by Valerie M. Grissom

Why do we practice worship intergenerationally? (1)

Worship is a spiritually formative practice that invites everyone to participate fully in the life and mission of the triune God. The triune God–Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, models for us divine, self-giving love, participating fully in diverse community with one another. Our participation in the community of God forms us to be more like Jesus. Being with others in Christian community and practicing worship together as a community forms us in our being the Body of Christ.

Intergenerational worship is “worship that brings all generations together as equal, valued participants in the divine relationship of the triune God, being formed in our participation with God and one another to be the body of Christ, and embody the fullness of the gospel, proclaiming God’s ongoing redemption of all of creation.” (2)

Worship is not something that just happens one hour a week. We are invited to participate in the life and love of God continually. We must ask: how can the spiritual practices of worship extend past Sunday throughout the week, in our homes, work, school, and play? Further, for parents and guardians, how might we facilitate intergenerational worship practices in our homes and daily routines, rhythms, and schedules?

How do we practice worship in intergenerational communities?

Intergenerational worship should invite all ages to participate equally in remembering the story of God together, practicing wonder as we listen and hear from God and contemplate how God is speaking to us and one another, and adoring God, giving God all honor and glory together in praise to God.

Remember

Anamnesis, a Greek word for “calling to mind,” or deep, active remembering is often used to describe the kind of remembering that we are called to do as we worship God. (3) We remember with gratitude, recalling all that God has done, is doing, and will do. When we gather together, we remember God’s saving work in our own lives, but also in our families, and faith community. Elder generations can share with younger generations, and younger generations can share with older generations in the story of God.

Once, when worship theologian Robert Webber was probed to define worship, he said simply, “Worship does God’s story.” Later, he explained further: “Worship proclaims, enacts, and sings God’s story. Worship is not a program. Nor is worship about me. Worship is a narrative—God’s narrative of the world from its beginning to its end. How will the world know its own story unless we do that story in public worship?” (4) Here, Webber describes a kind of anamnesis in worship that requires all generations to participate together in remembering and telling the story of God.

In the same way, the Shema (Deut. 6:4-9), which is God’s prescription to Israel for a life of worship in anamnesis, outlines a spiritual practice of worship that is to be deeply embodied through actions and senses among all generations: loving God with all our heart and soul and strength, remembering the commandments of God and placing them on our hearts, talking about them with our children, at home, on the road, when you lie down, when you get up, placing them as symbols on our hands, on our foreheads, writing it on the doorframes of our houses, but also on our gates. The Shema helps us gain a picture of God’s design for intergenerational worship as a spiritual practice embodied in worship in our daily lives and throughout the week.

Wonder

The word “wonder” implies surprise, or expectation, of something new about to happen, or awe over something wonderful or beautiful that cannot be explained. As we seek to tell the story of God each week through worship, we experience God in new and powerful ways through the spiritual practice of wonder. All ages can wonder in the majesty, grace, and power of our God. Wonder places us in a mode of expectancy–expectant that the God of all Creation is here, conversing with the people of God in worship. We can come boldly, knowing we belong, that we are children of God, and we can delight in the presence of God in and through God’s people.

Adore

Adoration and praise are the only logical responses when we remember God’s story and listen in wonder to what God is doing in and through us and God’s people. We respond to God’s revelation in worship in a spirit of praise and thanksgiving. We adore God by praising God with our music, our words of gratefulness, but sometimes, we praise God in silence, expressing heartfelt gratitude. Even further, we can adore God not for what God has done, but simply who God is (i.e. God is good, loving, kind, faithful, constant.).

The Child Practicing Worship in Intergenerational Community

Children are integral to the worshiping life of an intergenerational community. Children’s participation is vital for all of our spiritual formation in the body of Christ. We are all spiritually formed by experiencing and participating in the spiritual practice of worship with children.

Children enjoy the rhythms of retelling and experiencing the gospel story each week, and they often find it easy to participate in wonder and adoration. As we remember that children are formed in their participation–in their remembering, wondering, and adoration–we must ask ourselves: do our children feel welcome to participate in the life of our worship communities? A true intergenerational community not only invites participation, but goes further to value and honor each child’s contribution, recognizing that each child’s participation is essential to embody the fullness of God’s story in our worshiping communities.

Possible First Steps

Facilitating intergenerational worship can seem daunting, especially because, for many faith communities, intergenerational worship feels countercultural. In many of our faith communities, we have been segregated by age for so long that we lack an imagination for worship that includes and invites all ages. Below is a list of intentional first steps for faith communities and families as they journey toward valuing children by cultivating the intergenerational practice of worship.

1 – Increase Participation

Look at your weekly worship plan. How might children and youth more actively participate and lead us in remembering and telling God’s story? Children can participate as acolytes, ring the bell to initiate worship, pray, read Scripture, offer drawings for the fronts of bulletins, sing on the worship team, help usher, collect the offering plates, and so much more. Consider having children bless the adults each week, and the adults blessing and praying for the kids. At home, in the same way, ask yourself how the children of your household might participate and lead more worship practices with everyone. Continually look at new ways to include all the children and all the ages of your faith community.

2 – Offer Multiple Modes of Response

All ages, not just children, learn better when we are offered multiple modalities to engage in learning. So, when we plan worship at church or at home, let’s consider multiple ways people might respond. For instance, someone might not feel comfortable reading Scripture aloud during a community gathering, or coloring a picture, but perhaps that same person might be inspired to light a candle or engage in a physical gesture of kneeling or hands raised, etc. (5) And at home, our children and spouses, grandmas, grandpas, caregivers and friends all express adoration to God differently, so why not offer multiple ways we can express and share our praise together to God? Intergenerationally speaking, the key is to offer space where we can share in these multiple modes of response together.

