Towards an Intergenerational Worship-Based Integrative Church: The Embodiment of Reconciliative Community as the Epiphany of the Church

Abstract

This article presents reasons for manifesting the church as a community of reconciliation as her core identity through an intergenerational worship setting that integrates the whole body of Christ. This research is vital because chur­ches generally show internal disintegration through weekly frag­mentation in worship. Separation of generations who are sup­posedly one big family of God continues to happen based on social and psychological reasons to the extent of forgetting the universal sinfulness of humanity and their basic needs. The author elaborates on two fundamental reasons through bibli­cal-theological methods. He analyses the liturgical ecclesiology of Jean-Jacques von Allmen in the context of war and the post-war era, which influences his theological formulation about the substance of reconciliation as the epiphany of the church. Such conviction is substantiated by another biblical analysis con­cerning four terminologies used in Revelation (tribe, people, language, and nation) and literary analysis of 2 Corinthians that set reconciliation as its center. Both theological and biblical analyses provide a strong foun­da­tion for churches to integrate all of God’s people as a recon­ci­l­i­a­­tory community in the world. The author views the discussion of theological and biblical basis have not being tied to the wor­ship life of a church that needs to embrace all people through intergenerational worship. This notion would be a contribution to the Christian community in Indonesia.

Keywords

• Intergenerational Worship
• Reconciliation
• Integration
• Liturgical Ecclesiology