shane has thrown out what looks to be a bit of a stream of consciousness in dealing with unchurched youth and worship. it's a great little read as many of us have thought like this at some point.
Asking youth to sit through 60 to 90 minutes of prayer requests, announcements, music (and possibly sermons) that they can't easily relate to is a whole different ballgame when they're getting to church on their own initiative.
Since many UM churches (I know there are exceptions) don't do the best job of engaging youth during the 11:00 hour, what's the solution? Creating an alternative worship setting just for them? Killing the Sunday School hour and pulling youth out of the service for Christian education? I'm not sure if I know the answer.
in his humor, shane throws out "Why is the worship service such a sacred cow in churches anyway?" which, knowing him is honest, but not a serious statement, he knows the importance of worship.
worship for youth should be a gathering of the community of Christ together to express their faith, connect and encounter God. a traditional service with liturgy, hymn singing, teachings, and sacraments should really hit all those marks.
so the question to be asked? why doesn't this strike a chord with teenagers? added onto that, why doesn't this strike a chord with baby boomers (they like the contemporary, a common myth that teens like contemporary truly it's for the boomers)? i'd say simply, the answer is entertainment. traditional services are not entertaining to these generations.
next questions to ask, do we want to be "entertaining?" do we feel we need our central community experience to be entertaining? i taught a workshop last week on creative worship where i did a couple of things. 1. i said, i give you permission to not do the cool thing. worship isn't about cool & we shouldn't feel like a cool thing has to be done during worship. 2. don't be hindered because you don't have the powerpoint/mediashout/video loops to your worship. 2000 years of faith has been lived and grown without these, it's not a necessary for our times today. does this stuff help? it can & it can be distracting or blurring of what is actually going on. what is going on could be that movement of the Holy Spirit among the community. me personally, i don't think worship needs to be 'entertaining' as we know it of a worldly context.
back to the question, how do we bring in youth or young people? shane mentions that if you ask youth they do not give answers to you.. i explain this as we teach youth today to give answers to a test, they'll give you a 'children's church' answer to whatever you think they want or you want. to get them to speak to where they really are takes patience, trust and a forum that allows them to be heard. if i speak for them a minute, they'd say, "we want a place where we encounter God." "we want to know that people will listen to me." "we don't want to be judged." "we want a place that we feel included."
how do we give youth or young people something like this? i'm not a big fan of the charismatic "Jesus is speaking to me right now!!" type of worship experience, in fact, i shutter at it, but in the same, we have become some emotionless in our worship that we don't allow acknowledgment of the Holy Spirit moving through our community within worship or life. how many times can we honestly say that we listen to teens or young adults or each other? are we really in tune with who we are as a community, where everyone is? what if passing of the peace or prayer concerns was something more than just a 'hi there' & list of announcements that we actually connected and had compassion for our fellow brother & sisters in Christ. what would that look like?
maybe the question we need to ask our selves then is, do we want youth or young adults to feel a part of worship? i know of numerous churches that give lip service to "yes, we want all young people to be part of our church." problem being, they should cap that sentence with "but..." but, don't expect to sing in the adult choir. but, you're not responsible enough to usher. but, you don't really know the mature enough to serve communion. but, we're not going to invite you to be a part of the worship committee. but, we're not going to ask for your input on songs. but, your special music is not special to us. but, your expressions of 'amen' make people uncomfortable. but, you don't speak well enough or stammer over scripture too much to be liturgist.
however, "we do support our young people." we have a youth sunday which is generally the least attended sunday of the year, that way they screw up in front of the least amount of people. "we have a youth choir" that way our adults don't have to mentor or show youth what it means to lead in worship. "all our youth sit up the balcony together" it's the only place they feel safe cause if they sat on the main floor we'd all stare at them and "sshh" them for chatting to each other, something we certainly don't do as adults.
in all this, if we as congregations were honest i'm sure the reasons we would come up with 'why teenagers get bored with or don't attend worship' is not because we don't have a slick powerpoint worship. it'd be because we might really not want them there. sure they are chaotic, disrespectful at times, giggly, emotionally moved, uninhibited, honest, needing teaching, and inspiring to a congregation. the church that accepts that they are going to be a young people friendly church needs to loosen up their grip on what is comfortable to them and embrace that they will accept the chaos & beauty of a teen in order to show them the love of Christ and hope to transform their lives through the Holy Spirit in the act of worship.
