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In what ways do intergenerational relationships impact a women’s ministry?

Intergenerational relationships within a women’s ministry provide diversity and strength. If we all looked alike and thought alike, what fun would there be in attempting to come up with a new theme or a new program or a new avenue of reaching out into the community with the Gospel? We need one another. It’s not enough to have only those over forty on your planning and ministry teams. You lose a perspective and ideas and gifting that God intended the church to have. Our view of church membership holds that God gives us each member for a particular reason. We need her gifts, her strengths, and her weaknesses to further the work of ministry and sanctification. We are all part of the body of Christ and we need to learn to relate to and value one another – our own growth in godliness is dependent upon the ladies in our congregation. Bringing both young and old perspectives around the table allows for conversation about ministry that has depth. Instead of being fearful of those conversations, see them as Gospel opportunities. The younger ladies will come with new ideas. Rejoice and be glad that God has given them to you to help keep the ministry fresh and alive! The older ladies will come with sound wisdom and judgment that is filled with first-hand experience over many years. Rejoice and be glad that God has given them to you to keep you on the path of Biblical Truth! The question is, can we delight in, value, and affirm the gifts of all as we seek to build relationships with one another? Can we lay aside our insecurities and take a step towards one another for the sake of Kingdom work and personal growth in godliness?

Do you have any closing thoughts you would like to share?

This is a topic that has so much depth and so much potential, that is near and dear to my heart, and we have barely skimmed the surface. I want readers to know that I do genuinely desire to keep this conversation going, with the prayer that it helps ministry and relationships with your ladies in your churches. To that end, here are a few questions for you to reflect on and potentially discuss with one another…

1. The goal of a Gospel-centered intergenerational relationship (or any relationship!) is sacrificial serving of others. However, the realities of sin often cause us to enter relationships with great demands and great expectations that others meet our needs. Reflect: What is it that you most want out of relationships with other ladies, particularly those outside of your life stage? What are your great expectations of others that are self-serving? In thinking towards Gospel-centered relationships, what do you have to offer that could be used to serve others in an intergenerational relationship?
2. At the very places where our expectations are not met, we can most clearly see our need for a Savior. What is your response and what happens to the relationship when your “great expectations” are not met? In what ways do your own desires and expectations point you more toward the Gospel? What encouragement can you find at the foot of the cross for the foundation and strengthening of our relationships with one another and with our God?
3. In what ways can you begin stepping towards those who are outside of your generation and offer the gift of friendship? (Where are some natural starting points and venues?)

When we make idols out of our “needs” and “expectations,” rather than getting what we think we want (relational needs met), we actually push people away from us because idols are never satisfied and only demand more – more love, more time, more security. Only God can satisfy the relational needs of our heart and yet our hearts are thoroughly convinced that people can meet those needs. With honest reflection, name the relational idols that you are chasing. Pray over each idol and ask God to give you a heart that desires to repent and turn to Him to meet those needs. Then pray that He would show you the path towards Gospel realties that penetrate those intergenerational relationships that you desire.

DOING

INTERPRETATION OF PSYCHOMOTOR LEVELS OF LEARNING

FEELINGS/VALUES

INTERPRETATION OF AFFECTIVE LEVELS OF LEARNING

KNOWING/THINKING

INTERPRETATION OF COGNITIVE LEVELS OF LEARNING

R. J.: That’s a wonderful thing to have a framework or perspective from which to view tragedies like that, but some people would say, “I’m glad that works for you, but it doesn’t work for me.” What would you say to somebody like that?

Charles: I would say try it. A French philosopher by the name of Pascal once said (it’s called the Pascal Wager) “…if I believe in God and in the end find there is no God, I’ve lost nothing because I’ve lived a better life, but if I do not believe in God and in the end find there is a God, I’ve lost everything.” I would say try it; it works.

R. J.: How critical is this?

Charles: Extremely! If we say we believe something about God that God doesn’t say about Himself in the Word, guess who’s wrong. We have to work constantly because a kingdom disciple is someone Jesus said must take up His cross daily and follow Him. We must die to ourselves and live to God. This is a process of learning to think God’s thoughts after Him as the Apostle Paul instructs us to do in 2 Corinthians 10:5: “Bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.” All the different religions and all the different cults and occults have grown out of man thinking His thoughts about God and the supernatural rather than what God says about Himself.

R. J.: I guess we like to say, “this is what I think about God” without thinking of what God thinks! But that involves a lot of thought. What would you say to somebody who says, “I’m too old to do that kind of thinking or I’m not educated. Do I have an out? Can I say then that I don’t have to think?”

