All Age Worship

Categories: uncategorized

Date: 05 May 2008 19:11:00

All age worship is one of the hardest services a person can be asked to do within the church, take a topic and make it relevant to every age, every background and every person's understanding, challenging, encouraging and disciping them further in their walk with Christ. It seems on many levels an impossible task and yet the Bible says that its important that the church which is one body worship as one body therefore its crucial that we as church leaders take note of this. It's important not just because it's a biblical principal but it teaches grace, it enables different ages to worship together giving opportunity to learn together, old from the young and the young from the old. It gives children an opportunity to learn be example and soak up the atmosphere, and it gives families a service to worship together in instead of being in their relevant age groups, and last but not least it gives a set time for the whole church family to worship God together. But it is a service that requires grace as it is hard to do well so that every person thinks that part of it is relevant to them. But this got me thinking, when did worship shift focus from giving God praise and the honour He is due to being about what we can get out of it. Society dictates that life is about me me me but God says that life is about dying to self and living for God, how often in our humanness do we forget this?
Some families really struggle with aaw services and trying to keep their kids quiet and entertained throughout it when they dont have the ablility to concentrate for the hour, particularly if they're pre-school aged. A mum raised this issue with me this last week, she doesn't get anything out of it cos shes too busy focusing on the kids and would rather that the kids were out the service in sunday school or something equivalent. For many children family time at home is non-existent, people dont sit down for meals anymore and share their day, instead they eat at different times, and the kids watch too much tv and attend too many clubs/activities. Does aaw have a place within a society that doesn't place importance on family time? Or does the church choose to be different despite the difficulties? When did church become like school, liked because the kids get entertained in their groups and the adults feel that they get their own time? Is is that parents are too reluctant to give up this time for aaw to work?
Personally Im really passionate about aaw and think that it has a relevant place within todays church but how do we engage our pre-schoolers. Once a child has hit year 3 they have the ability to cope for an hour and with a bit of an assistance with words etc can engage in a service particularly if it is made fairly visual, but primarily for the 3-5's its a really hard service cos they're too big for creche but dont quite have the concentration or ability to deal with a whole service. The church has some responsibility providing for our little uns but the parents have primary responsibility for engaging their children as they're responsible for their child's spiritual development. (But who is responsible for what is a whole other debate.) One option is that during the 10 minute talk bit packs are given out with crayons and activity sheets in along the theme and then at the end of the talk they're invited to share their sheets and what they have learnt. I would be tempted to do 2 sets of sheets, on for the 3-4's and the other for the 5-6's. But then i wonder, do the 5-6's really need sheets or should they be encouraged to engage. Engagement is so key valuable lessons are learnt when they're little that will take much longer to learn when they're older. Gone seem to be the days where the parents help their kids find the relevant verse in the bible or read the prayer on the sheet b4 its said so the kids can join in. I find it really sad that people who have been christians all their life can not see the relevance or importance off aaw and fascinating that this is usually parents, most of the older folk enjoy it so it again comes down to being responsible for children and equipping parents. In the past when children weren't allowed to run around or bring things to do parents taught their children to engage so maybe since societies changed we'll just have to fina a new way to engage our families. The question is how?