00:00:00.000 - 00:00:32.200

And we'll go so rapidly, for me particularly, because what I feel and what I think about intergenerational groups comes, some of it from a head knowledge, and I want to share some of the head knowledge with you. But so much of what intergenerational groups to me, mean to me, come from a gut level.

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And some people have even trouble with the word intergenerationally. Don't know how to spell it or how to hyphenate it or what to do with it, but I usually kind of assume that intergenerational means gut. Because in just the few minutes that I had to talk with you, and please tell me your

00:00:53.480 - 00:01:11.960

name again. Phyllis you mentioned that your interest in coming in here was was because of something that I connected up with a gut level feeling that I'm talking about. Tell the rest of us what you were saying would you mind doing that?

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I have two older children that have a long age gap, and a third child. When the two older ones were very young, we were privileged and blessed to be able to live

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close to grandparents. And they were there weekly, and sometimes summer time almost daily. And then we moved away when my third child was an infant

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to Kansas. And she grew up with her grandparent. We had no relatives there. And she grew up without that beneficial contact.

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And there's, there is no way that I can ever build what my two older children have with their grandparents with this young, she just, they're kin folks. And there's all the other different feelings

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with the two older children. The grandparents are far more precious to them because they know 'em better. - And so from a family need, you're here.

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Do some of the others of you, I had a few moments to talk with you about your need for wanting to use the education model. And I appreciate that.

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Do you have a, some of the others of you, what are your needs for knowing about intergenerational family life education? Ms. Brewster, you said you came

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because of an interest in the subject. I have a feeling you must believe that groups of people must in some way be related like families, do you?

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- Well, I feel, after hearing particularly the speaker, the first speaker in Congress this morning, and I already knew it, that we no longer have as many people living even near each other

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as her, much less in the same household. So I just wanted to see what the members of the Congress knew. - What are some of your other needs?

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What's the need? - Okay, one need is similar to, I can't really get into it, to feel such need about,

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'cause our children are, we've never lived custody, you know, either one of our parents, anything, and I would, you know, most of the other grandchildren have, you know,

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and you wish that your children could have somewhat of the same feelings that they, you know, me, like I grew up right next door to one of my grandparents, you know,

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so naturally you wish that they could have some of that in their lives too, and then also as far as in the church, I'd like to see how we can minister to families that are in the same situation.

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Some of them are usually more free, my husband's a pastor, are usually more free to go on weekends or something because their families then are pastors and ministers in general. But also how just the different generations within the church can minister to one another. I guess I have the need to to share a little bit about why I

00:04:01.480 - 00:04:20.800

Think that an intergenerational Family life education model is important and the best way I can do this is to sit down and tell you how a specific model came to be and I'd like to do that if you if you will let me and share with me

00:04:21.800 - 00:04:39.160

thoughts along the way and I guess the way I see this time divided will be for me to tell you a little bit about Where we have come Then to present to you some of that head knowledge and I'd like to tell you some concepts of education that I think

00:04:39.160 - 00:04:59.020

justify or Legitimize what we're doing as an educational model and then spend the last part of our time together showing you some how-to's that have been developed and and Trying to reflect some questions or needs that you might have on the how-to part the activities and all

00:04:59.020 - 00:05:15.980

John and I Have two children at this point in our life who are teenagers, but our need for intergenerational life Came long before we could even verbalize what was happening to us

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Missouri is my home. It is for John. And in 1963 when a decision was made for us to come to New Orleans for John to do further graduate study, we packed up all our belongings except for an old set of coil bed springs that wouldn't fit on the back of a little U-Haul and we headed from Missouri to New Orleans.

