CPYU Parent Prompts are a regularly released resource to spark biblically-centered conversations with your kids about the issues they face in today’s youth culture.
Download the Parent Prompt here.
By:
Kyle Fulks, CPYU Research Fellow and Assistant Pastor at Hope Community Church, Gilbertsville, PA
and
Josh Good, CPYU Research Fellow and Ministry Director, Christian Endeavor USA, Gilbertsville, PA
As parents, we naturally want our teenagers to be connected to their church community. We’re grateful when they have Christian friends their own age, when they enjoy youth group, when they’re engaged on Sunday mornings. These peer relationships matter—they provide companionship, shared experiences, and age-appropriate spaces to wrestle with faith questions. But if our teens only experience church through relationships with people their own age, they’re missing something essential. Scripture envisions the church as a multigenerational family where wisdom flows from old to young, passion for the Lord flows from young to old, and every generation needs every other generation. As parents, we have a unique opportunity to help our teens develop meaningful connections across generations—connections that will shape their faith far beyond the youth group years and benefit them, our families, and the entire church body.
(W)ORLD: What is Happening?
- Our teens are growing up in a world that has systematically separated them from meaningful relationships with adults outside their immediate family. From kindergarten onward, nearly every institution sorts them by age—six to eight hours daily with peers born within months of each other. Consumer culture reinforces this division, targeting teenagers as a distinct market with their own music, fashion, and values. Technology deepens the separation as our teens exist in digital spaces curated by their peers. Geographic mobility has scattered extended families, removing natural intergenerational relationships.
- The church has not been immune to this pattern. With the best of intentions, we’ve created age-specific ministries: children’s church during service, youth group on separate nights, distinct programming for every life stage. We drop our teens at youth group and head to adult service, separating for worship, learning, and fellowship. Church buildings often reinforce this—youth rooms in the basement, children’s wings on separate floors, spaces designed to keep age groups apart. What started as helpful contextualization has sometimes become functional segregation.
- As parents, we’ve absorbed these patterns without questioning them. We assume our teens wouldn’t want relationships with “old people” or feel awkward facilitating connections across generations. It’s simply easier to let teens stay in their lane.
- The result? Our teens may end up moving through an age-stratified conveyor belt from elementary school to college, continuing in church contexts that reinforce rather than challenge this pattern. The ability to navigate relationships with people in different life stages is not learned when only interacting with peers —yet we expect them to suddenly integrate into multigenerational church life as adults, often wondering why they disappear after graduation.
(W)ORD: What does god’s word say?
Scripture presents a vision of church that transcends age boundaries—one where the body of Christ functions as a unified family across all generations.
Consider Jesus’s prayer in John 17:21-23: “That they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me… that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me.” Jesus prayed for oneness among His followers—the same intimacy He shares with the Father. This unity isn’t abstract; it’s the visible testimony that proves to a watching world who Jesus is.
Paul reinforces this in 1 Corinthians 12:12-14: ”For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit.” Age isn’t mentioned as a dividing line because it isn’t one in God’s design. Our teenagers are already members of the body, already necessary, already part of the unified whole.
God’s design for faith transmission explicitly involves generations together. Psalm 145:4 declares, “One generation shall commend your works to another, and shall declare your mighty acts.” Deuteronomy 6 commands parents to teach God’s word in daily life rhythms, but the principle extends beyond biological family. The church becomes a spiritual family, and as parents within that family, we can help facilitate these life-giving connections.
Here’s the beautiful paradox: our teens aren’t just recipients of wisdom from older believers. Paul tells Timothy, “Let no one despise you for your youth, but set the believers an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity” (1 Timothy 4:12). Young believers are called to be examples to the entire church. This mutual edification—young and old learning from each other—only happens when generations share life together.
The biblical vision is clear: Our teenagers aren’t the church of tomorrow; they’re the church of today. They are not able to enjoy and benefit from this truth if they never interact with the rest of the church body.
(W)ALK: Conversation Starts and Questions:
So how do we help our teenagers experience the richness of intergenerational connection and community?
Here are concrete ways to move from understanding to action.
Recognize What’s at Stake
When youth remain isolated from other generations, they develop faith in echo chambers where only peer perspectives are heard. They never witness how faith weathers life’s storms. Research from Fuller Youth Institute’s “Sticky Faith” shows that youth with meaningful relationships with five or more adults beyond their parents develop remarkable faith resilience—multiple anchors during doubt, multiple mirrors reflecting Christ, multiple mentors showcasing faithfulness.
Shift Your Family’s Approach
While we may not design church programming, we absolutely influence how our family engages. Prioritize opportunities to worship with your teens rather than always separating. Actively look for ways teenagers can serve alongside adults. View other believers as potential spiritual family for your kids. Our perspective shift—seeing intergenerational relationships as essential—shapes our family’s church experience.
Practical Steps You Can Take:
- Worship Together: Make corporate worship a regular family experience. Sit with your teen. Afterward, discuss the sermon: “What stood out? What questions did it raise?”
- Serve as a Family: Find service opportunities where your teen works alongside adults—meals, events, children’s ministry, greeting. Serve with them and introduce them to the adults you’re serving alongside.
- Create Hospitality Rhythms: Regularly invite adults from different life stages into your home for dinner. Involve your teen in conversation. Ask guests to share faith stories.
- Facilitate Prayer Partnerships: Connect your teen with an older believer who will pray for them consistently. Have your teen report back, creating ongoing relationship.
- Seek Apprenticeship Opportunities: Identify adults whose faith you admire and whose ministry aligns with your teen’s interests. Ask if your teen can serve alongside them.
- Ask The Leadership: If intergenerational opportunities don’t appear to be readily available, graciously ask your church’s leadership about this topic.
Questions to Discuss:
- “Who are three adults in our church you respect or would like to know better?”
- “What relationships might help you stay faithful to Jesus in 20 years?”
- “What’s one thing we could do this month to engage with the whole church?”
Your church’s youth ministry is likely a gift. The goal isn’t to bypass it but to ensure your teen also experiences the fullness of the body of Christ—where every generation contributes, where our teens aren’t just the church of tomorrow but vital members of God’s family today.
“For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.”
1 Corinthians 12:12
Download the Parent Prompt here.