Continuing the Intergenerational Conversation

In the February episode of Spark Dialogue: A Generation 
Spark Podcast, Thrive’s Ron deVries started by talking baseball with Josh Sweetman. The podcast is an outgrowth of Generation Spark, a joint CRCNA and Reformed Church in America ministry, and the nearly hour-long episode was titled “Life as an IGen Youth Pastor” (aired Feb. 25, 2025).

Sweetman is now the faith formation pastor at Water Street CRC in Guelph, Ont., and he and deVries, a youth and emerging adults ministry consultant for the CRC’s Thrive Ministries, knew each other from playing on the same softball team while working in ministry a few years ago in Edmonton, Alta.

As the podcast opened, they noted that they loved playing on that team because it was multiethnic and multigenerational, two factors that are foundational for Generation Spark, which pairs young adults with older adults (serving as mentors) to find ways to bring younger people more intimately into the life of a church.

The topics of the podcast series, which launched last September, range from theological issues to book reviews, and from intergenerational worship practices to politics and voting.

Through it all, said deVries, the aim is to generate wide-ranging and in-depth conversations about how to link older and younger church members, help them better to understand one another, and deepen and grow the life of our congregations.

In the February podcast Sweetman described his work as a youth pastor at two churches, as well as his ministry at Water Street CRC.“In my current role, I oversee a program that works to infuse faith formation practices in every area of church life,” he said.

He especially seeks to connect younger members with older members, aiming to celebrate the history and experiences of seniors and to bring a sense of hope and understanding to young people in the church.

Sweetman gave two examples of how this is happening today. For instance, he said, an older member started taking photos of the young people carrying banners as they would leave the weekly worship service to attend Sunday school classes. The older member then began showing the kids the pictures, and they appreciated seeing images showing how they were participating in worship.

After worship services, the young people are also encouraged to mingle with older folks and talk together over drinks and donuts. These gestures are all little things, said Sweetman, but they serve to bring the generations together.

“We want to create ways for the generations to connect,” he said. “We want to plant seeds, water them, and take care of them so that these things can grow into lifelong faith practices for everyone.”

The entire podcast series, as well as Generation Spark itself, said deVries, aims to promote next-generation engagement.

“We come alongside churches to help them see children and youth as the [next-generation] leaders that they are,” he said. 

In 2021, the RCA received a $1.3 million grant from Lilly Endowment, Inc. to support a collaborative effort with the CRCNA to enable the continuation and expansion of Generation Spark, which began at Hope College in Holland, Mich., in 2017 to build intergenerational connections.

Since then, the ministry has worked in many ways to help churches in both denominations bridge the gap between generations, bringing young and older people together to enrich and expand the very heart and life of congregations across North America.

Generation Spark is about intimacy and understanding, said deVries. Through a series of training methods, it helps to link people of all ages and to equip them to honor, hold, and express the faith that they share.

“Generation Spark joins young people and older adults in congregations to build trust and to work together,” he said.

As an outgrowth of this ministry, the podcast series provides another way to share the message of inclusiveness and keep the conversation going about intergenerational connection.

The next podcast in the series aired Mar. 11, focused on the “Theology of Intergenerational and Youth Ministry,” and featured Mike McGarry, a youth minister at a church in Massachusetts and the author of Lead Them to Jesus: A Handbook for Youth Workers.

In this podcast, hosted by deVries and Annika Bangma, program manager for Generation Spark, McGarry debunked the notion that youth ministry is a relatively new phenomenon in the church. He argued that “youth ministry goes back to the Garden of Eden. Working with youth is built into the creation mandate of human flourishing and passing on the faith from generation to generation.”

McGarry also dispelled the idea, which he said he once held, that a church’s youth ministry should be significantly about finding ways to bring unchurched young people into the life of the church.

Young people who don’t attend church may come to a concert, a game night, or an outing or a special event, such as playing laser tag, but they tend not to show up on Sundays, said McGarry.

“You can never out-fun other options they have in their lives,” he said. “The best thing is to have conversations and equip your young people to really understand their faith and to talk about it to others.”

In another podcast episode, deVries and cohost John Simon spoke about the “pecking order” evident in churches and that even though young people might be encouraged in youth ministries to find and use their voices, they often find when they join the broader church that older members who are in charge aren’t eager to hear what they have to say.

“You can give a young person a voice,” he said, “but then, when they become a more active member of the church, they . . . face a sea of older adults and can feel marooned. What we need to do is to find ways for these young voices to be heard. It can be so dangerous when your voice is muted.”

As the podcasts evolve, said deVries, they are becoming yet another way “of continuing the intergenerational conversation. We hope the podcasts are a digestible piece of content you can listen to when you go for a walk or you are driving in your car.” We need to find “ways for young people to have a voice and to identify their gifts that can be used in churches and in our denominations,” he said.