00:05:42.920 - 00:06:11.640

Looking back now, I realize that that long 26-mile causeway across Ponchatrain Lake has become a symbol of something for me. It symbolized that I left behind in Missouri a tradition and a person, me. I left a lot of me behind. And the three years in New Orleans, the experiences that we had there, when I flew across

00:06:11.640 - 00:06:37.200

that lake three years later with a 10 day old baby to head to life in Nashville. I had some experiences and John had some experiences that were truly life-changing and here's how they impact intergenerational work. For the first time in the community of the seminary, the married students apartment, the student

00:06:37.200 - 00:07:03.180

life, John and I found a peer group of, it happened to be in this case, two couples other than ourselves, who became like brothers and sisters to us. And for the first time I had a feeling of church in that growing out some work we had done with small groups and some of the work coming out of the West Coast in group dynamics.

00:07:03.180 - 00:07:24.900

We had a small group that developed where we experienced with each other forgiveness, grace, justice, acceptance, all those things that are so appropriate to Christians. But I discovered something else. I discovered that there could be brothers and sisters who could be more important to

00:07:24.900 - 00:07:45.980

me than my own blood brother. And that scripture that says that we sometimes find people who are new family in the faith, "You must leave brothers and sisters," I experienced that. At the same time that was happening, our family, which happened to be John and me at that time,

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became enmeshed with the family of Ann and Avery Lee. Avery was the pastor at St. Charles Avenue at that time and his wife, three teenagers, boys and a daughter and during the three years there we often child set or house set for them and we went over and had chicken livers and hamburgers on Saturday night and in a very

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beautiful way we discovered a new family and I discovered a woman in Ann Lee who became mother sister she was too young to be my mother but she in many ways was the nurturant model for me and a a lot of what you see now, the me sitting here, is Ann Lee. And I discovered, as our friend Myron Madden said,

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that we do have the power to bless people. And Ann did that for me. Now, that is important for you to know, because in some way I think you all

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may have experienced this, or you maybe will experience this. Now when we left New Orleans and flew to Nashville, We took with us a 10-day-old daughter.

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John had a new job. I finally said to him, "John, you must get a job "and get out of this seminary life." Can you identify with that, some of you?

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You must go to work. But we came into a situation where all the stress factors were high. And we were looking when we moved to Nashville.

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We were proactive seekers. And it took us a few years to verbalize here again what we were seeking. We would invite people into our home. We would invite other couples into our home like we tried to do with those two couples in

00:09:33.680 - 00:09:57.200

New Orleans. Some of them we scared off. We said we want to get to know you. Well, they'd never come back. And we went to a big church and we looked for people there. And four or five years passed and there was this longing in us and we didn't know what it was. And by this time we had Judd who came 28

00:09:57.200 - 00:10:19.480

months after Melissa did. And here we were a young family with no parents close by. Mine were in Missouri, far piece from Nashville. Johns were deceased, no brothers or sisters. And we ate. Well we got caught in about in the early 70s to a group of people like ourselves, some professionals and students at

00:10:19.480 - 00:10:40.840

Vanderbilt and we found some couples who said we would like to start a house church. The big church is not meeting our needs and here I must define big church and little church. Big church is is to me and was at the time a large church in Nashville with a thousand membership and a beautiful sanctuary and all that.

00:10:40.840 - 00:11:06.920

Little Church became a house church with 20-25 people. We tried it. Labor Day 1970. We said, "Okay, let's give it a try. Let's try a house church." John and I are so much products of denominational life. We are Southern Baptists from the word go, and so we did not split from our big church, but we tried to

00:11:06.920 - 00:11:27.480

incorporate into our lifestyle another church life. So on Thursday nights we'd go to stew supper with the little church. On Wednesday nights we would be at the big church with choirs and all that. Sunday morning, big church. Sunday afternoon, little church. Sunday night, big church. For three years we did that and

00:11:27.480 - 00:11:50.760

we found some new experiences in the little church that shaped our lives. We We found that we could take our children and worship as a family. No longer in the little church did we send Melissa and Judd off to the nursery. We found that here were a group of people who said, "Let's create some experiences

00:11:50.760 - 00:12:08.280

and not just do head knowledge stuff." And we found that we could do a number of worship experiences in new ways, and it began to feed that need in us. And as you might well guess, with two preschoolers and a busy lifestyle, John was a consultant

00:12:08.280 - 00:12:22.360

and began to travel. We had to make a choice. And so we said, "We are denominational people. We will give up the little church and we will go back to our big church and look for a community."

