Favorite Worship Services
What Makes a Great Worship Service for 7th/8th Graders?
In the confirmation lesson about worship, the 7th/8th graders are asked to break into Quads (4 people) and share with each other their favorite worship service.1
It begins with a lot of looking anywhere but towards the front. Then someone says they love singing carols holding the candles on Christmas Eve.
Others chime together about being stuffed into the pew, wearing uncomfortable clothing, full from a big dinner, waiting for the famous birth stories to begin. Waiting for the full organ rendition of "Hark! The Herald Angels Say" and "O Come All Ye Faithful."
Then someone else says how long the service is and everyone laughs.
What we like best is passing the light from the big candle up front - "The Christ Candle!" someone remembers - But really waiting, waiting for our college-age cousin, who doesn't believe any of this, turning to us with their lit candle and that gleam in their eye as they too know this IS a big deal.
We light our small candle from theirs. We share that sly smile. This is special.
And we sing "Silent Night" and "The First Noel."
Best Worship Services
This gets the ball rolling about best worship services.
The class contrarian lifts up the smallest worship service they remember from a Vesper service at the outdoor chapel near the lake at summer camp. Someone else tops that with the love of the big Palm Sunday parade. Another remembers the baptism service where they got to see the child up close when the pastor carried the child all the way to the back for them to meet her.
No one ever mentions any of the services of October that the staff spends so many hours working and preparing. World Communion, Reformation, and All Saints Sundays are never remembered by mid-highs.
When we ask the same question of adults they sometimes do lift up the All Saints Sunday with the reading and bell tolling of those who have died and gone on to glory in the past year. This resonates (pun intended) with them as these are people they know and love.
The Bell Chimes
For a Children's message I use each year, I talk about how the choir music, the congregational hymn singing, and the piano or organ pieces are so important to worship as they connect us on a visceral, like art, level with the holiness of God. The kids look at me strangely. Then out of the congregation a bell chimes. The kids look around.
I keep talking as if I didn't hear. The bell choir member sitting with their family has the bell below the pew. They ring it again. The children interrupt me to ask if I hear the bell. I say I do. That bell is a great reminder of what? The holiness of God an older child says. The bell chimes again - this time above the pew. The kids point, grin, and point some more.
We ask the ringer to ring it again. She does. We talk about how we feel hearing the bell. I invite the children to listen for such a holy moment in each piece of music during the service. The older kids can jot a note about when they hear such a moment. They can share it with me at coffee hour.
And they do.
So do some adults.
Understanding Worship Makes it Better
Worship can do this for us. Worship means more when we understand it. Good worship connects us with the holy.
In Confirmation, we take those ten minutes of talking about favorite worship services to then pull common elements out of them and put them on the whiteboard. We keep going making connections with the elements we love with what we do each week in worship.
And sometimes the youth point out how few of the things they love about those special worship services are found in the normal Sunday morning services.
I often have two high schoolers serving on the Leader Team for confirmation. When we do this lesson, one will usually lift up how much they love worship on the trips. They tell the 7th/8th graders how much the high schoolers love that worship service. They are not believed.
For over a decade of high school mission trip evaluations, the second highest-rated part of the trip is the evening worship service (30-40 minutes).2 Yes, high schoolers rate worship that high when they understand it, connect with the music, get to help lead, and have messages that are understandable to them.
Sharing What We Enjoy with the Wider Church
Now we can talk about how the youth can bring this learning to the wider church by talking to a Worship Committee or to a Music Director or to the church staff. And they can take this learning to their parents. So few parents have had such conversations about worship.
At least once a month, our Sunday morning worship services should seek to engage youth where they are. Such worship will also nourish the souls of many of our adults as well.
This confirmation question originally came from Rev. Dr. Will Willimon’s “Making Disciple’s curriculum. This is a great curriculum that I used for over 15 years.
The highest-rated part of the trip is always the cool weekend activities. Some youth rate the mission work #1. For most, this falls #3.