“Building Bridges” Intergenerational Event for Grace & Foothill

Focus:Building Christ-centered relationships & communication between congregations, generations, and within families.

Possible Outline for Day:

9-9:30 AMARRIVALS/CONTINENTAL BREAKFAST/WORSHIP

As people arrive, a laid-back worshipful setting could be a great way to set the tone. I’m not familiar with the space you are working with, but a continental, low-fuss breakfast could be made available in the back of the area where worship is (or adjacent to it.) If it is a space where you can rearrange the chairs, I would suggest some traditional seating with some blankets on the floor to the left and/or right, and a few round tables with chairs set up in the back. I would also suggest some kids’ musical instruments and ribbon twirlers be made available upfront so that kids will be encouraged to have fun and participate. From a family’s perspective (especially a family with younger children), this setting will hopefully put them immediately at ease because there are snacks readily available, if they are coming in late they won’t feel rushed or disruptive, and their kids’ wiggles will clearly be welcome.  From a relationship building perspective, the more communal set-up and interactive worship with help people to feel comfortable with each more quickly and set the stage for getting to know each other.

9:30-9:45WELCOME & INTO TO DAY

A welcome & maybe a fun get-to-know-you activity would be great here. Maybe you could even do a sort of “did you know” or “which church” trivia game to break the ice and get to know more about each other’s churches. If you are breaking the participants into small groups, now is the time to do it. They could play the church trivia game with their small group as a team or you could have small groups form after the trivia game and then have them do the building bridges activity as a small group.

9:45-10:20BUILDING BRIDGES ACTIVITY

A great way to start building some relationships is to have some fun and have them work together on something. This creates a shared experience and starts communication. Since your theme is “Building Bridges”, I thought why not have groups actually build a bridge with an activity like this:

10:20-10:40SNACK BREAK

Have small group take a snack break together. Give group one question to discuss while they have their snack. (E.g. What was hard about the bridge game & what was fun about it?; What’s your favorite Bible story?)

10:40-11:45ZOOM ACTIVITY & COMMUNICATION GAMES

How can you know the big picture story of what God is doing around you and how you canjoin in, if you haven't been intentional about tuning in and listening to the everyday stories ofyour family and those around you? The intention of thegame, ZOOM, is to get everyone listening to each others "stories", as we illustrate through a group game that you must engage, listen to, and share the seemingly innocuous details in order to understand the big picture of what God is doing around you and your family.

The game is simply this: Each group will receive a set of pictures that together tell a big picturestory. Every group member receives a picture face down, while being told that they must not let anyone else see their picture. The group is then given the task of putting the pictures in order to tell the story. The catch is that they will not be able, at any time, to see each others' pictures. In order to figure out the correct order and the story, they must listen very carefully to each person describe their picture and discuss how they all might fit together. Once a

group believes they have the pictures in the right order, they can start at the beginningturning pictures over and see how they did.

This is a great game to play with all ages, because kids of most ages can describe a picture that they are seeing (and in doing so, reinforce the fact that kids also have important stories to tell about what God is doing and that we need to listen to them to get the big story of what God is doing.) This is also a great game to reinforce communication, cooperation, and listening, because if you don’t listen and you just look at your picture, you think you know they whole story, but you’re missing so much.

Other communication games to play after ZOOM is finished: Charades, Pictionary, Telephone, Headbandz, etc.

11:45-12:30LUNCH

As the groups are sent off to lunch, I would encourage them to eat together and put those communication and listening skills to work as they chat and eat. Jars with fun “table talk” questions (E.g. If you could be any animal, what would you be?, What super power would you want to have?, What’s the silliest joke you know?, etc.) could be on every table to encourage this.

12:30-3:30ADULT TEACHING TIME/KIDS’ DOWNTIME

While the adults dig deeper into healthy communication, intercultural dynamics, or whatever seems most appropriate and helpful, the children can go have some much needed downtime. For youth, I have found that it works best to give them the option of going to help play with the kids and watch a movie OR staying with the adults.

If there is a playground or gym area, the kids should get a chance to run and play after lunch. Then I would suggest a feature length movie that is appropriate for all ages. This way the kids can quiet themselves and give their brains a break for a bit. The preschooler and early elementary students will especially need this, as they probably still have naptime at home.

3:30-?LARGE GROUP TIME FOR WORSHIP & WRAP-UP

This is a good chunk of time to have fun with and reinforce the themes of the day. Good uses of this time could be: more laid-back, interactive, fun worship; giving people chances to share their favorite moments from the day or their “God Sightings” (moments when they saw God at work); or even have people take turns “introducing” someone they have gotten to know that day who is not from their church.