Charles: When Jesus said, and He was quoting the Old Testament, that we’re to love God with our mind, heart, body, and soul I don’t believe he gave a retirement age to that. As I was telling you earlier, God has been dealing with me as I’m getting older on how to deal with this biblically and the prayer of David in Psalm 71 has been so meaningful to me. He says, Lord, as I am getting older and my hair is turning grey, give me the strength to continue to communicate to the next generation who you are. In Western culture young people are really reaching out for a relationship with older people to help them understand life because life is very confusing and very perplexing. They need the wisdom of older people to help them and yet I find many times that older people are pushing younger people away and not reaching out to them. They need our help, teaching them the biblical perspective regarding life and reality.

R. J.: That leads us to an important question. What would be essential elements of looking at life from a biblical framework? What are some things that go into that framework? Some hooks to hang your coat on?

Charles: First, you have to start with a right view of God. If you have a wrong view of God everything else is going to be off base and this is why I say it’s very important to study the Scripture and to be in situations where you’re taught the Bible. This is what makes the church so important because one of the main roles of the church is to teach God’s people His word so they in fact can be kingdom people. Second, a right view of creation. God is the creator of all things and that includes who we are as human beings. The Bible says we are made in the image and likeness of God. John Calvin, said in his book, The Institute of the Christian Religion, that the most important thing we can know in life is God. [We also must] know ourselves, but we cannot know ourselves unless we know God. We must have a right picture of God, if we’re to understand who we are as His image bearers. A third ingredient is to understand that God’s good creation, beginning with man, fell into sin, which touched every part of God’s creation; the physical world around us, as well as our own lives. Sin not only affected our relationship to Him but our relationship to one another. The fall helps us understand why things get so mixed up and broken and why so many people are hurt with life because they don’t understand what the fall into sin did but it’s not hopeless. The fourth ingredient is to understand why Jesus Christ the Son of God came to earth to die on the cross to redeem us from sin; to begin to restore and bring healing to the broken relationship that we have with God; to reconcile us to God and to one another and to understand the world around us. The fifth is our commitment to grow in Christ, and by that I mean being transformed. If we really believe in something it will affect our lives. Oftentimes our faith in Christ doesn’t seem to change our lives the way it should because we’re not making a conscious effort to grow to think God’s thoughts after Him and we’re left [on] our own. We have to realize that being a kingdom disciple with a world and life view involves being transformed. As the Apostle Paul says in Romans 12: 2: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind that you may know the will of God.” Kingdom discipleship is aimed at transforming the way we think because the Bible says as we think, so are we. We live what we think we are. The sixth ingredient is to realize that this life has an end. Christ is coming again and He will create a new heaven and a new earth. We do not believe that presently we’re in heaven. As the writer of Hebrews says we look for better things to come and we do hope in the return of Christ who will create a new heaven and a new earth. This has to be an ingredient because we can become so attached to this world that we can really believe this is really our home when in reality this is not our home. God made us for eternity, not to just be on Earth.

R. J.: Let me go back to your book. You said that your hope in making disciples is that Christians will come to see the importance of thinking, making decisions and choices and living from an eternal perspective. Would this perspective be the kind of mentality expressed in a song like “This World Is Not My Home” or would you say there is a bit of a difference?

Charles: “This world is not my home” doesn’t mean that we can withdraw from the world or move into what we call Christian ghettos, and only talk to one another. Christ said, “go into the world,” but we need to go into the world equipped. You see, we have an enemy, the Devil, who is powerful and very deceptive. He is always trying to draw us away from God. We need to be aware of his devices so we’ll not fall into his frame of thinking. The antithesis is that we must be consciously thinking of decisions we have to make and the relationships we have. It’s about God. We have to make those decisions beginning with God so we keep those things in perspective. When we do we realize it’s important to live life to its fullest right here and now but this is not our home. As the writer of Ecclesiastes says in the closing chapters, a Christian must learn to live with eternity in his heart so we realize this is not all there is.

R. J.: Now to shift gears, you said something about falling into certain traps and that is the problem we face today. We are called to live a biblically world view but there are so many things that impact us and seek to drive us away from that perspective, if you will, crack our spectacles. Would you say then that the decisions we make and how we live need to be guided again by that framework but it’s a theological framework? You seem to be saying all of us, even though we’re not pastors or church workers, all of us need to be doing theology.

Charles: Certainly! We need to teach our young people how to think properly about God. In the States, I often work with those involved in youth ministry. They often look for books and material talking about dating, drugs, sex and all the things young people are dealing with. I tell them the first thing they need to deal with is who God is and who they are because of Him. When it comes to those relationships or drugs, they need to address those issues from the perspective that they belong to God. I can’t do with my body whatever I want to do. I can’t take drugs if it’s going to harm me. I can’t get involved in premarital sex because God says not to do that. We have to start with the youngest [children] teaching our children to think biblically and theologically.

