Why We’re Publishing “Church Together”

For years, congregations have seen a subtle divide emerge focused on age: While we gather under one roof, we largely worship and experience God in separate rooms. The children head to the education wing, the youth disappear to their own tricked-out lounge, and the adults gather in worship. Outside worship, adult Christian education often divides around unwritten age-dictated guidelines: The class that’s spent Sundays together for decades, and the class for the generation that’s new to town or new to our church.

When we explore our faith in our different places, we lose the crucial intergenerational fabric that once held our communities together.

Church Together: An Essential Guide to All-Age Ministry by Traci Smith and David M. Csinos is more than a book—it’s a vital rethinking about how our congregations can function.

Traci and Dave are renowned pastoral leaders, authors, and researchers. Traci is the program director of Family Faith Every Day, a Chalice initiative that helps parents and caregivers incorporate faith practices into everyday family life and the author of our best-selling Faithful Families book series. Dave is Associate Professor of Practical Theology at Atlantic School of Theology in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and founder of Faith Forward, an ecumenical innovator in ministry with children and youth. Both Traci and Dave routinely write and speak on faith formation, intergenerational ministry, preaching, and innovation in children’s and youth ministry. They know their stuff.

Putting their knowledge and experience to work, Church Together helps us pivot away from the age-siloed approach that doesn’t work as well as it used to. They diagnose the loneliness and disconnection in our churches, then provide a practical, field-tested roadmap for healing. Their approach is grounded in nine core principles:

• Relationship
• Community
• Diversity
• Accommodation
• Creativity
• Participation
• Play
• Context
• Discipleship

These principles remind us that the goal of the church is not to keep age groups entertained, but to weave them together into a single, vibrant, and contributing body.

Church Together is far more than abstract theory—it serves as an "idea factory," filled with accessible, easy-to-do practices like "Noisy Offerings" and "Stones of Kindness." More than 85 practices are organized into 15 different categories, making it easy to find new ideas for specific elements of church life or activities to engage across generations. Putting their network to good use, in addition to writing their own practices, Traci and Dave have included ideas from congregations and pastoral leaders from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia, and from many denominations. Combined, these practices can be building blocks for churches that are ready to foster genuine belonging.

The future of the mainline church will begin when we invite the elder to learn from the child, and the youth to serve alongside the senior. When we bridge the generational gap, we do more than just stabilize our attendance; we rediscover the transformative power of being the body of Christ, exactly as we were meant to be: together.

Gratefully,
Brad Lyons, President & Publisher