A Gospel for All Ages: Teaching and Preaching with the Whole Church

By David M. Csinos and Rev. HyeRan Kim-Cragg

A Gospel for All Ages lives at the intersection of two conversations--preaching and intergenerational ministry. By integrating these two topics, an entirely new conversation emerges, one that draws from both, that interrogates both, and that births something new in the process, creating fresh possibilities for a sleepy church.

The fields of preaching and intergenerational ministry rarely cross paths because they are championed by two different sorts of ministerial leaders. On the one hand, preaching and homiletics has largely been a field for teaching pastors, senior ministers, and other pastoral practitioners who are tasked with the important work of proclaiming the gospel to congregations of adults every week. On the other hand, the cheerleaders of intergenerational ministry have tended to be ministry leaders who find their primary vocation within the formation of adolescents and children. Increasing numbers of Christian educators and leaders who work in children's and youth ministry are lifting high the banner of intergenerational ministry.

Wherever your tent is planted in one camp or the other, this book is for you. If God has called you to the work of preaching, you find within these pages wise words and best practices for improving and expanding your homiletical practice in light of the eight-year-olds and eighty-year-olds who share a pew on Sunday mornings. If your vocation is Christian education or intergenerational ministry, these chapters will spur you toward that final frontier of all-age worship as you consider how your vocation can include the preaching of the gospel to young and old alike.

Six creative ministry professionals join author David M. Csinos in providing intergenerational best-practice resources. Each chapter includes discussion questions and exercises for future practice

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Release date: May 3, 2022
• ISBN: 9781506473956

Book preview

Cover Page for A Gospel for All Ages

Praise for A Gospel for All Ages

Thinking about intergenerational worship? Here is the best book available. David Csinos uses educational theory, guiding principles, exercises, questions, and examples to show how communities may craft biblical messages to bring all people together. In so doing, they experience the depth of the gospel in ways everyone understands.

—PAUL SCOTT WILSON, professor emeritus of homiletics, Emmanuel College, University of Toronto Seminary

Healthy community is where we are formed and held as people of faith. Here Dr. Csinos gives us invaluable guidance for the work of speaking truth to build and nurture that community from which we do the gospel work of changing the world.

—AMY BUTLER, founder, Invested Faith

"Well-versed in homiletic theory, and building on his own and others’ recent research, Dave Csinos brings together his creative skills as scholar and minister with a passion for intergenerating the sermon in A Gospel for All Ages. The collaborative spirit characterizing Csinos’s work especially comes to the fore in Part 2, where colleagues share their experiences with intergenerational preaching. Penned in an accessible and amusing style, yet neither shallow nor banal, this book is a treasure for students and practitioners alike."

—TONE STANGELAND KAUFMAN, professor of practical theology at MF Norwegian School of Theology

In a time of stark divisions, David Csinos challenges us to live into God’s vision of a church where all are one in Christ. For Paul, that division was Jew and Greek. Today it is often old and young. How then are we to worship with and preach to all ages? Csinos offers practical guidance from preachers and worship leaders around the world. This is needed now more than ever.

—LUCY LIND HOGAN, professor emerita of preaching, Wesley Theological Seminary

A Gospel for All Ages

A Gospel for All Ages

Teaching and Preaching with the Whole Church

David M. Csinos

Foreword by HyeRan Kim-Cragg

With contributions from

Amy Casteel,

Karen DeBoer,

Jim Keat,

Tammy Tolman,

Murray Wilkinson,

and Talashia Keim Yoder

Fortress Press

Minneapolis

A GOSPEL FOR ALL AGES

Teaching and Preaching with the Whole Church

Copyright © 2022 Fortress Press, an imprint of 1517 Media. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Email [e-mail] or write to Permissions, Fortress Press, PO Box 1209, Minneapolis, MN 55440-1209.

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Scripture quotations marked NRSVA are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright © 1989, 1995 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Scripture quotations marked MSG are from THE MESSAGE, copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson. Used by permission of NavPress, represented by Tyndale House Publishers. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked IB are taken from the Inclusive Bible, copyright © 2007 by Priests for Equality.

Cover image: Kristin Miller

Cover design: Kristin Miller

Print ISBN: 978-1-5064-7394-9

eBook ISBN: 978-1-5064-7395-6

While the author and 1517 Media have confirmed that all references to website addresses (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing, URLs may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.

For Eszter

Chante, rossignol, chante,

Toi qui as le cœur gai.

