Join our Community!
Are you looking to bring the generations together in your church?
Is your leadership trying to create deeper connections between members of all ages?
Do you want to build a more intergenerational culture in your church?
If your answer is YES, then InterGenerate is for you!
Our Story . . .
2017. The inaugural InterGenerate conference at Lipscomb University in 2017 brought together church leaders and academics from a broad spectrum of Christian traditions to explore intergenerational faith formation and ministry. This unique combination of practitioners and scholars set InterGenerate apart as a conference unlike any other in the field.
2019. At the second InterGenerate conference in 2019, more than 200 men and women from the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom gathered for deeper explorations of and conversations about the theories, trends, practices, and models that are shaping churches with intergenerational priorities. Once again, the conference was located at Lipscomb University.
2021. Due to Covid-19, InterGenerate intentionally partnered with the Children’s Spirituality Conference for a powerful virtual experience over the course of these three days (May 24-26). To our surprise, we had around 1000 people register and join us from places around the world. Each day included keynotes, workshops, academic paper presentations, and other activities that served to teach, inspire, connect, and support.
2023. We were thrilled to gather in person again at Lipscomb University in June of 2023 for our fourth Intergenerate conference. An exciting slate of keynote speakers, mainstage presenters, workshop leaders, and paper presenters invited 100+ participants to engage with a wide range of topics on intergenerational ministry.
2024. In 2024, we discerned three main focuses as we continue into the next season of InterGenerate:
Collecting Stories of intergenerational ministry
Curating Resources for becoming more intentionally intergenerational
Providing Connection to further the intergenerational conversation.
2025. And in June 2025, people from all over the globe convened at Asbury Theological Seminary, in Wilmore, KY, to commence with our fifth InterGenerate Conference. Our theme is Connecting Heads, Hands, Hearts of Every Generation, centering on what it means to lean into 1 Corinthians 12:12: "For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ." Over 50 presenters from all over the world, representing an array of Christian denominations, contexts, and aspects of intergenerational ministry presented academic research, practical workshops, and intergenerational experiences.
In 2025, we also launched our first InterGenerate Cohorts, and they are still thriving in 2026. Every other month, we also have invited speakers to share in our Online Gatherings. Recordings of these events are available here:
2026 marks our 10th year at InterGenerate, and we celebrated by inaugurating our first online global conference on February 24 (25 in Australia/New Zealand) 228 people came together from 11 countries, literally from around the globe. Our theme extended out of our 2025 conference: Gathering Heads, Hearts, Hands of Every Generation Around the World. Together, we continued to deepen what it means to build a global community of Christians dedicated to bringing the generations of the church together. We explored what it means to be intentional about building community in an online space together. We came together as pastors, children’s leaders, family ministers, youth ministers, researchers, worship pastors, council members, session leaders, and more—whole ministry teams from churches from multiple denominations and sizes, with different theological perspectives, different views, different preferences, but all working to hold space intentionally for diversity in community. We offered many ways to connect and build community. We also worked to honor this sacred space of difference, recognizing what it means for us to each lean in, listen, to connect, to encourage, to learn, to grow. We also offered Vendor Rooms (with lots of giveaways!) and Welcome Rooms before and after the conference to offer resources and communities of support. And for those who missed this wonderful day, never fear—we recorded all 12 sessions, and you can purchase a Conference Recording Resource Bundle for you and your ministry team to explore in the coming year. Here are some of the testimonies from participants:
Looking Forward. . .
After our 2025 in-person conference, our team recognized how powerful it was to have younger people join us for our conference. We had a youth come to represent the IYS Youth Story project, and several children, even a baby join us, and we realized it felt so right for them to be there, and added SO much to our overall conference—especially since our conference is about including ALL generations! We began wondering: what would it be like to offer more activities so that young people, and elders, might be able to join us? At the same time, GenOn Ministries was praying about how to enact conference elements surrounding their Threads Within grant that seeks to empower and extend faith from church to home. As our ideas converged, we realized the Spirit was guiding us to collaborate for our 2027 in-person conference.
To be clear, InterGenerate will be offering all the same wonderful elements—engaging speakers and presentations, joining both the academic and practitioner in conversation, along with academic papers, workshops, taste-and-sees, affinity groups, and much more—but ALSO, Threads Within will seek to weave intergenerational activities throughout the conference, making it possible for people to bring family members (or not—and it will still be totally fine to come individually!) to the conference. All will be welcome, and all will be able to participate!
We are so excited to announce that InterGenerate, along with GenOn/Threads Within will host the 2027 conference at Calvin University, June 22-24. Our theme will be: Weaving Together Generations of Faith. “I want you woven into a tapestry of love, in touch with everything there is to know of God.” - Colossians 2:2 (MSG) On June 21, we will also offer the following pre-conference options: 1) Global Pre-Conference Track June 21, afternoon, and June 22 am, 2)Music That Makes Community pre-conference workshop on June 21, and 3) Pre-conference intergenerational mission opportunity (stay tuned for more details. Mark your calendars! We hope to see YOU there!
We Hope you will join us . . .
Whether you are simply interested in learning more or are experienced in this field, there is a place for you at InterGenerate! This is a conference where you belong!
For all questions or inquiries about InterGenerate, please email us at: intergenerate.ig@gmail.com