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And we knew at that point that what we had missed along and that what we had had in New Orleans was we had discovered community in the faith, in the church. Now we still grapple with a sense of community. Miss it a lot at this point in my life, I do. But what we did was we said, "Okay, we are proactive, creative people and when I look

00:12:48.620 - 00:13:16.180

at you and see your faces I know that you are that way too. You wouldn't be here if you weren't. And we said, "We are smart, and I believe that Baptist educators are the best in the world." I believe that. And so we said, "Okay, let's look for a family in the church. Let's look for a second family. Let's look for grandparents, for Melissa and

00:13:16.180 - 00:13:32.320

Judd. Let's look for some brothers and sisters in the church. Let's look for some children besides our own. And about that time, two really important people were saying the same thing.

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And those people, some of you know, Albert and Mabel McClellan. Albert at that time was in the executive office in the Southern Baptist Convention.

00:13:43.420 - 00:14:02.760

Their two sons were grown and in school in a way. And they began saying, we don't have any little people in our lives, we don't have any grandchildren. We would like to be in a family group and so out of that similar longing we

00:14:02.760 - 00:14:23.420

sat down on a couple of Wednesday nights and started scheming and out of that grew our first second family intergenerational experience. It's hard to convey how much it means to me because I've told the story before

00:14:23.420 - 00:14:37.920

and sometimes the feeling does not always come across to me. But as a young woman with children who knew that my children were missing out on the beauty of a woman like you, Ms. Brister,

00:14:37.920 - 00:15:00.400

who has seen experiences in life, I knew that I wanted for them somebody like you. And I knew I wanted those people to be Christians, like my folks were, are. And I had to make it happen. And I knew that we had people in our churches who were the

00:15:00.400 - 00:15:23.000

same way. So there about came our need for an intergenerational group. In some ways it's such a simple thing. And I thought, I thought, silly me, it's going to be so simple to do an extended family in the church because family life should come natural for me. But then I learned that intergenerational is spelled

00:15:23.000 - 00:15:49.080

another way. Intergenerational groups are spelled W-O-R-K, work. And so I really challenge you in the next few minutes when we're talking about the educational principle and the resources, you're going to have to want to do this pretty badly.

00:15:49.080 - 00:16:09.720

Because a lot of it you're going to create yourself and it's going to go against what we as Southern Baptists have so beautifully designed for a number of years and that is age-graded concepts. Now I'm not surprised that there are a small number in this room and I'm certainly not

00:16:09.720 - 00:16:35.240

discouraged because we're talking about an education concept that goes against the flow. You buy that? It's true. We send our children into church. We take them. I've always taken, we've taken our children. You do that too probably. We've taken our children and when we hit the back door of the church they go in the

00:16:35.240 - 00:16:56.960

nursery, they go in the preschool sessions, they go in the youth rooms, I go off to my rooms, and in some churches, unfortunately, the husbands and wives split. Sometimes we meet again in the sanctuary, but many of us do not, because if you're on the staff, certainly your husband is somewhere where you are not.

00:16:56.960 - 00:17:32.480

If you are like John and like me, we were choir members, and so our children were not inquire with us. What's happening to our families? What is the church doing? What do you think I'm thinking we're doing? Very likely we're adding to the problem and that hurts me. That - I think it's a secular educational method in that sense

00:17:32.480 - 00:17:43.760

because before everybody was just in one big school room, everybody was there all together, and now everybody goes to grade according to their age, and we did the same thing in the church.

