Age Segregation in School and Church

Two things which have been of great interest to me for as long as I can remember are "School" and "Church." In my early twenties I began to realize that there is an institutional version of each of these, promoted in the common society and upheld by most of the powerful organizations of our time. To try and escape the clutches of these institutions, into an organic version of life, is amazingly difficult for most. It's take great strength, courage, and the hand of God! There are so many areas which hold one tightly to the institution but not many more pronounced than age segregation.

I began noticing early on that it just didn't seem natural for my church to divide up family members into corresponding age groups. There were youth groups, children's ministries, young marrieds, married with young children, older adults, and seniors. We all went to separate Bible classes on Sunday, separate youth retreats in the Spring, and separate rooms in Summer Camp. As a youth I was virtually cut off from the world outside of my own age group, and, except for the devotionals of my own youth minister and his adult volunteers, had very little interaction of any spiritual depth with anyone older than myself. It wasn't until I read a book in college about parent-directed Youth Ministry, where the youth minister quit his job and left the parents in charge, that I really begin to look for an alternative to this institutional model.

I also noticed it was true in schools, which may have in fact informed the way in which 20th Century churches began to behave. Karl M. Bunday writes here http://learninfreedom.org/age_grading_bad.html : 

• Some people think it is "natural," or even beneficial, for children to be confined with other children of approximately the same age for most of each school day, but this is a recent, mistaken idea promoted by education bureaucrats.
• The fact is, however, that most American schools were ungraded until the second half of the nineteenth century, the graded school having been introduced in the United States in 1848, when the Quincy Grammar School in Boston, Massachusetts, opened its doors. A number of educators, impressed with the graded schools they had seen in Germany, had been proposing adoption of the technique in this country. The Quincy School was the first built for that purpose; it contained twelve rooms of equal size, four to a floor, in which a teacher and somefifty-five children would meet for a year at a time. The men who created the school predicted that it would set the pattern of American schooling for another fifty years. Their estimate was clearly conservative. Charles Silberman, Crisis in the Classroom: The Remaking of American Education (New York: Random House, 1970) p. 166 (emphasis added). Read the entire article here: http://learninfreedom.org/age_grading_bad.html

It just makes sense for students to be "pulled along" and "pulled up" by students older than themselves. Parents and Teachers can only be part of the equation. We should never underestimate the power of positive peer pressure. I've noticed that with each new child April and I have, and we're now on #6, the younger achieves more sooner because he is always running to catch up with older siblings. This is true in daily life, in daily school, and it is true in our spiritual lives as well. 

If we only spend time with those who are at the same spiritual age as ourselves we should not expect to gain new ground, at least not as quickly as when we sit at the table with those who have gone further with God than ourselves. The difference in Church and school, however, is that age does not mean the number of birthdays one has. Age is something entirely different in God's economy. Age is spiritual maturity. It is not natural, or even beneficial, for the children of God to be confined with other Christians just as mature as ourselves. We must seek out, on a regular basis, those who can pull us up and pull us along to a greater depth and a higher understanding of our Life in Christ. I'm sure most would agree. The real trick is finding a church where you have plenty of opportunities to mix it up with more mature Christians.