Being Family Together: An 8-Week Intergenerational Bible Study on the Family
About
Being Family Together: An 8-Week Intergenerational Bible Study on the Family invites children, teens, young adults, adults, and seniors to do something surprisingly rare: sit at the same table, open Scripture, listen to one another, and discover what it really means to be family.
Families can be wonderful—and complicated. They can be places of belonging, laughter, faith, support, conflict, misunderstanding, caregiving, grief, forgiveness, and growth, sometimes all in the same week. The Bible never pretends otherwise. Scripture is filled with imperfect families: siblings who compete, parents who show favoritism, generations who misunderstand one another, people who carry old wounds, and communities that must learn how to forgive, serve, and remain connected.
This eight-week discussion-based study explores those realities with honesty, grace, and humor.
Rather than separating people by age, Being Family Together brings generations into the same conversation. Seniors share long memories and life experience. Adults reflect on responsibility, family roles, and caregiving. Young adults bring questions about identity, independence, and changing expectations. Teens speak honestly about pressures older generations may not fully understand. Children contribute the kind of direct wisdom adults often overlook.
No generation is treated as the teacher while another is expected only to listen. Everyone has something to offer—and something to learn.
Each week explores a central family theme:
Week One – What Makes a Family?
Discover how Scripture expands family beyond biology into belonging, commitment, love, and the household of God.
Week Two – Family Patterns: Blessings, Wounds, and Repeated Stories
Explore what families pass from one generation to the next, including traditions, strengths, habits, expectations, and unresolved patterns.
Week Three – Listening Before Speaking
Learn how communication styles differ across generations and how careful listening can transform family relationships.
Week Four – Conflict, Forgiveness, and Reconciliation
Consider the difference between forgiveness, restored trust, reconciliation, accountability, and healthy boundaries.
Week Five – Roles, Expectations, and the Power to Serve
Examine the roles families assign—caregiver, peacemaker, organizer, achiever, problem-solver—and how Jesus reframes power as service.
Week Six – Passing Faith in Every Direction
Discover how faith moves not only from older to younger generations, but in every direction through stories, questions, example, worship, and shared life.
Week Seven – Families Under Stress: Change, Loss, and Caregiving
Reflect on how families respond to aging, illness, grief, financial pressure, caregiving, and major life transitions.
Week Eight – Becoming the Family of God
Explore what it means for the church to become a truly intergenerational community where every age is valued, heard, and needed.
A special Table Talk Appendix includes 125 cut-apart questions—25 each for Seniors, Adults, Young Adults, Teens, and Children. Place the questions in separate containers by generation or mix them together for completely random conversation. These questions are designed to spark stories, laughter, memories, curiosity, faith conversations, and genuine understanding around the table.
Being Family Together does not offer a picture of the perfect family, because perfect families do not exist. Instead, it offers something more useful: a way to talk honestly about real relationships and to practice being a healthier family of faith.
Because being family is not simply something we are.
It is something we learn to do—together.