I’ve been seeing a lot of both these words lately, and that’s a good thing. It means that more and more people in our congregations (and in our association) are thinking about the benefits of having multiple generations interacting in various ways. Of course, the most obvious way the word intergenerational has been used in our congregations is in reference to worship, as in “Today is an Intergenerational Sunday. Children will be with the adults for the entire worship service.” And that’s one of the main reasons I prefer to use the word multigenerational now. It has less baggage and it actually is more precise. See, intergenerational technically refers to two or more generations. So by that definition, every worship service is intergenerational (unless you had an all Boomer or all Gen X service). But multigenerational implies (at least to me) more that two generations. And when three or more generations are gathered for worship, some serious give-and-take needs to occur. Even among our “elders” there are significant differences between the G.I. Generation, the Silent Generation, and the Boomers, just as there are major differences between Boomers, Gen Xers, and Millennials. And if we really take seriously the task of bringing generations together in order to create a single Beloved Community, the stakes are even higher. For my money, multigenerational is the better word for describing who (but not what) is involved in addressing that task.
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5 comments
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July 15, 2008 at 12:56 am
radicalhapa
whats the silent generation?
July 16, 2008 at 6:33 am
psdlund
Good question, Joseph. Basically, it’s the generation that was between the GI Generation (those who came of age during World War II) and the Baby Boomers. Wikipedia has a brief write up on them: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Generation.
July 23, 2008 at 2:39 pm
juuggernaut
There has been some discussion on that exact topic on my blog http://uuapresidentialdebate2009.wordpress.com/ in the most recent segment about the two candidates’ responses over youth and young adult ministry.
Martin
July 25, 2008 at 8:50 am
psdlund
Thanks, Martin. I’ll check it out!
August 9, 2013 at 4:01 pm
Multigenerational and not Intergenerational | TimAtkins.net
[…] We need to move from intergenerational to multigenerational services, programs, events, media, leadership, you name it. (And it looks like I’m not the only one thinking about this distinction, h/t to Phil!) […]