00:17:43.760 - 00:17:55.000

- We certainly did, didn't we? And so it's gonna take a few years to overcome that. Now, I think if you wanna do education that is intergenerational,

00:17:55.000 - 00:18:05.600

The best thing we can do is to get a firm base for that to make us legitimate, so that when people ask you what you're doing, you won't come off looking like

00:18:05.600 - 00:18:15.320

you don't know what you're doing. And so in the next few minutes, I want to equip you by adding what I think are some sound educational principles

00:18:15.320 - 00:18:32.440

that will come in handy. Now when we started looking back in the early '70s at a little church and what it meant to bring our children into a house church and set up an education program

00:18:32.440 - 00:18:51.040

for them that would not separate us as families. We were hard put. There wasn't a lot available. We came up with some work being done by Margaret Salwin.

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Margaret is and was, still is, with the American Baptist Convention. And she too had a concept of families, of blending all ages together,

00:19:05.480 - 00:19:15.200

and had already developed the concept of family clustering. Some of you may have gone to workshops with Margaret, have you? In our group yesterday there were several,

00:19:15.200 - 00:19:24.860

and I've talked to several. Well, Margaret has written, and she has taken the time and energy to form Family Clustering Incorporated.

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And a book that I have of hers, Hope for Families, is one that she has edited and brought together some experiences of people who have tried her model.

00:19:36.400 - 00:19:48.020

S-A-W-I-N, saw one, say one, there are two pronunciations of it, and although I've met her, I'm sure I may not pronounce it in the way she does.

00:19:51.400 - 00:20:02.940

I suggest this as certainly something for you to read. It's on the bibliography that I have here on the table that I want you to take. But this is a basic concept.

00:20:02.940 - 00:20:14.720

Now when we were looking at it though, we came back to the idea that so often if we want to do something additional in our church, it means if you wanna do a family cluster,

00:20:14.720 - 00:20:29.460

that you ask 'em to come out on Friday night, you're running into big trouble. Thursday night's not a good night, Monday night's not a good night. So we were having problems with how do you invite your church people who are already

00:20:29.460 - 00:20:49.660

booked to take another night to be family. And that's where it latched onto our heads, in our heads, that the church structure could provide us a place and a time if we would just utilize it. John, being in church training,

00:20:49.660 - 00:21:06.280

began to feel some wheels clicking here. And so when we came into the big church in '73 and started talking to Albert and Mabel McClellan, we began thinking, well,

00:21:06.280 - 00:21:21.560

if the church is available on Sunday night, and obviously not everyone comes to church training, in fact, we find some churches don't even have them, so your church sits empty on Sunday night. Here is a nursery. Here is a newsletter already in

00:21:21.560 - 00:21:51.840

operation which publicizes. So we said, "Okay, let's try it on Sunday night. Let's try having a second family, an intergenerational group, and let's do it as a short-term study, knowing that families are busy, that some mothers and fathers travel, knowing that children get booked up. Let's put it in the church. Let's ask for a commitment from people.

00:21:51.840 - 00:22:17.120

And so here's how we started out. We took the list of people in our church and we went down and we said, "Okay, who doesn't come on Sunday night? What families have children? Where is there a single adult? Where are the senior adults and who are they? Where are the teenagers that might come? So we printed up a letter. We said, "Would you

00:22:17.120 - 00:22:39.920

consider coming to an intergenerational group, people of all ages? Would you come on Sunday night from January through May? Will you come for a snack supper immediately after worship?" We had a worship first and then our training groups. Would you take that hour and a half and commit yourself to be there every time that you can,

00:22:39.920 - 00:22:55.360

knowing that you will be ill, that you may be out of town on a trip, that you may have a test coming up the next day in school, but will you commit to it? We sent out the letters. There were about 70 families, 70 units that we sent to.

00:22:55.360 - 00:23:18.440

Mrs. McClellan, Mabel, and I got on the phone and we called them. "Did you get our letter? Will you do it?" And some of them said, "Sure, we'd like to give that a try." Well, the first Sunday night came and we had taken a room off the side of our fellowship hall that held about, oh, 30 people, I guess, and set up a couple of tables. Not knowing what to expect,

00:23:18.440 - 00:23:42.920

well here the people started coming. Had some teenagers come without their parents, floored me. Had some people come in who had little children like Judd and Melissa. Had some senior adults who came to be with us. Some singles. Well, the room got so crowded and we were just oozing out that first night. It was hot and kids were kind of, "What is going on?"

