SYNERGY

Chris McCurley: Synergy is probably a word I have never used naturally. I probably rarely have ever used it on purpose. It sounds kind of like a corporate buzzword to me or something that when I used to get sent every now and then to a conference or some kind of training session, some hired speaker that came in would use the word synergy time and again in the presentation. So while it's not that common a word for me, it's actually a beautiful concept. Synergy can be defined as the combined action or cooperation of two or more agents, organizations or substances to produce a total effect greater than the sum of the individual contributions. So simply put, we might say the whole is greater than the sum of the individual parts. Maybe we might say one plus one equals three or more. A peanut butter sandwich is fine. A jelly sandwich may be a little strange, but still okay. But a peanut butter and jelly sandwich is a snack that probably most all of us would find quite tasty. 20 years ago, Disney acquired for the purchase price of $7.4 billion dollars billion with a B Disney purchased Pixar. That's an astronomical sum of money that they spent and yet it paid off in dividends. So for years Disney had been unable to replicate the success of some of their animated films that they had enjoyed a generation prior. Movies that you're aware of like Little Mermaid, The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast. But by 2006 they had been on a dry spell, had not had that kind of success and so they acquired a Pixar. And immediately the ⁓ stock of their revenue soared and the movies that they started churning out were again instant classics like they had been a generation before. The magic, so to speak, of some kind of effort, even a ministry in the church, we might say that the magic can be found in our working together. If you've ever been in some kind of brainstorming session with others. You might find that you have a level, you find a level of creativity that you didn't previously know existed. And we find that our morale is higher when we get to work together, even in the church. We have more motivation to get through a problem and our output and our energy levels are higher because we get to work together. It helps us to stay focused on the shared vision. When you're working by yourself, it's easy to get distracted and it's easy to get discouraged. But when you're working with fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, if you're feeling weak, they may strengthen you. And then later on you might strengthen them. Tonight, I want to discuss intergenerational relationships in the church and how the church is so much richer for having them. You might find yourself in the list of generations on the screen. Whether it's in your home or when you're raising children, maybe it's with your neighbors, with coworkers, or with any other group, when you are mixed with members of another generation different from yours, sometimes there can be some friction. We have different tastes. Certainly, Different generations dress differently than others. They might have different music preferences. Different things are important to them. Their language is even something that maybe you can't take for granted. For instance, some of you might come in on a Sunday evening and just say, whew, I am tuckered out. I know what you mean. I know what message you're trying to convey when you say you are tuckered out. I don't use the phrase, I'm tuckered out, but I know what you mean. But if you went up to the loft where there are 12 to 17 and 18 year olds and you said, I am tuckered out, they might look at you very strangely because they have no idea what you're talking about. We have different phrases and slang that we use. Some of you back in your day may have said something was groovy. I don't. Some of you may say something is bogus. Some people, and I'm a millennial, but I struggle to identify with my own generation. But as I was Googling slang terms for millennials, the word BAE came up, bae. Now, if you have children or grandchildren who are younger than me, you probably know what that means, but you may never have heard it. A bae is your pet name for that special someone. It's kind of short for baby. But you may not have known that because we have differences in our communication across the generations. You could go up there into the loft right now. And would love to look at your face listening to these kids talk. As they say, clap back or something is sus. You don't know what they're talking about. There is a difference of course, in talking about intergenerational relationships versus intra-generational relationships and those in the church. Intra-generational relationships in the church would be of course, how we relate to someone who is within our own age group or demographic. For instance, how do teenagers relate to one another in the church? How do young adults, how do our young families? How do our middle aged or empty nesters, how do our senior saints relate to one another in the church? And many churches have ministries that cater to these specific age groups. They may have Sunday school programs like us that put one year olds in class with one year olds. And they have middle schoolers in class with middle schoolers and they have young adults in class with young adults, but they're not gonna put a an 11th grade junior in class with a two year old. Some churches actually designed their adult Bible classes on the model of intragenerational relationships. And so if you're a 20 something, if you're a young family or all the way up, you're almost whisked into a specific Sunday school class without much choice because that's how their Sunday school program is categorized. Here at Walnut Street, have age specific ministries. I think about our CIA group, which Spencer and Bethany Moore work with. These are our third through the fifth graders that we get together. We have an attended nursery, and so this is babies and their parents. We have Bible hour for grades third grade and