Pastoral Care and the Faith Formation of All Generations

From The Forum Magazine, Winter 2014 - view the full issue here

Throughout the Bible we see God’s enduring concern for how well each generation works together to form the faith of the next one. And so when the people of Israel were about to enter the promised land, God impressed upon them the importance of sharing stories with their children at all times and in all places in order to pass on the faith: “when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up” (Deut. 11:19).

When Paul was looking for a way to encourage his friend Timothy in the work of ministry, he pointed out that Timothy’s faith was not his own but a gift flowing from his grandmother, passed down through his mother (2 Tim. 1:3-5).

When we share the reason for the hope in us with friends who are strangers to our faith, one of the more compelling points we can make is that our our beliefs are not of our own making. Far from it. Ours is a faith that has been handed down to us throughout the generations.

Inasmuch as pastoral care involves the task of healing, sustaining, guiding, and reconciling, it is imperative that we think of this work as cross-generational, and therefore ongoing and never finished. Put another way, good pastoral care in action looks like intergenerational faith formation. Envisioning pastoral care in this way enables us to identify opportunities for forming faith at every stage of life.

In offering the scenarios below, I am drawing on my time of service on the Faith Formation Committee of the CRC and church planting work in a university town. It is far from an exhaustive list, but my hope is that a few concrete illustrations might spur even more creative thinking.

Forming Faith in our Baptism

It is in our baptism that we receive our identity as members of Christ’s body. And while baptism occurs in one moment in time, living into our baptismal identity is a lifelong journey. Since we are prone to forgetfulness, good pastoral care can stir remembrance throughout our lives.

One way might be to begin a tradition of celebrating baptism birthdays. Looking at photos, listening to audio recordings or watching videos of the baptism service, setting out mementos of the occasion, sharing stories and testimonies that celebrate God’s faithfulness—all these activities can be a way of holding fast to the promises of God in our baptism. Marking the date of our baptism provides occasion to teach our children that we celebrate not just their lives but the life God has given them, not only their achievements but what God has accomplished in them.

Another way to renew our baptismal identity is to use it as a source of comfort and a guide for counsel. “Remember who you are,” we tell each other as members of Christ’s body. These are comforting words in times of trouble. Because we belong to Christ, in life and in death, we can endure pain and sorrow. They are also instructive words when we are trying to discern God’s will in our lives. That we belong to Christ gives us the confidence we need in times of uncertainty. We’ve all been there, in conversations with a hurting or bewildered person, lost for words in the face staggering loss or a confounding dilemma. There are probably worse places to begin in moments like that than with these words: “Remember your baptism.”

Forming Faith at the Table

When we gather around the table of the Lord’s Supper, it is the very drama of redemption in which we participate. And so there is solemnity but also gratitude, remembrance of Christ’s death as well as celebration of his resurrected life, the hope of Christ’s ascension that pervades our lives as we wait for his coming again, and a foretaste of the table he will spread before us in that day.

While it points to a powerful spiritual reality, there are also astonishingly physical aspects to the Lord’s Supper. It is an opportunity to see, touch, and taste as well as hear the proclamation of the gospel. It’s the kind of thing at which children rightly marvel. And if we can pause from our hurried, frenetic pace of life, it can be a clarifying and evocative moment for grownups too. In fact, as a table made possible by undeserved grace toward God’s people, it is the ideal place for an intergenerational gathering.

There are many ways to do this well, but gathering in a circle around the table can be especially meaningful. It puts not only the bread and the cup in full view of the church, it also helps us to see the body of Christ made up of ordinary people—dressed in their Sunday best perhaps but with their foibles and failings nonetheless. We don’t need to get caught up with forms, moreover, as it’s just as possible to see people’s faces passing you in a line. What’s important is that all members of the church family, young and old alike, welcome each other in a manner that recognizes our common need for spiritual nurture.