00:23:42.920 - 00:24:04.720

We did some work around the tables and we said, "What have we done? Have we created a monster. But we invited them back the next week and they came and we opened the dividing doors and made more room. And then the next week we said, "Hey, we have to have fellowship hall for our family group." So we got it. For those three months we had an experience

00:24:04.720 - 00:24:31.020

that I, the only way you can really know about intergenerational family groups is to experience one. And for me to stand here and to talk and tell you about it is just the antithesis of what it is. We need to be doing some of it right now. But trust me, out of it came the learning. Now here's what we discovered. I want to write only a few words, but I want

00:24:31.020 - 00:25:01.480

you to latch on with your training and expertise. I want you to pick up on this and see how it works. Intergenerational learning is as old as old. It's not a new thing. It's Out of California back in the '60s, early '60s, came a word, "confluent." Confluent education out of the public school writings was the kind of thing where they

00:25:01.480 - 00:25:21.000

wanted to take the cognitive skills in children and blend those with experience in the classroom, those two together. They thought it was a new thing. Think back with me to Deuteronomy.

00:25:21.000 - 00:25:30.600

How do we teach our children faith? We write it on a gate post. We wear it on our heads. We talk to them when we walk in the way.

00:25:30.600 - 00:25:41.640

We talk to them when we sit in the house. What are we doing? What have people of faith always done to educate? they've mixed the head and the heart.

00:25:41.640 - 00:26:00.240

So that's what we do in intergenerational groups. We have content, that's the cognitive head stuff, but we work with the heart and the emotion and the affect. We blend head and experience.

00:26:00.240 - 00:26:08.400

And so when people say to you, what is intergenerational family life education? You say it's confluent education. It's out of Deuteronomy.

00:26:08.400 - 00:26:22.880

It's the head and the heart. That's the kind of education it is. It's experiential, but it's also head stuff. Now, the other word that describes what we do

00:26:22.880 - 00:26:36.760

is that intergenerational work is informal. Now, how formal can you be when you have children in your midst? Have any of you tried worshiping with little children?

00:26:36.760 - 00:27:07.500

happens? What happens to it? It's naturally informal. You have them crawling in and out. One of the things that I, that happened in the little church that made me realize that we have to change our mindset is, was centered around a time when we were doing the Lord's Supper and And in the informal group, if you've done it in the Lord's Supper in an informal group,

00:27:07.500 - 00:27:26.380

we had a loaf of bread and had had the worship and we'd had the juice that we passed. And at some point Judd, who was about 18 months old, had also had something of the grape juice. So because our children stayed with us and participated where they could, as much as they could in the worship.

00:27:26.380 - 00:27:48.460

Well Judd apparently had, as I remember, that whole worship had stayed with it in the group. And so as we were concluding our worship and as we stood in the warmth of the communion together and we were standing for our benediction, John had reached down and picked up Judd and was holding him in his arms and we were all in a small circle.

00:27:48.460 - 00:28:07.580

Well someone was going to lead in the benediction and it had been a very beautiful experience for the person who was leading it had done a beautiful job. And so as we had our arms together and Jud in our midst, we bowed our heads and we were all feeling so close to God.

00:28:07.580 - 00:28:20.660

And all of a sudden, as the person began to pray, this big burp came out of Jud. I mean it just rippled through us. Do you think any of us could pray? Of course not.

00:28:20.660 - 00:28:34.740

We burst into laughter, we hugged, and it's the one time that I remember being benedicted with a burp. But it came out of our life. It came out of our common celebration.

00:28:34.740 - 00:28:58.240

And so the laughter was the benediction and the love for little Judd that the others had. Now that means that in intergenerational family life, whether we do it in our homes or in the church, we've got to change the attitude about the importance of being formal in worship or being informal, whether it be formal in study or be informal.