younger. We have VBS for children through fifth grade. We have a youth ministry for sixth through 12th grade. We have young at heart group ⁓ somewhat like maybe an AARP card. You may have noticed when you turn 60, all of a sudden you have emails from Steve Baggett that you weren't getting a month before. And it's like it's magic how it happens, but you're in that young at heart group. We have home builders for our young families, young adult groups. ⁓ Some of our connect groups are, if you look at them, they're pretty well based on age. And then outside of age, we also have other groups like a survivors group, like ladies ministry, ladies, small groups, iron sharpens iron for men. We have a Tuesday morning Bible study for men at Tristar bank. And I could go on and on. of how Walnut Street tends to its ministries by intra-generational relationships. And there is great value in being around Christians who are your age and going through the same things that you are at that season of life. We have a unique perspective in that we can kind of support one another within our age groups. It may be something like this. It may be, I'm a new parent and you're a new parent. and I'm not sleeping at night and you're not sleeping at night and it is all we can do to get our family here for church and you're not going through that alone. Or it may be, well like you, my child is graduating in two weeks and I am both sad and happy but we are going through this together and the feelings that you feel may be something that I'm able to relate to as well and that helps us. That makes us not feel like we're out on an island as much. Maybe we are raising our children, we're also caring for elderly parents and so that working a job all the all the while and so you're able to relate to someone else in church that's going through that like you. Maybe you're advanced in age, maybe you've lost a spouse, maybe you're lonely because of that and so you find someone at church who's going through it too and you bond and you're not alone. So there is tremendous value in the way that we do church of having these intra-generational relationships but also there's great value I would propose in us promoting intergenerational relationships in church. And that's the focus that I wanted us to look at this evening. Some Christians, some of you, some of us, some Christians are blessed to be raised in a Christian home. They have parents who talk about God at home, they pray in front of them and with their children, they read their Bible with their children and they make sure that their children are in church, make sure their children are in Bible school, and make sure that their children are able to view every situation of life through a lens of faith. But for others, their connection to God or their connection to church or their faith is built primarily from someone else. Maybe it's grandparents. A lot of grandparents in our society today are raising or helping to raise their grandchildren. And I've seen some of those grandparents, ⁓ they have an in with their grandchildren by their taking care of them. Often they can bring them to church and even though the parent may not be ready for ⁓ church and faith talks yet, the parent, the grandparent has that in with the grandchildren. Maybe it's an aunt or an uncle. Maybe it's someone else in church that's not a blood family member. Some Bible school teachers just click really well with certain children. Some youth group workers just have a knack. for dealing with middle schoolers, for dealing with high schoolers, and they enjoy being around them, and they know how to talk to them and relate to them. And sometimes there's a preacher in the church or some other church member that is foundational for a child's faith development. I've also seen that a child may come through church, zero through 18, and they come to church, but there's seemingly a strong ⁓ connection to God that is built. But then they go to ⁓ college and they get in with a student Christian center of some kind and I'm happy that Walnut Street supports several of those around this area and maybe something happens at that point in a child's life, a young adult's life where he's ready for she's ready to hear the gospel and a college minister becomes that profound spiritual impact for them. I've been in the church my entire life 42 years and I've never, I've been Maybe like you, my faith has certainly gone up and down through the days, through the months, and through the years. You can probably relate. But I've never had a time in my life where I wasn't going to church. However, I have been blessed to know so many people in the Lord's church who have been foundational in my faith. And I know, looking back on it, that they, whether it was a Bible school teacher or a man of the congregation or a family, they paid special attention to make sure that I felt welcome. and invited into that church's ministries. In my current role here at Walnut Street, I'm coordinating minister and I wanted to read ⁓ one line from my job description. It says that my job is to ensure members of different ages and from diverse backgrounds are served effectively. And I collaborate with ministerial staff and the elders regarding ministry administration. implementation of mission and vision in the church. I have spent many years at this point trying to build up the church family and you have to. And that's a worthy goal. I've spent a lot of my time trying to make church life more enriching and you have to and I appreciate your efforts for that. And a lot of what we have done has been based on the age groups. But when I think of the intergenerational relationships in scripture, my first thought when I was preparing this went to Paul and Timothy. And so if you want to flip in your Bibles to Acts chapter 16, that's where I want to read a little bit. Acts chapter 16 in the first verse says, Paul came to Derbe and to Lystra. A disciple was there named Timothy, the son of a Jewish woman who was a believer, but his father was a Greek. He was well spoken