By Allison R. Graff
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.
Advertisement
New Hope Lutheran Ministries, PennsylvaniaYouth 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 ThemChurches 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.