00:28:58.240 - 00:29:16.840

And with intergenerational groups, we have to go to the side of informality. We must be able to accept the children in our midst. We must change our mind. And if any of you have been in services where it's usually adults and youth and very stately,

00:29:16.840 - 00:29:32.360

you know that the moment a child comes into that sanctuary and starts to cry, every head will turn. We're so, we're so, we don't want it. Well that's not intergenerational.

00:29:32.360 - 00:29:48.200

And I cannot believe that the early church did not have children in it. They must have had them, didn't they? Sure they did. I love the part out of Paul when they're talking about Paul preaching and the guy sitting up

00:29:48.200 - 00:29:59.160

in the window fell asleep. I mean Paul was preaching till midnight after all and I just have visions of this young man sitting up there in the window listening to Paul and he fell asleep and fell out. What?

00:29:59.160 - 00:30:06.840

Down to the... And they had to go out and revive him. Well, I know what was going on. They had all their kids in that room and Paul just kept going and adults loved it but the

00:30:06.840 - 00:30:29.640

kid went to sleep and fell out. I know they had their kids with them. The informality showed up in our group in a lot of ways. What does it do to you when someone calls you by your first name as Brister? If a little boy or girl would come up, what what would they call you?

00:30:29.640 - 00:31:00.200

people of all ages now, my grandchildren, so I know I feel perfectly all right and I have many many younger friends so I've been intergenerational all along. Oh I love that so you're Elaine and it's okay. Oh I like that I like that. You know where I'm going with this line of questioning. What am I going to say next about intergenerational family groups? Yes. Yes.

00:31:00.200 - 00:31:26.340

It must be first name basis. And that is so difficult for some of us who get on that professional level and earn that doctorate. Or we're pastor, so and so. How hard it is to become Bill, Elaine, Leila, Lynn. - It was hard for me, writing first,

00:31:26.340 - 00:31:38.580

especially when my grandchildren, two of them. One still calls me Mimi. Anyway, I think that work conferences have taught me a great deal

00:31:38.580 - 00:31:48.860

about what you're talking about, the generation. - Yeah. - You talked about some of your experiences. I've experienced that at these conferences,

00:31:48.860 - 00:31:56.660

which of course are entered in our nation. - Yes. - Beautiful experiences. - And we need to learn from that because that's what families are.

00:31:56.660 - 00:32:07.820

And Mimi, see that's a beautiful term. Albert McClellan in that first group, a man just beloved by all Southern Baptists who know him and some who don't know him,

00:32:07.820 - 00:32:18.140

wanted to be called Abba. When we, in our first group, that first night, and we always do this with our groups, we say now look, do a name tag.

00:32:18.140 - 00:32:30.000

If you want to be called a name, you write it down. Your family will call you that name. Had a boy whose name was Ken, but he wanted to be called Kent. To this day, I call him Kent, and I'm one of the few.

00:32:30.000 - 00:32:47.480

He knows who it is when I say Kent. Albert wanted to be called Abba, and Papa. And so I talk, when I see Albert in the hallway or wherever and call him Abba, people kind of look at me.

00:32:47.480 - 00:32:58.760

(laughs) So it's informal. And one of the most beautiful experiences came out of discovering who was gonna be teachers

00:32:58.760 - 00:33:17.480

in this group. The informality led also to all of us being leaders. And the teenagers had volunteered to do a session. Everybody signed up to take turns.

00:33:17.480 - 00:33:24.960

Well, the children, we didn't know whether they could do that or not. And we didn't wanna force them. You know, we kinda left it up to them.

00:33:24.960 - 00:33:35.320

But when people were signing up, several of the eight, nine-year-olds said, well, the teenagers got to have a night. When can we plan?

00:33:35.320 - 00:33:46.920

We said, well, let's put you down. So we had a night when the children planned. And one of the most beautiful scenes is one that I remember that occurred between

00:33:46.920 - 00:34:01.280

one of the youngest members, who was about five or six at the time, a preschooler, and a beautiful stately lady named Dr. Louise Blunt. Dr. Blunt graduated from Eastern Theological Seminary

00:34:01.280 - 00:34:11.700

many years ago, and she was 81 or 82 at this point in her life. Lived in a retired teacher's apartment building. Still was teaching

00:34:11.700 - 00:34:24.660

at the American Baptist Theological Seminary there in Nashville and taught a Sunday school class. An elegant, elegant lady, gray hair, just a beautiful woman, inside and out.