of by the brothers at Lystra and Iconium. Paul wanted Timothy to accompany him and he took him and circumcised him because of the Jews who were in those places. for they all knew that his father was a Greek. As they went on their way through the cities, they delivered to them for observance the decisions that had been reached by the apostles and elders who were in Jerusalem. And so the churches were strengthened in the faith and they increased in number daily. This is at least Paul's second visit to Derbe because Acts chapter 14, just back a couple of pages in your Bible, tells us of when Paul and he had Barnabas with him. had preached the gospel to that city in Derby, and the quote was, they had made many disciples. So the work is going well. But it tells us that the work was going so well that the message was ⁓ landing with, or being received with so much enthusiasm that some of those who heard the message tried to worship Paul as a God. They missed the point. And so because of that, some Jews came to the area and those Jews persuaded the crowds to stone Paul. They left him for dead outside the city. And so then flipping over two pages or two chapters in your Bible, we read here in chapter 16 about Paul encountering this believer, young believer, a man somewhat younger than him, don't know how much younger, named Timothy. Timothy, the son of a Jewish woman who was a believer, And the Bible says, but his father was a Greek. And I think that but indicates that even though the father was a Greek, he was not a believer. so Timothy grew up in this split faith household. You know, you think about how Paul persevered in chapter 14, being drug outside the city gates and stoned and being left for dead, but he wasn't dead. And he persevered through that. Perhaps that is what made his second visit to the area so impactful. Maybe word of that had gotten around for some time of how Paul made it through that and was still preaching and was coming back to the area. And young Timothy in this split faith household had heard about this man, Paul. And when he comes back, well, Timothy joins him. What a blessing Paul was to young Timothy. So much that Timothy was able to learn from him, so much he was able to experience with him. But I know that Paul was blessed by Timothy too. To have a young man along the journey would have been, helping him in his service would have been foundational to Paul's changing the world through the gospel. You think about the Paul and Timothy relationship, this mentor-protege relationship. in their faith. And so I want you to think about tonight, who was your Paul? There may have been several. Who was your Paul? who poured themselves into you in your younger years or even perhaps now, making a special effort to bring you closer to God and to lead you towards service in the kingdom. Who was your Paul? And now I want to ask you, who is your Timothy? Who is it that you are leading to God? Who are you including in your work? Who are you showing how to do the things that you do and encouraging along the way? Your Paul is your mentor. Your Timothy is your protege. And so many times in life, what we want to do is pay someone back for the good that they did, right? That's natural. We want to give back to the person that gave to us. But I suspect that your Paul wouldn't want you to pay him or her back. Your Paul wants you to pay it forward to your Timothy and then the next Timothy and next Timothy and next Timothy and always have your eyes open for someone that you can lead closer to Christ. In 2 Timothy chapter three, Paul writes again to Timothy. He said, You, however, Paul writing to Timothy, you, Timothy, have followed my teaching, my conduct, and my aim in life, my faith, my patience, my love, my steadfastness, my persecutions, my sufferings that happened to me. But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it. think about that passage and I think about the dynamics of this Paul and Timothy relationship and I think about the dynamics of my Paul and Timothy relationships. Paul says you have followed me, you followed my teaching, you followed all these things and then he tells Timothy continue in what you have been taught. How can Paul say that? Is that not in some ways terrifying to in matters of faith and in matters of righteousness, tell someone, follow me. Feels like a big responsibility. How was Paul not too scared to say that? How can we be not too scared to say, follow my example? I'm gonna share some more words of the apostle Paul. He said to the church at Corinth, do not write these things to make you ashamed. I write these things to admonish you as my beloved children. For though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers. For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel. I urge you then be imitators of me. And then flipping over a little bit in first Corinthians, Paul clarifies, he says, be imitators of me as I am of Christ. And so we can catch that. Think, how did Paul have that boldness to say, Timothy, Corinthians, whoever he's writing or talking to, follow me in the faith. How could he do that? Well, he could only do that because he is following Christ himself. You think about, Our Timothes are going to follow somebody, naturally. And we may not want the responsibility to say, follow me, but who do you want them to follow? Do you want them to follow someone who's not trying to do what God wants them to do? Because they can find plenty of people in their life that's not trying to do what God wants them to do. And so the responsibility is grave, but it gives us so much purpose to live like God wants us to live. so that we can in good faith say, follow me. There's a song from 2006 country song. You've probably heard it goes like this. Driving through town, just my boy and me with a happy meal in his booster seat, knowing that he couldn't have his toy until his nuggets were gone. Green traffic light turned straight to red. hit my brakes and mumbled under my breath. His fries went flying and his orange drink covered his lap. Well