community of forgiven sinners (emphasis on both words).
Ian, lve enjoyed and admired Gareth Crispin’s zeal and research. Speaking of the whole body of the Christian Church, have we paid enough attention to the Body of Christ over over past centuries. It’s like feeling we have just discovered the Gospel and understood it for the first time. In my experience, evangelicals have usually been like this, generally avoiding the power of the catholic witness. Yes, a symphony of many instruments, young and older, black, white and other, the wise and the naive. How deeply, Gareth, are you prepared to research catholic youth witness, especially within the troubled contemporary C of E? Believe me, it is there, in touch with the endeavour through centuries to claim the young for Christ. Do we want a symphony only of our own time, or with those orchestral parts which have played the hymn of faith for centuries?
Some very good questions! Thank you…