3 – Extend Worship Throughout the Week

How might we extend worship past a week on Sunday for all the ages attending our worship gatherings? Karen DeBoer, one of the creators of The Faith Practices Project, offers several simple ways to practice worship on Sunday and “take faith home.” (6) For instance, DeBoer hands out bells or jingle bells on a string for people to use during worship to celebrate the goodness of God, but then sends the bells home, so they can continue finding ways to engage in the spiritual practice of celebration throughout the week. (7) In the same way, parents or caregivers might give each family member a remembering stone to place in their pocket, to touch throughout their work and school days, to remember several times a day that God is with them, perhaps recalling a special verse or breath prayer.

4 – Create Rituals, Rhythms, and Patterns for Daily Worship

Finally, all ages can participate in creating new rituals, rhythms, or patterns that help us participate more fully in the life of the triune God at worship and throughout the week. Tish Harrison Warren, in Liturgy of the Ordinary, helps people imagine how we might integrate normal, everyday things we do, such as making our bed or brushing our teeth, as spiritual practices that enable us to interact with God on a daily basis. In the same way, we, as faith communities, as well as households, can adapt simple rituals, patterns, and rhythms in our worship gatherings that invite us to remember, wonder, and adore God. For instance, each week, we might invite a child to ring the old church bell or a special tone chime, to invite us to prepare our hearts as we begin worship.

In the same way, at home, we might practice blessing one another by laying our hands on each other’s heads as we all prepare to go our separate ways to school, work, and daycare. This author’s family has been participating in this kind of blessing for years; even though now kids are going to high school, college, and jobs, they still stop each morning, on their way out the door, and ask for their blessing. We always end the blessing, saying, “Remember Who you belong to!” Often, the kids, in turn, say that to us, as the parents. This created ritual or pattern has deeply embedded in all of us—not just the kids—the spiritual practice of remembering that we belong to God and that God is with us throughout the day. Rituals, rhythms, and patterns, when seen as spiritual practices of worship, can deeply embed in us God’s story.

Resources

• Abdallah, Amy F. David. Meaning in the Moment: How Rituals Help Us Move Through Joy, Pain, and Everything in Between. Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2023.
• Beckwith, Ivy. Formational Children’s Ministry: Shaping Children Using Story, Ritual, and Relationship. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2010.
• Cho, Theresa. “Intergenerational Worship.” Still Waters.
• https://theresaecho.com/intergenerational-worship/
• Earley, Jutin Whitmel. The Common Rule: Habits of Purpose for an Age of Distraction. Downer’s Grove, IL: 2019.
• Faith Practices Project. Christian Reformed Church, crcna.org.
• Grissom, Valerie M., ed. All Ages Becoming: Intergenerational Practice in the Formation of God’s People. Abilene, TX: ACU Press, 2023.
• Harding, Nick. All-Age Everything: Worship for an Intergenerational Church. Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg, 2009.
• Kirk, Daphne. Heirs Together: Establishing Intergenerational Cell Church. Suffolk: Kevin Mayhew, 1998.
• McCoy, Wilson, Imagining All Generations: A Renewed Vision for an Intergenerational Church. Abilene, TX: ACU Press, 2025.
• Millar, Sandra. Worship Together: Creating All-Age Services that Work. London: SWPK, 2012.
• Smith, Traci. Faithful Families: Creating Sacred Moments at Home. St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press, 2017.
• Warren, Tish Harrison. Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life. Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press Books, 2016.
• Witvliet, John D., ed. A Child Shall Lead: Children in Worship: A Sourcebook for Christian Educators, Musicians, and Clergy. Garland, TX: Chorister’s Guild, 1999.

Footnotes

1. This article is adapted and used by permission from Valerie M. Grissom, ed., All Ages Becoming: Intergenerational Practice in the Formation of God’s People (Abilene, TX: ACU Press, 2023); and Valerie M. Grissom, “Intergenerational Worship Is All Ages Participating,” and “Finding the GIFTS,” in Imagining All Generations: A Renewed Vision for an Intergenerational Church, 185-196, 217-226, edited by Wilson McCoy, Abilene, TX: ACU Press, 2025.
2. Valerie M. Grissom, “Worship on the Chopping Block: Essential Practices of Intergenerational Worship,” Reformed Worship, June 2022, Number 144, 29-33.
3. See more regarding ἀνάμνησις, “364.anamnesis,” BibleHub.com, accessed April 26, 2025, https://biblehub.com/greek/364.htm.
4. Robert E. Webber, Ancient-Future Worship: Proclaiming and Enacting God’s Narrative (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2008), 39-40.
5. See more about multiple modalities of learning in Robert Pendergraft, “Building Ramps Instead of Stairs: Universal Design in Planning Intergenerational Worship,” in All Ages Becoming: Intergenerational Practice in the Formation of God’s People, edited by Valerie M. Grissom (Abilene, TX: ACU Press, 2023), 117-130.
6. See the Faith Practices Project, Christian Reformed Church, crcna.org. Also see Karen DeBoer, “Faith Practices in Community and at Home,” All Ages Becoming: Intergenerational Practice in the Formation of God’s People, edited by Valerie M. Grissom (Abilene, TX: ACU Press, 2023), 133-144.
7. DeBoer, “Faith Practice in Community, and at Home,” 142.