HOW TIME FLIES

“O God, You have taught me from my youth,

And to this day I declare Your wondrous works.

Now also when I am old and gray-headed,

O God, do not forsake me,

Until I declare Your strength to the coming generation,

Your power to everyone who is to come.” Psalm 71:17 & 18

The Psalmist had a passion to “declare” the works of God to the next generation. I love the focus of this particular Psalm. Here was someone who had lived for God their entire life – and now in old age, they were incredibly motivated to share “God stories” (“Your wondrous works”) with the generation to come. This kind of motivation is the heartbeat of truly effective mentoring. This person had a long and beautiful relationship with the Lord of Heaven and their continuing desire was to share their love for the Lord with younger people.

I’ve personally had the amazing privilege of knowing some people like this. Truthfully, there’s not many of them out there (and that’s a shame); but the “gray heads” who love the Lord and who enthusiastically want to tell younger people what He has done for them are contagious. This is how good churches are built – it’s the joyful expression of Godly older people who love the Lord so much that they can’t help but “declare” God’s faithfulness over the years with the younger, emerging generations.

Have you ever noticed how time flies? My wife and I have been married almost 35 years now. Our children are all adults and we have two granddaughters. The disasters of 9/11 happened almost 10 years ago, and it’s been forever since the Green Bay Packers won their last Super Bowl. (Well, maybe not forever. But, you get my point.) Doesn’t it seem that the older we get, the quicker time goes by?

Churches are like that, too. It’s also a shame that once vibrant and growing churches are closing their doors in record numbers all across this country. I had the opportunity to visit some of the churches that were once used of God to launce entire movements that impacted culture and that once served as models of effective, community-changing ministry. Some of those buildings are in complete disrepair with just a handful of older people huddled together almost afraid to change in any way. Friends, our churches shouldn’t be that way! We must be intentional about declaring God’s strength to the coming generations!

How about it? Is your church characterized by older people who contagiously and infectiously share God’s wonderful works with younger generations? If not, it should be!

Here are a few quick ideas on how to develop inter-generational mentoring relationships in your church:

1. Be intentional about motivating and training your church’s older people to pray by name for younger people. This could start by distributing a simple list of names and prayer requests. I’ve been in churches that encourage older people to develop prayer-partner relationships with younger people in the church. As the older people pray the Lord will put a growing burden on their heart for the younger people.

2. Once the older people are praying specifically for younger people, take them on a “field trip” to see the young people in action. Paul specifically told his student Timothy to be an “example” to older people (1 Timothy 4:12). Yet, how can that happen without exposure to each other? Make sure that your church’s older people get to know your young people and see how they are living for God in their own culture. Another way to do this is to give your students the opportunity to serve in significant public settings in your church services.

3. Provide opportunities for the different generations to have intentional, informal contact with each other. Some churches ask their young people to host a banquet for the senior citizens and other churches ask the older people to offer to pay for individual students to attend various church youth activities. Other churches schedule informal game nights for the generations to get to know each other better.

4. Once growing relationships have been established, give the generations opportunities to specifically pray with each other. Inter-generational prayer can be a real blessing and encouragement, but it can also be rather intimate and perhaps even quite threatening. So, start slowly and see what happens. Ultimately, this can be a powerful and influential force for good in your church. Young people need to hear older people pray – likewise, older people need to hear young people pay.

5. Provide some opportunities for members of the various generations to serve alongside of each other in the church. What about your team of ushers or the people in the sound room? And what about your Sunday School teachers? Encourage each serving member of older generations to make it a top priority to recruit a younger person to serve alongside them in their various avenues of ministry. It should be the expected norm in all of your ministries that older people are actively training younger people to take over someday.

Yes, time flies. In “no time at all” one generation will pass from the scene and a new generation will be present. God expects one generation to pass the baton to the next generation. Churches must be intentional about doing this - or it won’t happen.

"NOT SITTING AT THE KIDS’ TABLE"

Remember eating at the kids’ table during family gatherings? The adults would sit at the massive dining room table in the big chairs and they’d use the good china, the real silverware, and cloth napkins. But, the kids ate somewhere else, usually on a folding card table, off to the side somewhere, sitting on an assortment of other random chairs and a lone piano bench. The kids would use plastic utensils and would eat off of those ubiquitous Styrofoam plates. There were always two very different tables, with two very different experiences.