00:34:24.660 - 00:34:40.480

Well, that particular night, the different tables were set up and the youth were, and adults were going to do what the children were going to lead them in.

00:34:40.480 - 00:34:54.560

And at one table, we had table games. One table did something else, but the table I remember is the one where Robbie was working. Robbie had wanted his group to work with macaroni.

00:34:54.560 - 00:35:03.780

And so on Saturday, he and his mother and sisters had dyed macaroni in popcorn and spaghetti, and they had their glue, and they had their construction paper,

00:35:03.780 - 00:35:15.020

and it was all out on the table. And he was going to have them do pictures with macaroni. He loved doing that. So here we worked and we were in our family groups

00:35:15.020 - 00:35:24.180

and at one point I heard Mrs. Blunt, Louise, come walking across. She said, "Where's Robbie?" And I said, "Well, you know, I don't know."

00:35:24.180 - 00:35:32.660

Well, Robbie had given his instructions and gone off. He was tired of being leader. Where's Robbie? And she said, "I don't know what else to do with my picture."

00:35:32.660 - 00:35:39.680

And she said, "Where's my leader?" I said, "Well, I think he's over there." And so she found him and I guess got her instructions and went back to work.

00:35:39.680 - 00:35:49.700

Well, the night ended and the people left and of course there was a lot of clutter that night, especially at Robbie's table. So I was over there and I had gone to the end of the table

00:35:49.700 - 00:35:58.800

where Louise was working. And here I looked at her picture and it was beautiful. She had, it was near Easter and she had done three crosses and a scene

00:35:58.800 - 00:36:08.640

and it was just covered and it was really pretty. And I saw her going out the door and I thought, well, surely she's going to want her picture. And so I said, "Louise!"

00:36:08.640 - 00:36:19.020

And as I did, every piece of macaroni and popcorn fell on the floor. What had that stately, elegant, intelligent woman not learned?

00:36:19.020 - 00:36:27.820

You glue it! She goofed it. And she laughed. Oh, she loved that.

00:36:27.820 - 00:36:38.620

Because she had not paid attention to her leader. I'm sure Robbie told her to glue that. A five-year-old knows to do that. And so the children become leaders.

00:36:38.620 - 00:36:53.200

That's important. Now the other principle with that in the shared leadership is, as you may well guess, an educational concept, again, comes through,

00:36:53.200 - 00:37:06.140

that in intergenerational family groups, we must gear on the level of the youngest. Now I know that makes some of you sick to think that we're gonna work on the level of the youngest.

00:37:06.140 - 00:37:25.120

But think about it. An adult and a youth can gear down, and you can get out of things what you need. You have that ability. But a child cannot reach beyond their cognitive, social, and emotional skills.

00:37:25.120 - 00:37:49.280

And so when we invite our family in to work and worship and play, we must always consider the youngest and then add what we can for those around us. Now that's important because once we start doing things in our church intergenerationally, we're not careful, we're going to lose the children.

00:37:49.280 - 00:38:07.680

And I'm afraid many of our pastors do that, they lose the children. And what part of the sermon, if you have a children's sermon and an adult sermon, are Are you like me? Do you enjoy the children's sermons almost as well, if not better, than the real sermon?

00:38:07.680 - 00:38:20.120

Sunday when I was at UBC here in town, I loved the children's sermon. Of course, I would. That's a clue for us. Our faith is simple.

00:38:20.120 - 00:38:36.860

Why do we have to make it complicated sometimes? Keep it geared. The other principle for learning that became very important to us is experience. Now I don't know who said this because I keep reading it by and different people are given

00:38:36.860 - 00:38:48.800

credit for it. Thomas Merton is given credit for it, Carl Rogers is given credit for it, but I'm going to tell you because I think it's important. Those things that are most personal are most common.