Contents

Acknowledgments

Foreword by HyeRan Kim-Cragg

Introduction: Assembling the InterGen Avengers

Part 1. Understanding Intergenerational Preaching

1. Intergenerating Our Faith

2. Preaching with Purpose

3. An Intergenerational Homiletic

4. Hallmarks of Intergenerational Preaching

Part 2. Practicing Intergenerational Preaching

5. Interpreting the Gospel Together

6. Speaking the Gospel Together

7. Experiencing the Gospel Together

Part 3. The New Normal

8. Making the Move to Intergenerational Preaching

9. Intergenerational Preaching in Crisis

Notes

Bibliography

Contributors

Acknowledgments

Many people have infused this book with wisdom and creativity. It all started with my friends in the Westminster 20. These fellow conspirators in the mission to intergenerate the church offered me opportunities to ignite, discuss, and test out some of the ideas that eventually made their way into this book. They also connected me to practitioners from around the globe who responded to my questionnaire and shared about their passions for and experiments with intergenerational preaching. I’m grateful for these leaders of leaders and for the pastors and laypeople who took the time to respond to my requests to learn about their work.

I think the best part about this book is the second section. You’ll see what I mean when you get there! I have come to know the six pastors and leaders who contributed to the chapters that make up part 2—Talashia Keim Yoder, Murray Wilkinson, Karen DeBoer, Amy Casteel, Tammy Tolman, and Jim Keat—through different networks, conferences, and initiatives. Although they are part of different denominations and live in different parts of the world, one thing they hold in common is their faithfulness to God’s call to share the gospel. It’s a privilege to include their voices in this book.

At various points of the writing process, I solicited feedback from friends and colleagues. Brian McLaren, Amy Butler, Paul Scott Wilson, Elizabeth Caldwell, Jack Seymour, Tone Stangeland Kaufman, and Lucy Lind Hogan all provided support for this project in its early stages. This book has been immeasurably improved by the wisdom of Chris Barnett, John Roberto, and Mary Hawes, each of whom read early drafts and offered detailed feedback. And having HyeRan Kim-Cragg, who joins me in living at the intersection of faith formation and homiletics, write the foreword for this book is the icing on the cake! I am thankful for each and every one of these people of faith.

The team at Fortress Press have been all-stars. They’ve worked diligently to help craft the book that you are holding in your hands (or reading on your screen) into the best possible version of itself. Thanks especially to Scott Tunseth, Bethany Dickerson, and Elvis Ramirez for their faith in this project and the advice they offered along the way.

The idea for this book was sowed, took root, and started sprouting during a sabbatical from my teaching position at Atlantic School of Theology. I am thankful for the support of this university, the encouragement of my faculty colleagues, and the insights of my students, all of which helped make this project possible.

My family is an unending source of love, support, and unbridled joy. From conception to publication, my wife, Lydia, has been a sounding board for the ideas within this book, and she’s worked hard to provide me with the space and time I needed to write these ideas down. Our family experienced its own infusion of intergenerationality through the arrival of our daughter, Eszter, right in the middle of the writing process. This book echoes my prayers for the sort of church to which she can belong.

Foreword

As an intersectional thinker, I always appreciate Christian scholars who cross boundaries to integrate practices and theories in a way that both advances theological scholarship and serves Christian communities. I am particularly excited when they engage inter work, whether it is interdisciplinary or intergenerational or intercultural. That is why I am delighted to see this book by Dr. David Csinos, who approaches teaching and preaching as interrelated, intergenerational ministries. In fact, Dr. Csinos further connects this intergenerational work to intercultural and interfaith concerns as well (p. 31).

Dr. Csinos, as a well-known scholar in faith formation for children and youth, has sought to expand his research and scholarship on homiletics in recent years. For him, preaching is not the solitary work of the preacher but the work that brings the whole church of different ages together. This is a radical notion in a church where preaching remains the domain of the adult clergy. Csinos boldly stirs up the idea of the pulpit as the most untouchable object for the ordinary worshipping community and suggests that preaching is a deeply segregated time between adults and children in the church. Provoking readers with these ideas, Csinos’s goal is ambitious: to convince readers that intergenerational preaching should be the new normal.

