one of the things that has bothered me for some time about the way we do church is age segregation. Breaking up Sunday School or other small group time into age categories seems like a way to pool the collective ignorance of a demographic slice of people. In other words, why in the world would we put twenty fourteen year old boys together in a room and expect them to learn something useful from each other. It just doesn’t make sense. Teenagers need some guidance from grownups.
Younger adults need the wise counsel of older adults who have made the journey they are making. Older adults need to benefit from the fresh perspective, energy etc of the younger adults.
When I started a new sunday school department back in 2005, we made it “unclassified” for that reason. Our goal was to have a good healthy mix of older and younger adults in order to cross-pollinate across generations.
Ramblin Pastor Man had a quote on his blog a couple of days ago from JI Packer on Between two Worlds
Here is a portion of what Mr. Packer had to say:
J. I. Packer: We have separated the ages, very much to the loss of each age. In the New Testament, the Christian church is an all-age community, and in real life the experience of the family to look no further should convince us that the interaction of the ages is enriching. The principle is that generations should be mixed up in the church for the glory of God. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t disciple groups of people of the same age or the same sex separately from time to time. That’s a good thing to do. But for the most part, the right thing is the mixed community in which everybody is making the effort to understand and empathize with all the other people in the other age groups.
Go read the rest of it. Its not too long. What do you think? Is age segregation a good thing? why or why not?
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