Last week my wife and I went to “Family Camp” with 75 people from the church. We spent a glorious week up at Lake Tahoe and if you haven’t seen the snow covered mountains on a summer day up at Lake Tahoe, be sure to put it on your list of places to go! The church has been doing “Family Camp” for more than 30 years and it is a most amazing tradition. Some people camp in tents, some people in RVs, while others rent a cabin or stay in the lodge. In the mornings there is a program for a couple of hours, the afternoons are free and often there is something fun planned a part of the evenings.
This year we decided to keep all of the generations together for the program time, rather than having the kids do a separate program and the youth do their own thing. We used the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy as our theme so each group was broken up into a fellowship. Our youngest participant was 6 and 1/2 years old and our oldest was 84. I remembered why there is usually so much resistance to keeping the generations together! It is very difficult to plan something meaningful for a 6 year old, an 80 year old, a 13 year old and a 49 year old. Admittedly, there were probably moments throughout our program when someone in one of the age groups was bored…but every person survived.
When I was explaining my decision to keep all of the generations together to some of the participants, I told them that as a society we are doing less and less together across ages. We tend to cater to the “kids must be entertained” mindset and the “adults just want peace and quiet” mindset and the “teenagers are a species all unto themselves” mindset and we live and move in separate universes as a result. The church is one of the few places where we can bring all the ages together and it makes sense!
One of the most touching moments was watching the groups struggle with an exercise in which they had to get every person in their group across a fictitious river. I glanced over to see one of the groups using their three children to “anchor” each one of the adults in the group as they crossed the river. I guarantee you it was a high point for the kids who were able to be so helpful and for the adults who knew they could count on the kids.
So often I hear adults (particularly older adults) bemoan their inability to talk to their grandchildren or great grandchildren with whom they feel they have very little in common. One of the things we accomplished with our intergenerational “Family Camp” is that the generations really talked to each other. As difficult as it is to make it happen, the experience between the generations is invaluable. Hopefully they will all experience church differently now as well.