By Allison R. Graff
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?”
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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, PennsylvaniaAlex 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