Csinos claims that sermons or homilies, albeit ubiquitous, are one but not the only manifestation of preaching. Noting diverse forms of preaching, he underscores the importance of asking why preaching matters and probes this issue with three foci: preaching as testimony, as empowerment, and as an encounter with God. Csinos then proposes intergenerational homiletics as an art of ministry, featuring Jesus as an intergenerational preacher and expounding upon the passages in Mark 10:13–16 in which teaching with and preaching about children take the center stage in order to illustrate the reign of God.

The first chapters of the theoretical section are well supported by chapter 4, where Csinos, as a practical theologian, solicits survey responses of over twenty different practitioners of preaching from countries in Europe, Pacific Asia, and North America. From this inductive research approach, he notes eight insights for intergenerational preaching.

These insights are tested with six practitioners. The second section of the book is dedicated to innovative, faithful, and creative work embodying intergenerational preaching. Csinos organizes the experiences of his group of preachers into three aspects of preaching: interpreting, speaking, and experiencing the gospel. Readers are delighted to discover treasures offered by these practitioners, ranging from LEGO-inspired small-group discussions and interviews about the Nativity story to a guided walk through Harlem on Good Friday.

Csinos models and embodies a collaborative nature of preaching in this book by honoring six practitioners of preaching around the globe to show how preaching is a collective, democratic, and participatory sharing of the gospel. The diverse voices of six practitioners are uttered with practical wisdom, which makes the book credible and adds weight to his argument regarding the urgent need for intergenerational preaching.

His final section dealing with challenges one might face putting these ideas into practice—especially in light of crises like the Covid-19 pandemic and their impact on preaching—reminds us that crisis and uncertainty call for faith and enable us to encounter the Spirit at work in unexpected places. This book equips readers to engage in preaching across different ages. Each chapter offers Resources for Further Reading, Questions for Further Reflection, and Exercises for Further Practice that will help readers integrate these ideas into their own ministries.

Csinos, using a metaphor of backpacking, invites us to unpack assumptions about and unexamined norms of preaching and repack essentials for intergenerational homiletics. After all, we are followers of Jesus taking a trip toward the reign of God! But we are warned: clergy- and adult-centered preaching practices have been tenacious, so they will not change overnight. If we are going to reach the promised land of a church where people of all ages are regarded as preachers, we’ll have to be prepared for a long hike.

My advice to readers is to take a deep breath, which is the first and foremost physical and theological exercise for speaking the gospel. Then, with the wise guidance and encouragement of this insightful book, take a brave step on a new and exciting homiletical journey toward proclaiming the intergenerational gospel.

HyeRan Kim-Cragg

Timothy Eaton Memorial Church Professor of Preaching

Emmanuel College of Victoria University in the University of Toronto

Introduction

Assembling the InterGen Avengers

It’s a strange feeling to have memories of an event that you never attended. In 2019, twenty of my friends and colleagues from the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, the United States, and Canada gathered at Church House in London for an international roundtable about intergenerational ministry. For two days, these leaders from many corners of the globe engaged in soul-stirring conversation about the current state and potential future trajectories of bringing the generations together in Christian faith communities. While in this vibrant and historic city, they visited attractions like the British Museum, Westminster Abbey, and even the local LEGO store.

One year later, this global band of colleagues—called the Westminster 20 by some members and the InterGen Avengers by others¹—met on Zoom in the throes of a pandemic to celebrate the first anniversary of this gathering. As we all sheltered in place in an effort to protect ourselves and our communities from a threat that we couldn’t have dreamed of a year earlier, we shared laughs, celebrated progress, and lamented the steps backward that intergenerational efforts seemed to have taken during the climate of Covid-19. The celebrating and reminiscing continued long after our live call ended. For days, my social media pages were inundated with one year ago photos from this ad hoc team’s adventures around London and messages to one another expressing how blessed they were to be part of a conversation that marked the debut of this team of faith-formation superheroes.

Each picture and every sentiment that I saw as I scrolled through social media brought back wonderful memories of stimulating conversations. The weird thing about it, however, is that I wasn’t there. I didn’t see the Rosetta Stone at the British Museum. I’m not one of the friends stuffed into an iconic red telephone booth in the photo that appeared on my screen. And I didn’t go to Church House. Due to prior commitments, my schedule didn’t allow me to skip across the pond and attend the intergenerational roundtable in person.

But like Ringo sang back in the 1960s, I got by with a little help from my friends. Knowing that I wasn’t able to travel to London, they ensured that I was part of the important discussions through the magic of FaceTime. Of course, my experience wasn’t the same as everyone else’s. Yes, I could watch as presenters shared their wisdom, and I was able to be part of conversations among these creative leaders. But there were moments when I had to text my friends on the other end of the screen and remind them to turn the camera so I could see a presentation or move the computer so that I could continue the discussion with my small group. I was in the room. But it was easy to overlook me.

