Engaging Youth in Worship-Opportunities to Respond
December 1, 2008
For most of my life the only style of worship I knew was what I would call the teacher student model. There was a choir director and pastor who sat up front and spoke, we sat in the pews and listened. What I found missing from that was the opportunity to be involved. To respond to God in ways that were not written, or scripted or printed in a hymnal. We listened to the preacher, we listened to the choir, we listened to the scripture being read. Often I did feel that worship was boring.
But then things changed when I started going to my youth group. These became the times when I learned the most, when I felt closest to God, was most engaged, and when my faith grew the strongest, when I had a chance to express my thoughts in some tangible way, and to experience God outside of songs and sermons. It was when I was given a chance to respond.
I remember one of the first times I experienced this. We were asked to write down something that was separating us from God on a piece of paper and tack it onto the cross. Then when everyone had finished they lit the bottom piece of paper and all of our “sins” dissapeared. What was awesome for me was not necessarily the cool paper, or awesome pyrotechnics, while I will say I was impressed, but it was the opportunity that was created for me to have an active role in the worship service.
Maybe your conscience, or your insurance, won’t allow you to use flash paper but I want to encourage you to create opportunities to respond in your worship services. Some ideas are to use rocks and a bucket of water and have the youth imagine letting go of their worries as they drop the rock into the water. We have also used a fiber paper that dissolves in water, which is much safer than the flash paper and just as cool. Most recently we did something as simple as laying down two sheets of butcher paper and markers and had the youth write down anything they wanted to say to God.
There are many ideas of things you can do, there are tons more that haven’t even been thought of yet.
Oh, one more thing. These do not just work well with youth, but I encourage you to try it with your adults as well.
Ok for those of you who have been using these types of worship experiences. What are some of the ones that have worked the best for you? Share them with us!
Related posts:
- Engaging Youth in Worship- Give Them Ownership
- Youth Worship Idea- Cell Phone Prayer List
- Worship Team Retreats: Why They’re Worth It!
- Tips For Introducing Original Songs
- Book Review – “Engaging With God: A Biblical Theology of Worship”
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My guest post on The Worship Community http://tinyurl.com/624w7k
[...] 1. Engaging Youth in Worship-Opportunities to Respond which talks about providing hands on ways for youth to respond in the worship service. [...]
Engaging Youth in Worship – Opportunities to Respond at http://is.gd/acbW
Engaging Youth in Worship – Opportunities to Respond at http://is.gd/acbW
I have a friend, Dave “Choke” Rogers, at The Heights in Richardson who took his students one year through an experiential worship of each Jewish festival and they enacted how Christ fulfilled that festival.
I did the passover with them and it was a power night as we together ate and learned how Christ fulfilled it. He also did the Feast of Tabernacles, etc.
At NorthWood we did an experiential communion where we walked into the Temple by all the furnishings (symbolically) and showed how Christ fulfilled them (bread of life/ candlelight/ etc).
I need to post some of these on worshiptrench.com as they have been the better services we have done. Our Good Friday are there (under free tools) and are highly participative for both students and adults. We need to start an “order of service/explanation” pool of knowledge of these services as a community.
those are some awesome ideas I’ll have to go check out that site. Let me know when you get them up online.
When I was a teen, the youth pastor locked the meeting room door and posted a guard, who surreptitiously slipped a note (with directions to a checkpoint) to each group that showed up. We walked out of the building, to the newspaper office, where the editor gave us directions to the back entrance of a closed-up storefront. We had worship that night as if we were part of the persecuted church.
Now that I am older, I’m part of a Messianic congregation and we teach how each Jewish Biblical feast points to Jesus. Passover is usually the best attended and clearest to show the Gospel.
My guest post on The Worship Community http://tinyurl.com/624w7k