Forming Faith as We Profess our Faith

There is wisdom in calling Christians as they progress in faith to affirm their baptism through a public profession of faith. For those who were baptized as infants, there is a distance of time that separates one moment from the other. For those who come to the baptismal font as youths or adults, God’s action in baptism and theirs in professing faith occur in closer proximity. Regardless, there is God’s initiative and our response.

Some churches prepare their youth for profession of faith by connecting them with a spiritual mentor. Others host a retreat to create space for deeper reflection. Or a service project can provide opportunity to exercise obedience flowing from gratitude. No matter what is involved in the preparation, what’s important is coupling tangible actions with the words of profession so that a pattern emerges where keeping covenant goes hand in hand with covenant renewal.

Forming Faith as we Serve Together

With any liturgical event or practice in the church, it is important to think about building bridges to life outside the institutional church. Acts of service provide the ideal occasion for experiences that help connect what we do in church to how we act in ordinary life. An intentionally intergenerational approach can add another layer of richness to the journey.

One particular experience stands out in my mind of leading an urban plunge team as a campus minister. As we prepared, we worked to recruit a team that was as multi-generational as possible. Surprisingly—or now as I look back, not at all surprisingly—a lot of pastoral care happened during the course of our trip. Students opened up to each other about what they had seen and were learning as they inched along in bumper-to-bumper traffic. Grad students began mentoring relationship with undergrads. Estranged friends started talking again.

There’s something else etched in my memory from that action-packed week. We spent a morning at a rescue mission on skid row in Los Angeles. One afternoon we were at an afterschool tutoring program in Lincoln Heights. At the end of the week, we prepared dinner at a home for homeless families in northwest Pasadena. It was a dramatic and fitting culmination to a week of learning about justice in the city. Seeing poverty and homelessness not as an individual matter but as something that affected whole families—even parents with adorable children—touched our entire team in a powerful way. For hours we lingered after dinner, babies on laps, laughter at some of the tables, and hushed silence at others as we heard testimonies of God’s faithful provision from parents still living in dire straits. There was something transformational about seeing not only the cross-generational reach of poverty but also the vitality of intergenerational faith in families going through tough times. We saw how hardships become more bearable when generations stick together.

Forming Faith by Getting Together

It can be amazing to see how much ministry happens when people simply get together. Of course, getting intergenerational gatherings going can be a bigger challenge. I heard it all the time as the pastor of an intergenerational church in a campus context. Undergrads would tell me they were intimidated by the adults in the church. Parents of young children would wonder out loud what in the world they had to offer young hip college students.

Then slowly, they started getting together. Having intergenerational ministry teams helped. The worship team, the welcoming team, the retreat planning team—at every opportunity, we did our best to throw a broad range of ages together into doing the work of ministry. Families began opening up their homes to undergrads who missed home cooking or had rarely experienced family meals growing up. We saw undergrads rubbing shoulders with tired parents. We witnessed the miracle of perennially busy, corporate-ladder-climbing, young adult professionals slowing down to play with messy toddlers. Many of our graduates would later remark that they were blessed with greater sobriety about discipleship after college because of the intergenerational relationships they had formed during college. People of all ages got a glimpse of what faithfulness in a different stage of life might look like.

We got asked often whether we were a campus church or a church for families or whatever other affinity group that might come to mind. It was difficult to answer because we were simply the church together and enjoyed being together across generational lines.

Pastoral Care as Intergenerational Faith Formation

“Strange that we should grow older and yet grow worse, receive more from Christ and yet do less for him.” The revival preacher George Whitefield wrote these pensive words to a friend in the aftermath of the Great Awakening. What Whitefield knew from personal experience and what we can learn from examining our own lives is this crucial insight: We never outgrow the need to grow in Christ. At every stage of life, we stand in need of healing, sustaining, guiding, and reconciling.

And if we have eyes to see, we will realize that there are opportunities all around us to serve joyfully together in the work of intergenerational faith formation. For we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses—not only in ages past, but in the many ages present today.

(Peter Choi, former Director of Distance Learning)