Pasadena Covenant Church Models Multigenerational Ministry

Barbara Pettit, pastor for Children and Family Ministry at Pasadena Covenant Church, has a passion for including children as active participants in the church. "I have always said, 'Never do for children what they can do for themselves,'" says Pettit.

In recent years, Pasadena Covenant has been working hard to structure itself as a Christian Formation congregation focusing on personal transformation, partnership with the home, and holistic multigenerational ministry. This initiative involves the whole church, with every church committee focusing not only on ministering to adults, but to children and youth as well.

This summer the children, youth and adults will be ministering together in South Central Los Angeles. The ministry will include both a work camp and a sports and arts camp. The camps are a cooperative effort by the church's committee on peace and justice and committees on children and youth.

Pettit says that her passion for including children in multigenerational ministry "hit" her a few years ago when she was reviewing "The Philosophy of Spiritual Formation of Children" in "A Framework for Children's Ministry" written by Bobbie Bower and Evelyn Johnson (and available from the Covenant Resource Center).

"A major task of the local church is to help children grow spiritually through a cooperative program between the home and the congregation," write Bower and Johnson. "A planned program leading to growth in godliness will include long-term modeling of behavior by mature Christian adults, direct instruction with the Bible including God's plan for salvation, and participation in the life of the Christian community."

"It hit me that when families come to church they often separate in the parking lot and then do not see each other again until they gather back at the car," says Pettit. "The only modeling of Christian behavior our children see at church is from each other and a handful of volunteers. They certainly are not participating in the life of the Christian community outside of their peer group either."

Pettit says when she first started at Pasadena Covenant, she noticed that teenagers were having a difficult time going to worship because they weren't directly involved. It was an unfamiliar place to them and they did not know the people," she says. She knew that worship with the whole congregation must become a familiar experience with familiar faces before children hit their teen years. "Children can worship," she says. "They can be an incredible inspiration to the worship of the greater congregation, but we must be intentional about it!"

As a result, Pasadena's worship services are designed to be child-friendly, but not child-focused. They intentionally include children in the same way they are intentional about including a 25-year old or a 75-year old. Joan Reeve Owens, minister of worship and music, trains the children's choir to understand that they are helping to lead worship rather than performing. She gave them the experience of writing a Psalm-based liturgy for a worship service and leading the congregation in that liturgy.

Other ways that the church involves children include the ushers and greeters allowing their young children to assist them in their jobs. Or a child may be asked to lead the call to worship or read the Scripture on a Sunday, just like any adult may. The children know that the congregational prayer time is for them as well and they often speak out with their prayers.

Pettit says that the worship service must be participatory, visual, active, and story-based to be child-friendly. She point out that these are elements that are great for engaging adults as well. And children's sermons aren't used, says Pettit, because church leaders do not want kids to believe that they only need to "check in" during that particular time in the service.

Another way the church is including everyone in ministry is by involving teens in children's ministry. "We are intentional about not using them as warm bodies," says Pettit, "but investing in training them and giving them 'real' responsibilities. Our 2's and 3's class is totally teen-lead by small group leaders. . . . I remind them often that the children can imagine themselves being a teenager like them more than they can imagine being 40 plus, like me!"

Pettit says that while multi-generational ministry is age-old concept and core to our faith heritage, church leaders need to figure out how it can look in our postmodern world. She says that this means change--and change means work.

"Children will not likely rise up and take a stand for their place in the faith community," she says. "They will simply not come back when they are finally given the freedom to make their own choices. That is not acceptable to me!"

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