On the first day of this think tank, we split into small groups to discuss our responses to some brief presentations about the importance of intergenerational ministry and the challenges we are likely to face as we bring people of different ages together at church. The members of my group and I lit up with excitement as we shared stories of how congregations are working to create worship services where all members of the church—regardless of age—experience the vitality and formational power of communal worship. One person told us about a church that created an all-age prayground in a section of its sanctuary. Another spoke about parishes they knew that encourage people of every generation to lead parts of worship. We shared all sorts of ways that congregations have been experimenting with nontraditional services that invite young children, older adults, and everyone in between to roll up their sleeves and get messy as they create, learn, and worship together.

As we pored over all the different ways that worship can become intergenerational, one member of the group soberly informed us that despite all the innovative ideas we were tossing around, one part of the worship service remains untouchable. For some reason, he said, we haven’t been able to find any way to make preaching accessible for all ages. We all agreed. Try as we might to make our faith communities intergenerational—that is, environments in which relationships are fostered among people of all ages—we all felt as though the pulpit was the final frontier, a bastion of adult-centeredness within the liturgical landscape. Sure, young people might be in the sanctuary during homilies and sermons, but the messages preached aren’t really for them. Much like me during my virtual experience at the London roundtable, they’re in the room, but it’s easy to overlook them.

During the preceding semester, I had taught both an introductory course in worship (with the not-so-creative-but-ever-so-descriptive title of Worship Foundations) and an advanced course in homiletics, or the art of preaching. Each course included components related to intergenerational ministry, and on the particular days that we focused on all-age worship and preaching, students came alive in new ways. You could feel the creative energy igniting everyone in the room as we asked important questions and spitballed different ways that the corporate lives of our congregations and parishes could be transformed as people of all ages worship God together.

While the students in the upper-level homiletics course were eager to explore the possibilities of intergenerational preaching, their curiosity was mixed with trepidation. In theory, they told me, they could see the immense value in crafting and delivering messages for communities of diverse ages. But they had no idea where to begin the process. How might intergenerational preaching happen? What could it look like? Are there examples of best practices that can help those wishing to try it out themselves? And how do we make the move from the expected forms of preaching to unexpected forms that not only are outside the box but blow up the box completely?

While a few short articles and blog posts had been written about the topic, there were no major resources available to help them explore how to make preaching the gospel an intergenerational experience. Someone has to write a book about this! I thought. Two months later, when I heard my small group in London lament the fact that even the most innovative and forward-thinking congregations were struggling to intergenerate the sermon, I started to realize that it was up to us to respond.

Christian proclamation is a pivotal topic among clergy and congregations alike. In many contexts, the work of preaching is perceived as one of the most—if not the most—significant practices of pastoral ministry. Seminaries require students to take courses in homiletics before they’ll put their stamp of approval on their graduates’ preparedness for the front lines of the church. Congregations that are searching for a new pastor often require candidates to submit sermon manuscripts, point search committees to YouTube videos of their preaching in action, and visit their churches so the community can see them deliver a message live and in person. Every year, more and more books are written to help ministers prepare and deliver better sermons. And the renowned Festival of Homiletics is just one of a growing number of continuing education events celebrating the central place of preaching in the vocation of ministerial leadership. And yet, despite the ubiquity of this emphasis on the proclamation of the gospel, little attention is given to preaching that goes beyond adults. Sure, there may be a workshop here and an article there about how to preach to youth or what you can do to offer better children’s messages. Yet there are very few discussions about what it looks like to craft and offer messages that bring people of all ages together.

Likewise, intergenerational ministry has become a popular topic among pastors and Christian educators, with increasing numbers of publications being produced and conferences being organized about what church looks like when people of all ages come together.² And yet preaching remains largely overlooked within this conversation. Maybe this is because in many Protestant traditions, the preaching moment has become the de facto pinnacle of worship, the eucharistic fill-in through which we connect with God in a special way. We can see the metaphorical elevation of preaching within Christian worship through the literal elevation of soaring, raised pulpits in church sanctuaries (the origin of pulpit comes from a Latin word that means platform or stage). Altering what is perhaps the central practice of a faith community’s liturgy can be tantamount