It’s too bad, but many churches are set up this same way. We’ve bought into the idea that there is a “generation gap” and so we’ve programmed our churches to reflect that.

Friends, it’s time to change this paradigm. It’s time to connect the generations in your church!

We are absolutely convinced that real-life, hands-on mentoring is one very practical way that any church, anywhere can intentionally break down generational barriers – and it must begin with the adults. How many young people do you know who would have the personal confidence or security to walk up to a key adult in the church and ask them to be their mentor? That is not likely to happen very often. Instead, older adults must initiate personal and growing relationships with younger people.

Of course, it is very, very important that you build “guardrails” or safeguards into this process in your church. We live in a dark and sinful world where evil predators and sick people abound. The news accounts are nauseating of coaches, teachers, priests, and other significant adults who take advantage of unsuspecting and gullible young people. Our church just instituted a carefully-crafted “child protection policy” and we are enforcing it with tenacity in all areas of our ministry. We highly recommend that your church leaders do their homework on implementing legal and enforceable guidelines into your church’s ministries with juveniles.

However, the sin around us must not thwart the work that our Lord wants to do in and through the various generations in your church. In fact, we all know it’s true, when culture is at its darkest – the light of the Gospel of Jesus Christ shines ever brighter! Praise the Lord for His light shining through His people.

Again, it is important to emphasize that effective mentoring is a spiritual exercise and it must begin with Godly older adults. The Apostle Paul outlined the practical ingredients of true mentoring in his memorable letter to the Thessalonian church in 1 Thes. 2:8, “So, affectionately longing for you, we were well pleased to impart to you not only the gospel of God, but also our own lives, because you had become dear to us.” He made it clear that his relationship with them was based on God’s Word (notice his use of “the gospel”), but he also emphasized his loving and caring interpersonal connections with them. It’s important to note that growing, individual, and inter-generational relationships must include these two imperative ingredients: (1) the Word of God, and (2) sharing your life in a caring and growing manner.

If you are convinced that intergenerational mentoring is the way you should begin to connect the generations in your church, it must be launched through the solid teaching of Biblical truth. Your pastor or other church leaders can use passages such as this one in 1 Thessalonians 2 or the familiar instructions to older women and older men in Titus 2 to challenge your people concerning the development of building inter-generational connections. The Scriptures are also filled with practical examples of people like Barnabas, Paul, and Silas that illustrate how this could work in basic life situations. Perhaps your church could schedule some time within the current structure of your women’s ministries and men’s ministries to teach your people on the importance of mentoring and then launch it within those existing programs. The important thing to remember is that God will always use His Word to challenge and instruct His people, so it is imperative that your church begins this process based upon solid Biblical teaching. We emphatically recommend, based upon passages such as Titus 2, that older women mentor young women and older men mentor younger men. Current culture may teach differently, but this particular safeguard is imperative. Women should mentor women – and men should mentor men!

The next step, practically speaking is to announce and schedule a meeting for all of the interested adults. It has been our experience that many of your adults will be interested in serving as mentors with younger people. However, we have also noticed that even though adults indicate they are interested in serving as a mentor, they will also feel as if they do not have the time to do it. It is for this specific reason that we tell churches that true mentoring is not necessarily an investment of extra time, it is in actuality “doing what you already do”, just doing that with younger people.

Over the past few years, both of us have had multiple opportunities to speak to churches and church leaders about the practical aspects of mentoring. It has been so encouraging to see how personal and inter-generational connections have developed around very basic things. We have witnessed churches where various generations get together around things like golf, quilting, computers, auto mechanics, piano lessons, karate, crafts, and other very simple day-to-day activities. The purpose of mentoring is actually very simple – it is basically the building of growing, inter-generational relationships that foster spiritual growth by just spending time together.

We always encourage individual adults to begin building these relationships with specific younger people right there in the church building. Mentoring begins in the church foyer when adults go out of their way to greet individual young people and by simply asking them non-threatening and life-related questions. A simple question like “How is school going?” or “How many points did you score in the game last night?” can lead to deeper, more meaningful conversations.