R. J.: We can’t get away from it; we have to think. We come back to the challenge of thinking. You mentioned, apart from reading your book, which I definitely recommend to our listeners, we need to teach our young people to think. What else do we need to do? As a pastor like me, how can I teach my people not only to hold to the principle but how do I teach the principle and how do I pass it on to them? What are some things I could do concretely to pass it on?

Charles: I would say that if the younger generation does not see truths working in our lives, they’re not going to be as open to embracing those truths. “Show me” is what the young people are saying. “Show me what you say about God is real and true and makes a difference in my life or can make a difference in my life.” We need to spend time with one another and become living examples of what we believe. They need to see and the world needs to see what we believe does make a difference in our lives.

R. J.: That is why the church has been marginalized in many areas because we say one thing but we don’t live that way. In marginalizing our faith, we become marginalized.

R. J.: Any parting words?

Charles: My prayer for you in Jamaica, as well as for us in North America, that God would create a great revival of thinking about the Christian life with the challenge to be kingdom disciples committed to doing all to the glory of God.

R. J.: Thank you very much, brother. It has been a pleasure.

Let me go one more step, and on this one I will tread lightly – preaching. How many of you pastors have your sermons thought through for the next year? If not, why not? What is it you are trying to accomplish? What really scares me about well-meaning preachers is when they say to me that they believe they are discipling their people through their sermons, and no more is really needed. That scares me because you have already told me that you do not have a plan for where your sermons are going. You have one ‘goal’ for this sermon and another for the next. If your people don’t know your objective for this sermon, how can you ever expect that they will figure it out when you haven’t? This is not discipleship; this is a hit-and-miss approach to simply giving out disconnected information, with no thread being given to help the people tie it all together! This again is like the teacher you would not send your children to.

If we analyze our church programs today, my educated guess would be that we would find a very active church with many enjoyable programs. But what is being accomplished towards true discipleship? You will find Sunday school and other times children and youth meetings. What coordination is there between these groups? Are the youth leaders sitting down with the children’s leaders to see what the other is doing? Do they plan in such a way that if a child was to be in those groups for several years they would receive a well rounded, well planned, training enabling them to know, be, and do something for the sake of God’s Kingdom? Isn’t this what we demand from our schools? Then why not for our churches? Do we not think that discipleship is as important, or, better, more important than what they learn in the schools?

Do you pastors know what curriculum is being used in your Sunday school – or if there is one? If you do not, then how can you be sure that what is being used does not contradict your teaching from the pulpit? Is your Sunday school using several different curricula? Why? The fact is that every curriculum generally has a different philosophy of what it wants to cover and when. The use of multiple curricula could easily mean the same material is covered several times instead of a pattern allowing a child to progress from one stage to the next in a logical sequence. In order to teach “line upon line and precept upon precept,” we believe that pastors, the church’s teaching elder, needs to know and review what is being taught in the churches! Christian Education and Publications and its Great Commission Publications curriculum can help you with this.

What also concerns me is the trend going on in our colleges and seminaries. One will start a youth leaders’ program, and another a children’s leaders’ program. These are nice, and they are the popular trend, but there is one ingredient missing. There seems to be no one teaching these leaders that their groups are part of a whole church. Instead, we are encouraging programs that will be simply doing their own thing. This teaches the groups to think individualistically instead of being a part of the whole community. Do you want a church where everyone does what is right in his own eyes, or one that is united and striving to serve Christ’s Kingdom, together? Coordination of CE and discipleship is essential for producing kingdom disciples.

Who is being trained to pull together all the different ministries in your church to make sure they are all following the overall stated purpose of your church? If every ministry in your church is allowed to continue going in its own direction, then what is being accomplished? Do you really know what is being accomplished or what method of evaluation you use to determine if you are doing what you believe you are supposed to be doing? If you don’t, then you need to ask if anything is being accomplished to disciple your people and enhance the Kingdom of God. Simply being an active church with many programs does not mean that anything is being accomplished. Don’t confuse busyness with growth.

One last question, how does all this fit with your church’s mission or purpose statement? Does your church have such a statement? This statement tells everyone why your local church exists and what it is trying to accomplish. If you don’t have such a mission statement, then it becomes difficult, if not impossible to know what you are accomplishing. In working with local churches over the years, CEP has insisted that churches not evaluate their programs but rather the results of those programs. Many “good” programs do no always accomplish a worthwhile mission.

These are straightforward questions, but they are meant to encourage you to raise the questions that need to be asked in every church – and often. In all the time you have been in your church, can you really say your people are being discipled (educated/trained)? If you think they are, on what do you base that assessment? Think about it!