If you involve them, they will come. With so many activities vying for teenagers’ time and energy—sports, academics, social life, sleep—it’s a wonder young people ever attend worship services. And when they do, they may act bored or apathetic or lack respect for the traditions of the church. Yet, many churches across the country are discovering something about teens and worship: If you involve them in the worship service, they will be there. Especially if you let them lead.
Robert Starkey, a recent high school graduate, is convinced teens can contribute in a huge way to their congregations. Starkey, along with a group of United Methodist teens from his area in eastern Michigan, has adapted for teenagers a curriculum designed to certify adult lay speakers for church ministry. Now, this same group is spearheading a year-long program to train youth from 100 United Methodist churches to lead worship in their churches.
“Every generation has to learn worship,” Starkey said. “Involving youth in worship does a lot more than just enrich their lives—it really enriches the congregation to have an entire service led by youth or to have a liturgist who is a youth.”
Feeling Needed
Not every church has young people like Starkey who are ready and willing to become leaders in their congregations. So how can the minds and hearts of older churchgoers be changed toward teenagers when so few youth take initiative to sing in worship bands, read Scripture or serve as greeters in their churches?
Sometimes it takes a visionary adult in the congregation to initiate change and equip teenagers to use their gifts.
The Church of the Ascension in Pittsburgh, Penn., has a population of more than 60 teenagers. Until recently, it didn’t involve youth in leading worship beyond the Episcopal congregation’s traditional roles, such as carrying the communion cup and processional cross to the altar and lighting candles at the front of the sanctuary. But Alex Ruzanic, Director of Student Ministries at Ascension, finds that though teens don’t always like all the elements of his church’s formal Anglican worship, he can keep them engaged by encouraging them to take ownership of weekly services.
If teenagers are going to become true leaders in their churches, they also need to feel needed in their congregations. At the.river, a new church south of Boston, Mass., youth are indispensable to the congregation’s worship life. “We don’t ‘let’ kids get involved; we need them to be involved!” said Mary Dykstra, who partnered with her husband, Bruce, to plant the church just over two years ago.
If you would like to get your congregation’s youth more involved in planning and leading worship, the stories of these five churches may help you get started. Each received a Worship Renewal Grant from the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship to stimulate their thinking. But you don’t need a lump of money to start involving youth in the worship life of your congregation.
Granite Springs Church, California
Keeping everyone—kids, teens and adults— together and engaged during at least part of the worship service is something that Granite Springs Church in Granite Springs, Calif., has worked on over the years. Vital worship, the church’s leaders believe, spans generations. Splintering people into age-appropriate groups as soon as they walk through the church doors means they will miss something very important in worship.
To flesh out this conviction, Granite Springs Church devised a project that would get everyone, including teens, involved in their worship service. They undertook a year-long Bible memorization challenge that led to the church’s youth standing up in front of the congregation on numerous occasions to share memorized Scripture. In September 2006, 13 high school juniors and seniors— several from unchurched families—memorized the entire book of Titus and recited it for the church. Immediately after sharing the book of Titus with the congregation, some of the youth asked, “When can we do that again?”
Shawnee Park Christian Reformed Church, Michigan
At Shawnee Park Christian Reformed Church in Grand Rapids, Mich., teens aren’t just helping to lead praise songs, they’re actually writing them.
Jan VanKooten, a music teacher and Shawnee Park CRC member, dreamed up a project that would not only give young people a way to be creatively involved in the worship life of her church, but also stimulate worship renewal in her entire congregation. After taking music composition classes taught by church members, young people are setting their favorite Scripture verses to song. Some of the teens involved weren’t sure whether they could “do” music. But by March 2007, the congregation was singing some of the new Scripture songs in their worship services and finding out that the teens had a surprising knowledge of music— and of Scripture.
Church of the Ascension, Pennsylvania
Alex Ruzanic, Director of Student Ministries at Church of the Ascension in Pittsburgh, says the key to getting teenagers involved in worship services is to bridge the gap between what happens in youth group and what happens in the main church service.
He found that if he conveyed excitement about the traditional Anglican liturgy, along with love and respect for the students’ abilities, they, too, would get excited about the worship ways of the church. Too many youth ministries try to make worship cool and contemporary, Ruzanic says. “This sends a message that the students don’t like church and they don’t understand it.” Instead, teaching teens about God and the church’s traditions during student ministries will prepare them to go out and contribute in big ways to the worship life of the congregation. It takes some patience and a great deal of intentional effort on the part of the churches’ adults.
the.river, Massachusetts
As a new church plant just south of Boston, the.river has integrated its teenagers into its still-developing worship life in a way that feels natural to the congregation. Through the help of their grant from the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship, the.river developed a program to train its teenagers to plan and lead worship.
Seeing their enthusiasm, church cofounder Mary Dykstra, along with other church leaders, began plugging the teens’ gifts into opportunities in weekly services. The key challenge was to convey to teens an important message about worship: It is not a performance—it is an act of service to lead others to worship God. When young people grasp this, faith blossoms. “Students see other students freely involved and acting on their faith, and it stirs something in them,” said Dykstra.
New Hope Lutheran Ministries, Pennsylvania
Youth Minister Greg Shoemaker and Pastor Philip Gustafson from the small, western-Pennsylvania town of Vandergrift discovered that a way to beat the drug problem in their town was to get teens involved in planning and leading worship in their two congregations.
They taught a group of teens—some of them with no church background at all— about worship that was intergenerational, intercultural and interdenominational. Then teens planned four services, two of which they led entirely on their own. “There were times when we thought it was going to be a failure, working with kids with varying commitment levels to the project,” said Shoemaker. But then as the young people were planning a reenactment of the first Lord’s Supper for their Good Friday service, one teen asked the question, “Is my grandmother going to understand this?” Then the project directors knew they must have done something right.
Involve Them or Lose Them
Churches all over North America are letting the developing gifts of their teenagers go to waste. The consequences of this are many; but among them is a waning interest in the church and its practices, especially as young people begin to make choices of their own about participation in religious activities. “If you don’t get the teens involved in worship, they’re not going to stay interested in church,” said Diane Laughlin, a member at Church of the Ascension.
Incorporating young people into the fabric of your congregation’s worship life will take some imaginative thinking and a willingness to tolerate change. But these efforts just might be rewarded when your teenagers carry a fresh, revitalizing breeze into your worship services.
Allison R. Graff is a freelance writer with a third-culture-kid background in Russia and Germany. She is also Web Communications Coordinator at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
