10-year-old Barney Hossain is proof that you don’t have to be a grown up to make a difference, having raised thousands of dollars to go towards sepsis awareness.
We started Whānau Church in the hopes that it will help demystify Christianity and make it more accessible to people who want to explore what it all means.
We are to be a people bound to particular communities, to bear one another’s burdens. Our lives are meant to support and be supported, to be intertwined – that kind of mahi is both beautiful and hard.
Psychologists call it individuation: the process of working out for yourself what to hold onto from your upbringing, and what to let go of. For Christian families, it often comes with deep uncertainty.
We are meant to journey together, learning from and encouraging one another – across cultures, ages and stages of our lives.
If we have healthy families living on mission and supporting one another through the generations – not just within the family unit but including grandparents, aunties, uncles and the church family – then we can really make a difference in society.
I’ve just started as the new Regional Leader for Launchpad in Nelson, and I’m excited to say that we’re seeing a local resurgence after a decline over the years.
When Jesus is asked "Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?", it's a young child who he places in the midst of the competing disciples. Why? What is it about children and childhood that, for Jesus, is key to knowing God?
There's no one-stop-cookie-cutter worship session that you could plug and play in all differing church contexts. Yet there are some intergenerational principles that could help support a community of faith that believes we’re better together.
Many of us would love for our churches to be more intergenerational – but we can't achieve this through just a programme, an activity or a resource. So where do we begin?