Then once a relationship begins in church, the older adult can then invite the young people to accompany them in other non-threatening activities outside of the actual church building. The key is to connect the generations. Practical ideas of how this could work are numerous. Maybe the generations can even sit together during holiday dinners.

(We’ll share specific principles and thoughts on making these connections during Vision For Youth’s National Mentoring Summit on Saturday, March 5th on the campus of Baptist Bible College in Clarks Summit, PA. Registration information can be found on the VFY web site at: http://www.visionforyouth.com/.)

Motivating Older Couples to Mentor Younger Couples

I am certainly not a proficient joke teller, but here’s one I remember.

Two elderly couples met regularly as friends to play games. On one occasion, the first man noticed that the other man was playing exceptionally well that evening. So, he turned to his friend and complimented him on his game. To which the friend replied, “I’m probably doing so well because I’ve been taking classes recently at a memory clinic and it has made a huge difference for me.”

“That’s great,” his friend replied. “What is the name of that clinic?”

The first guy went blank for a moment or two and then asked, “What do you call that flower with the long stem and the thorns?”

 “You mean a rose?” His friend answered.

“Yes, that’s it!” He said.

So, he turned to his wife and said, “Rose, what is the name of that memory clinic I’ve been going to recently?”


I’m positive that I’ll forget this story sometime as well. However, I am absolutely convinced that one of the top ministry priorities for local churches is to help older married couples develop intentional mentoring relationships with younger couples. Here’s one reason why I believe this. According to a new book by Thom Rainer and his son, Jess Rainer, (The Millennials: Connecting to America’s Largest Generation), “91% of Millennials want to learn from people who have long-term successful marriages.”

That is an amazing statistic, but it concurs with what God’s Word teaches us to do in Titus 2: 1 – 8. The older women were instructed there to, “…admonish the young women to love their husbands, to love their children…”

It only makes sense. Older people can and should mentor younger people. This is especially true in the development of Godly marriages. We must be intentional about helping older couples make mentoring connections in the church with younger married couples. Plus, today’s younger generation may be more open to this kind of relationship than any previous generation before them. Here’s another quote from the Rainer’s new book. “An incredible 94 percent (of Millennials) said they have great respect for older generations.”

Here are some ideas on how you could make this work in your church:

1. Organize a Sunday School class where married couples of all ages could meet together and where older couples could develop intentional relationships with younger couples. Perhaps the pastor or a respected “elder” in the church could teach or facilitate the discussion around Biblical principles.

2. Motive the older Godly couples in your church to develop intentional connections with young married couples. They could invite those couples into their homes to take them out for Sunday dinner. Some churches also actually organize a “surrogate or adopted grandparents” ministry to help babysit from time-to-time for the younger couples with children.

3. Train some of the older married couples in your church to help with pre-marital or post-marital counseling of younger couples. People with “long-term successful” marriages are the ideal people to help “admonish” the young couples in your church.

4. Plan a church fellowship or game night where older couples and younger couples could gather for a brief time of fellowship and interaction. Set up tables and chairs in one of the church’s classrooms and ask the couples to bring their favorite table games. Be sure that the young couples sit with some of the older couples. Give them some time to play the games and to generally get to know each other. Then have someone facilitate a discussion around the tables where the older couple could tell their stories of how they met, how they got engaged, and share accounts of the early days of their marriage. (I visited one church that scheduled a fellowship time where married couples could bring and share their wedding albums with other couples. Get ready for a few laughs with that one!) Today’s young people love stories – and this could be an ideal way to help the generations connect with each other.

Maybe the first gentleman in the above joke would forget his wife’s name, but being intentional about connecting the generations in your church would help us all “…not forget the works of God.” (Psalm 78:1 – 8)

All church leaders and church people interested in developing an intentional church-based mentoring ministry are invited to register for Vision For Youth’s National Mentoring Summit to be held on Saturday, March 5^th at Baptist Bible College in Clarks Summit, PA. The cost is only $30 for a full-day of sessions and resources – many of them led and developed by Mel and Peggy Walker. For more information see: http://www.visionforyouth.com/.