00:38:48.800 - 00:39:05.840

Now if you have an intergenerational group, what do you do with them? We don't have that much curriculum. These we've gathered for a number of years and are some of the best things I can offer. But what do you do with an intergenerational group?

00:39:05.840 - 00:39:12.960

What's most common in a family? What are some things that families do? Read? Sure they do.

00:39:12.960 - 00:39:18.960

What else do they do? Play games? Eat. Yes, we eat.

00:39:18.960 - 00:39:38.800

What else do families do together? Watch TV? Okay. Sing? Okay. What do families celebrate? Birthdays, holidays, sure. Play games, work

00:39:38.800 - 00:40:07.080

with clay. Those are the things that we do in intergenerational groups. We think what do families do together? What is most common to our experience? And that's where our curriculum comes. The occasion for Southern Baptists to do curriculum came along about 1975. The church training department was looking for a

00:40:07.080 - 00:40:30.680

new way of doing church training and they, the pilot project group of which my husband was a part, were trying to come up with some short-term studies which now are encapsulated in equipping center modules. And during the pilot project, one of the ideas that we wanted to test out, and I say we because

00:40:30.680 - 00:40:56.720

I in a way I was a part of it too, the equipping center idea of intergenerational groups. And so taking some men and women who had done intergenerational groups in our church and in our town, we came in for a week and had typewriters and typing paper and we designed in a week what I think are the very first for Southern Baptist, but we came up with

00:40:56.720 - 00:41:28.400

13 sessions on Thank You God for Summer. And we looked at things like summer, it's myself, my family, my friends, my church, world, dirt and water, sounds, fishing, rocks, daily food, leisure, and our summer family. And we put together 13 weeks for families to try, intergenerational groups to try.

00:41:28.400 - 00:42:00.380

Had another one that we designed for the Christmas/Thanksgiving season called the Fun Family Worships. this was a four session idea. The pilot project consisted of 200 churches across the United States that would try some of these and so we had a few churches that chose this particular one to do it. In the summer of '76 at Glorietta and

00:42:00.380 - 00:42:19.420

Ridgecrest we had a special conference which was the second family group and we brought them together at Glorietta we met in the lobby there at New Mexico Hall we had people of all ages in a group and it was a delightful experience. At Ridgecrest we met up there back of the auditorium one of those big rooms

00:42:19.420 - 00:42:42.700

and it was an unusual experience at the assemblies because we needed some youth and so we invited the speaker tournament youth to participate and that experience for several of them I know changed their life because they they found an immediate family and often they came without youth groups and it

00:42:42.700 - 00:43:10.560

just turned them on. Out of that came the idea to do some equipping centers that would be focused on the family and so out of that first group of equipping Center modules came your family living loving and learning. Okay surely well that and I wish I had one of the boxes down here to even show

00:43:10.560 - 00:43:34.700

you. In the bookstore if you have a chance and there's one up here in the display bookstore you will find a stack of orange and green boxes and that's literally what they are, boxes. And they are short-term studies for groups to use and they carry the logo equipping center on them. And those are available through

00:43:34.700 - 00:43:57.940

the church training department of the Baptist Sunday School Board. Yes, the family one is. And the book Extended Family was one that that I wrote back in and 78 and picked up on the experience that we had at Emanuel Baptist Church and picks up some of the work that was done by other groups who saw what we were doing and wanted

00:43:57.940 - 00:44:11.320

to do it. And so the extended family book, which kind of is a theory how-to book, is in the module to tell people how to do intergenerational groups. Now there may be some other questions.

00:44:11.320 - 00:44:21.340

Let me pause just a minute and ask. And I am so aware that I'm just going a mile a minute and that you're tired of saying it's It's been a long day, but I really know of, well, I know of one other way to do that,

00:44:21.340 - 00:44:33.100

and that's for us to do some activities, but that takes time, and you may have some questions that have sprung forth. - Are you aware of the material?

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