An Intergenerational Church

I’m thrilled that the Lord has allowed me to be part of this inter-generational church. If everyone here was younger, we would lack the blessings of age, experience, and wisdom. If everyone was older, we would lack the energy, excitement and zeal of youth. When the members from Simi and Orange join us from here in Rancho we’ll have infants, toddlers, kids under ten, teens, twenty-somethings, thirty-somethings, forty-somethings, fifties, sixties, seventies, and eighties! This is beautiful and biblical.

Let’s celebrate this gift. It is a special, unique grace not every church enjoys. It makes us uniquely prepared for biblical growth and ministry.

In Titus 2 Paul speaks about different categories of people. He addresses older men (vs. 2), older women (vs. 3), young women (vs. 4), and younger men (vs. 6). All of them are needed for the church to grow in health. Younger women need older women; younger men need older men. In this sense, a church without older and younger together is crippled. If there are no younger, the older are denied the tremendous growth opportunity that comes with pouring into another generation. If there are no older, the younger are denied the spiritual parenting they need.

This is one of the reasons why it’s great to be here at this church. In Scripture, the aged are never described as useless and the young are never described as burdens. I’m hoping that moving here, my children inherit new spiritual aunts and uncles, grandmothers and grandfathers. I hope my wife and I get friends much older than us and much younger than us, so we can always be learning and growing and helping others do the same. I hope we all work together to make disciples in our church family and in our community.

These are exciting times. In the coming months, we’ll be doing what we can to get the nursery ready to handle our babies. We hope to prepare some of the rooms for Sunday school. We are going to get the office spaces ready. My prayer is that this church becomes a place humming with ministry-- where children are being discipled, older and younger are meeting for fellowship, leaders are being trained, and people are being helped. We need your help. We need your prayers and your continued faithful support as we look forward to what the Lord has for us.

“Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us, and establish the work of our hands upon us; yes, establish the work of our hands!” Psalm 90:17.