Two South England Churches Form Teams to Implement Intergenerational Worship

Almost within view of Windsor Castle, England, located on the northern side of the main M4 stretch from London to the West of England motorway, is the Slough Seventh-day Adventist Church. If Windsor and its most prominent residents represent tradition and the status quo, the members of Slough, Guildford, and the Grace Linc church plant are ready for change as they gathered together at the Slough Church on April 22, 2023.

With a focus on change to make good worship better, Karen Holford, Trans-European Division (TED) Family Ministries director, shared with members new and creative ways to engage children and youth in worship. Recognizing a need to make worship multisensory, Holford shared many innovative ideas, including ways of making colorful visualizations, the retelling of Bible stories in a modern context, and using affordable, available products to create and illustrate the content in worship.

Focusing even closer on the essential elements of every worship, Holford then continued to present stories, Scripture readings, prayers, and preaching using this approach. Group workshops engaged participants not only in discussion but also an opportunity to create their intergenerational worship, run by children or aimed for children. As Holford connected participants with sources and resources, the group began to think about the long term. How do members transition their churches from where we are now to making every worship intergenerational?

A Sobering Reality

A recent Slough Church survey among its teens revealed the worrying reality that over a half of them responded by sharing that they find church either boring or not geared for them. The survey also discovered as a consequence that they are choosing not to “attend worship anymore” but instead “do their own thing.”

With this sobering reality, church leaders in the district have determined to work as hard as possible to ensure the trend can be reversed, even to the extent of becoming sensitive to the language they use in church. As one participant shared, “We recognize the ever-important salvation message of love, but we need to communicate it in a language today’s generation understand [sic]. Otherwise, we all go on a huge adventure in missing the point!”

Inspired to dig deep to try and put the new findings into reality, Guildford and Slough churches have formed teams to promote and implement the strategy in their worship and church activities.

The original version of this story was posted on the Trans-European Division website.