then my four year old said a four letter word and I was concerned. So I said, son, now where did you learn to talk like that? He said, I've been watching you. That ain't that cool. I'm your buckaroo. I want to be like you and eat all my food and grow as tall as you are. You read some or sing some more of that song. It says, when I got back home, I went to the barn. I bowed my head and prayed real hard and said, Lord, please help me help my stupid self. Then this side of bedtime later that night, turning on my son's Scooby Doo light, he crawled out of bed and he got down on his knees. He closed his little eyes, folded his hands and spoke to God like he was talking to a friend. And I said, son, now where'd you learn to pray like that? He said, I've been watching you dad. Ain't that cool? I'm your broker. I want to be like you. It's a great message for parents. a great song. But it's also a great message for us in the church. for others to want to be like we are in our faith and making sure that we're living to that standard. Yeah, I think about last words sometimes, last words in scripture. Much is made of Jesus' last words on the cross. The few sayings that we have, the things that he felt important enough to utter through indescribable pain and as his time was drawing near, it's kind of like if the proverbial question of if your house was on fire and you had five minutes to get out, what are the things that you would get out of the house and save? And you know that whatever you grab out of the house, those are the things that are most important to you. Well, that's what I see the last words of someone before their death is like, Jesus said some things like to his mother Mary, Mary and to John, he said, behold your son and behold your mother. Jesus said, father, forgive them for they know not what they do. said, father into your hands, I commit my spirit. Think about what David said to his son, Solomon. David was on his death bed and had, but just one more message to give to his son. And he said, be strong and show yourself a man and keep the charge of the Lord your God walking in his ways and keeping his statutes and keeping his commandments and keeping his rules. David wanted his son and the next king. to be strong, to show himself a man, and to keep the charge of the Lord his God and to walk in his ways. We have Paul's last message of scripture, and it's to Timothy, his protege. It's found in 2 Timothy, just before his death, just before Paul is martyred. He writes to Timothy things like, fight the good fight, keep the faith, that there is laid up for him a crown of righteousness. Those are the things that were most important to him as he prepared to depart this life. It's a powerful legacy. Think about it your families and in this church family, what legacy are you leaving? How do you want to be remembered? There will come a day that none of us can impact anymore how we are remembered. That time will be over and how others remember us will be completely for them and we can't do anything about it. But that is not today. As long as we're breathing, we affect how we are remembered. We affect what kind of legacy we lead. And so I think about that as I think about my words and my actions and my attitudes. And I encourage you to do the same. Think about our legacy. Another relationship that I see in scripture is the Paul and Titus relationship. If you want to flip to Titus chapter two, there's a few verses that I'd like to read. Titus, like Timothy, someone, another evangelist, probably younger than Paul, someone who was going to carry on the work of the kingdom in his area after Paul was gone. And this is one of the things that Paul encouraged. Titus in chapter 2 verse 1, but as for you teach what accords with sound doctrine. Older men are to be sober minded, dignified, self-controlled, sound in faith, in love and in steadfastness. Older women are likewise to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good and so train the young women to love their husbands and children to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind and submissive to their own husbands. that the word of God may not be reviled. Likewise, urge younger men to be self-controlled. Show yourself in all respects to be a role model of good works, and in your teaching, show integrity, dignity, and sound speech that cannot be condemned, so that an opponent may be put to shame, having nothing evil to say about us." Notice how that chapter begins, Paul saying, but as for you. as for you, that begs that you look behind that chapter and see what context led up to it. Because the end of Titus 1, Titus is receiving this message from Paul about people who are not living righteously. Those who are not living righteously are insubordinate. They are empty talkers. They are deceivers and they are liars. They are detestable, disobedient and unfit for any good work. And then Paul says, but as for you. And his message here breaks down into the H groups. That's how God expects us to live. He calls this sound doctrine. How we relate to one another in the church is part of sound doctrine. I love doctrine and you love doctrine and our church loves doctrine and part of sound doctrine is how we relate to other age groups. Spiritual growth does not come just through sermons, but through intergenerational relationships. put four things on, five things on the screen, just some practical suggestions as we ⁓ go through this life and go through our faith journey together of how to build strong intergenerational relationships in the church. And the first is to embrace complementary skills. Chad Garrett sent out a text or an email or something this week saying, hey, we're gonna have a one church help desk. out at the Connection Center today. And we've done that before with young adults. And I looked over and there were all kinds of people walking up with their phones needing some help. We've put young adults out there before when we first got OneChurch. It's an example of us embracing complementary skills. An age group