Darren Philip, Youth & Children’s Development Worker at Livingston United Parish Church, has completed an MTh at Aberdeen University.
His dissertation was on Children in an Intergenerational Church Community – Lessons for the Church of Scotland from the works of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. This has been awarded the John Hope Prize in Practical Theology.
Darren suggests that the church needs to change in the following ways to become more life-giving and faith-shaping for all in our communities:
- from age-segregated to intergenerational
- from educational to experiential
- from one-directional (adult-to-child) relationships to mutual place-sharing
- from relationships used for influence to relationships as revelatory
Read Darren’s research paper, Children in an Intergenerational Church Community