I'm on a mission

When I was a little, yet growing girl, my family were very much a part of a wider family network. Now if you know my extended family you would know just how expansive it is with my many uncles and aunties and cousins and grandparents and 2nd cousins, and now nephew and babies to in formation! Naturally, I love the concept of family and mixing it with people of various generations. As I look back on my 'formational' years what stands out to me is the input my family had in my life. I don't just mean my blood/marriage related family though. 

You see my Dad and Mum have been ministers in the Anglican Church since before I was born [ok my Mum isn't called a Minister and hasn't trained to be one - like my Dad, but she has faithfully served people alongside my Dad, so I'm calling her one]. So my 3 sisters and I had a great time being embraced by Church families around NSW, wherever we moved to. There are 2 Church families that were most formational for us: Mullumbimby and Alstonville. We spend most of our schools years between those 2 places [well at least my older sister and I did]. The people in both those Churches are definitely 'family' to us. What I love most about those Churches at those times was that there were lots of different people in them - various ages, personalities, abilities and life stories/backgrounds. Yet noone seemed out of place as though they didn't belong and I was always assured that these people were my family - because they treated me like family too. Even when we moved away, people from these churches would come celebrate significant events with us - even if it meant a 3-7hr drive. And whenever any one of them has died we have mourned and at least one of my family would attended funerals when possible [which has become more often these last 2 years. After all some of them seemed old when I was in primary school, so 20yrs or so later it is not really a surprise - yet still sad].

As I consider God's design for humanity and the way in which Jesus has and is at work to redeem that perfect design in us, there has been a growing desire in me to 'live the change' by helping the different generations intertwine again. As a youth/young families minister in a local church, it has been one of my missions to help my church family shift it's culture from being Age-segregated to Intergenerational - where younger and older people are lovingly and deliberately active in each others' lives so that we all grow. I've been at it for 5 years now, which is why I am finally blogging about it. Someone said on a podcast I was listening to today that they had been working on some project for 12 years, which made me think that it's about time I started recording things I've learned in this mission already so that I don't forget them by the 12th year [wherever I am this will always be part of my mission]. Plus, the things I have experienced and learned in these past 5 years have all been related to 'living the change' in other areas of life and ministry, so it's apt that I talk about it on this blog.

Feel free to share any of your discoveries or experiences with creating, changing or enjoying an Intergenerational Culture :)