younger than me who are ⁓ very tech savvy helping an older generation like me with something like OneChurch. not living in silos, that's a temptation in a church and in any ⁓ agency is to operate and live exists within your silo. Something that I worked through in Metro Nashville police and different departments, they were just concerned with themselves and I was in an office that had to have more of a bird's eye view of how the different departments when the police were operated and. the big picture of how they needed to work together. And we can fall into those temptations in church and not intermingle with one another, ⁓ yet the generations sorely need each other. Older members look to invest in younger, and our younger members don't look to isolate yourselves from the older, but rather seek guidance from them and find ways to work together. I could have listed, and I listed several of my notes here. examples and things that I've seen in the church of how ⁓ success stories of intergenerational projects and relationships in the church. Here at Walnut Street, we put in our teenage classes a teacher in those in each class for at least a quarter, if not longer. And that's an older church member seasoned in their faith, spending at least 13 weeks, if not more, with a group of children so that a group of teenagers so that they can get to know them, so that they can build a relationship with them so that the student hears and internalizes what he has taught. We have teachers in their 30s, we have teachers in their 40s, we have teachers in their 70s who go into these children's classes each and every week ⁓ loving on these children and teaching them the Bible stories that we cherish. We have a widows group who is served primarily by a generation just behind them of young adults through different fellowship activities through the year. We have a senior group who has provided food for our youth group at different occasions and it is appreciated and loved. We have back in the summer we had in our part of our leadership camp, I split the boys and the girls up. So I had two boys and two girls and they were assigned someone from our Young at Heart group. and I told them some room in this church building to go to and I said, hey, you've got 30 minutes, which is kind of a long time. I said, you've got 30 minutes to sit with this Young at Heart member and I want you to learn everything that you can about this ⁓ Young at Heart member. And then I told the Young at Heart member, you've got 30 minutes to learn everything you can about these four teenagers. And they were gonna come back together in a big old circle in the fellowship hall and we had someone like Val telling me all about some of our teenagers. We had Carl and Sue telling me. about our teenagers and we had our teenagers telling us about, I don't remember who it was, was Robin Brunette and I'm forgetting the others, but it was a beautiful sight to see and everybody, young and old, enjoyed that. I could go on and on with the examples of this in the church, but what I want you to do is to think about some examples, be creative in your own life of how you can pour into someone else that is of a different generation. Doesn't have to be a five-year-old, doesn't have to be a 50-year-old, but you can find somebody to pour yourself into in the faith. God is clear that every generation is to be valued because every generation does have value, right? Scripture is clear. Paul told Timothy, let no one despise you for your youth, but set the believers an example in speech and conduct and love and faith and purity. What a message for us to set an example in our speech and our conduct and our love and our faith and in our purity. How can you do that this week? How can you do that this year? I'm asking you to be creative and think, be purposeful and thoughtful in how you live your life and in this church. Job says that wisdom is with the aged and understanding in length of days. And Proverbs says gray hair is a crown of glory. It is gained in a righteous life. All generations are valued by God and valued by the church. Our younger generation may bring a level of energy and boldness and new perspectives, and our older generation brings wisdom and calmness and stability, and neither is complete without the other. I pictured like a tree that has deep roots and a solid foundation and branches and leaves. And without any bit of it, without the leaves, without the branches, without the roots, the tree is gonna fail. Think about our church family. Psalm chapter 145 is the final verse I leave with you. The psalmist said, great is the Lord and greatly to be praised and his greatness is unsearchable. One generation shall commend your works to another and shall declare your mighty acts. Faith is meant to be passed down. Faith was never meant for the next generation to discover it all anew every single time. It is meant to be passed down. It's like a relay race. We at the end of our runner, just handing off the baton to those who will run after us. Am I my brother's keeper? Yes, you are your brother's keeper. That's a resounding yes. And here in the church, you are your brother's keeper because life in Christ is one in community. I'm grateful for this church family and I'm so grateful for the people in my life who have helped lead me to Christ. And I want to pass that on to my Timothes. This evening, if you are in need of the invitation. I want you to take just a moment and consider that. I want you to search your heart on purpose, sincerely. Think about if you need to respond to the Lord's invitation. You can do it publicly. You can also do it privately. You can move back closer to God with one step beginning tonight. Or if you need to be baptized, there is a baptistry right behind me and we would love nothing more. than to witness you put on Christ and baptism tonight. So whatever your need is, we encourage you to come while together we stand and sing.

Acts 16 · chapter mention Acts 16 · chapter mention Acts 14 · chapter mention Psalms 145 · chapter mention