HALLMARKS OF INTERGENERATIONAL WORSHIP TOOLKIT
hallmarks of intergenerational worship TOOLKIT
The Hallmarks of Intergenerational Worship Toolkit is designed to help you reflect and assess the levels of intergenerationality in your church’s worship services.
Welcome! Start Here
In the spring of 2025, the Roots & Wings grant team conducted a literature review in part to discern the core characteristics, or “hallmarks,” of intergenerational worship. We identified five hallmarks: intentionality, relationality, dignified reciprocity, flexibility, and empowerment. We created this toolkit to help church leaders, lay and ordained, reflect and assess the current levels of intergenerationality in their worship based on the five hallmarks.
The toolkit has two parts:
- A survey to help you identify which hallmarks are especially strong in your context and which need more support
- A resource for each of the 5 hallmarks that offers practical steps for increasing that characteristic in public worship
We invite you and members of your worshipping community to take the survey and explore the follow-up resources as you discern how the Holy Spirit is calling you to engage all ages in worship more deeply. Our dream is that this tool might help your congregation:
- self-assess areas of strength and areas of growth related to intergenerational worship
- engage a new framework for exploring worship for all ages
- catalyze conversation about intergenerational worship
- generate new ideas for engaging the full participation of different generations in worship
Step #1: Consider a Team Approach
Participating in liturgy or attending worship is a highly personal experience. We would expect that two members of a congregation taking the survey might rate questions very differently. In order to get a full sense of which hallmarks are especially strong in your context and which need more support, we recommend inviting 3–6 people, ideally with some age diversity, to take the survey and share their results.
Step #2: Take the Survey
The survey has 33 statements that you will be asked to rate on a scale of 1 (Strongly Disagree) to 5 (Strongly Agree). For example, “Our congregation purposefully considers the needs of different generations when planning worship services.” The survey takes about 10–15 minutes to complete. You can click the button below to access the survey or use this link: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/hallmarksofintworship.
Please Consider Adding Your Email Address
Not only do we hope this toolkit will benefit your community, we have an ambitious goal of getting 500 survey responses in 2026 and reviewing the aggregate data to get a sense of which hallmarks are especially strong across the church and which need more support. In 2029, we will resend the survey to everyone who provides their email address so that we can assess how intergenerational worship changes across the church from 2026–2029.
Step #3: Score the Survey
Once you have completed the survey, you will need to score your survey. Instructions are provided below, and you will also see a link to a PDF with instructions once you complete the survey.
| HALLMARK | LOW | MODERATE | HIGH |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intentionality | 7–15 | 16–25 | 26–35 |
| Relationality | 6–13 | 14–21 | 22–30 |
| Dignified Reciprocity | 7–15 | 16–25 | 26–35 |
| Flexibility | 7–15 | 16–25 | 26–35 |
| Empowerment | 6–13 | 14–21 | 22–30 |
Step #4: Discern Next Steps
Once you have a sense of which hallmarks are especially strong in your context and which need more support, either by scoring your own survey or reviewing the scores of a team, celebrate your areas of strength and discern if there is a hallmark you would like to strengthen further.
For each of the five hallmarks of intergenerational worship, our team has written a short Building Faith article to help you deepen your understanding of that hallmark. In addition, each article offers a list of practical ideas for strengthening that hallmark in intergenerational worship. Click on the links below to access the articles you’d like to read.
Dive Deeper & Find Practical Ideas
How to Offer Feedback on This Toolkit
Our grant team, Roots & Wings: Intergenerational Worship Collaborative, is a community of practice committed to ongoing learning from scholars and church leaders alike. We hope to improve this toolkit over time so that it can be the most beneficial resource possible, but we need your help!
If you have feedback on this toolkit, please email our research partners at Future of Faith.