Tag Archives: family worship

Shared Leadership

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If any church claims to be truly intergenerational, her leadership must reflect the generational diversity of the church. To be clear, there is little need for an 8 year old with limited perspective to make unilateral, major decisions requiring a broader perspective of someone older. However, there are definitely ways that folks of all ages can be integral in shaping the vision and practices of many church ministries. The concept of “shared leadership” simply means that folks from all backgrounds (and ages) have the opportunity to lead (both in planning and execution of various ministry areas). Music ministry is a great way to implement the use of shared leadership. Here are are a couple of considerations when implementing this strategy:

  1. Implement worship leadership planning team(s) with members from all generations.  In this process those seasoned leaders invest in the younger, while the younger gives fresh ideas. This is potentially tricky, but allow those younger members opportunities to look at events, programs, and times of worship with fresh perspective. As a seasoned leader, ask questions of those younger members about their understanding of the worship experience and what might resonate with them to help them connect to God. You might be surprised at what you’ll find.

    My 10 year old son LOVES to doodle and draw during a sermon. Having plenty of room for notes (not always text notes—but pictures) allows him to stay focused and engaged. If your church doesn’t have room on your worship guide for this, consider having a separate worship guide for those creative types. In fact if the theme/scripture/application for the day may be added to this guide, that would help engage those (adults too) that are primarily visual and kinestetic learners.

  2. Develop musical leadership from all generations in your church. We value all our generations in worship so much, we regularly schedule time for our children and youth to share their gifts and talents in worship leadership. It’s a very intentional process. We don’t just teach them music performance, but also the importance of modeling worship behavior for participation. For our students that show great musical potential and feel the call of God to vocational ministry, we work hard to invest in them specifically. We do this by using the “Gradual Release Model,” developed by Pearson and Gallagher in 1983. This model (seen below) does exactly what the term suggests, it allows the “student” to assume responsibility as they get more opportunities to serve. Ultimately, it is our prayer is that the Lord will call some from our church to vocational music ministry and because they’ve been leading throughout their lives, they will already be equipped to lead elsewhere.

Obviously, the role of the “teacher” changes as the students are developed. This “passing the torch” approach is not without its difficulties. Obviously, the budding leadership still needs guidance along the way. Sometimes, for instance, the developing leader gets very excited about trying something new, but hasn’t considered the theological content or the context of the situation when giving leadership to planning and executing worship experiences.

Next week, I will discuss some of the tensions and struggles that may arise from developing nextgen leaders and how we as seasoned leaders can encourage without stifling the energy, creativity, and passion of these budding leaders.

 

The Intergenerationality of VBS

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VBS at our church is an “us” event. From the youngest kids to our senior saints, there are representatives from all generations on our campus each day to serve, worship, play, and learn about the saving power of Jesus Christ. It really is a family atmosphere. Older and younger working together to share the gospel with our youngest generations!

This year, and like most, I’m involved in worship and music with our students. Some of players from our orchestra and I make sure that our worship rally each day has live music so our students have a worship experience similar-ish to our Sunday mornings. We use the music from the curriculum in music time and our students learn it too. It’s a nice balance so the curriculum music is not all they sing all week.

My favorite part of VBS, however, is getting to intermingle with so many that I rarely get to know well outside of seeing them on Sundays. The way our Sunday mornings are with back to back services, I don’t get to visit with many people. I also get to know students and parents of folks not connected to our church during this week and it’s a joy to make connections and have the opportunity to invite families to be a part of our church. If history repeats itself, we will have the opportunity to touch new families with the gospel. It’s a great way to build community in our community!

I know the Holy Spirit is working in the lives of our students on campus. Many students have made decisions to follow Christ for the first time; others have re-affirmed their decision to walk with the Lord. We rejoice in all these decisions for they represent lives that have been changed by the investment of older generations who desire to give of their own time, talents, and resources to make sure the next generation will lead the church in the future. Soli Deo Gloria!

Saying YES to VBS!will vbs

 

We Must Reflect the Glory of God to the Next Generation

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Religious people are a very noisy, wordy, and active people. But activity for activity’s sake is not of God. We might first clear away the idea that church is a social club…We are a holy people, a royal priesthood, a holy generation called out of darkness to show forth the glory of the One who called us out…a sanctified people that are mirrors of the Almighty to reflect the glory of the most high God…to do less than this is to fail utterly, to fail God and to fail our Lord Jesus Christ who redeemed us. It is to fail ourselves and it is to fail our children…if a local church in one generation fails of its high design of worship, the next generation in that church will depart from the faith altogether. As a result the present generation succumbs to liberalism and does not preach the Word of God at all.

selections from A.W. Tozer from The Purpose of Man

 

A few weeks ago, my two teenaged sons went to another church with a friend’s family. Like a good father, I asked them what the experience was like. Their comments, which were not coerced, were enlightening to me.  Here are some of the things they said:

  1. We went with our friend’s family but as soon as we entered the building, we all headed to various worship experiences. It concerned my boys that the family did not worship together (I’m glad they recognize that!)
  2. Once they got to their “youth worship experience,” they were not welcoming at check-in. The check in person simply wanted their information and offered no special word of greeting to them as first-time guests.
  3. The musical portion of their worship experience began with a secular song, which my kids found odd. They didn’t understand the purpose of doing a song that didn’t at least have a biblical theme.
  4. The band members were younger adults and not youth themselves. In their words, “there wasn’t any youth in the band.”
  5. The “lesson” portion of the experience only included one bible verse and was only loosely connected to the theme of the lesson.

After talking with them about it for awhile, numbers 1 and 5 seemed to bother them the most. They didn’t understand why the worship experiences couldn’t be combined, especially since they felt the music for all the services was similar in “style.” I tried to explain to them that the church they were attending believes the Sunday morning experiences is not the same as having a small group or Sunday School class…although they felt they were in a Sunday School class more than a worship service. I also mentioned that grouping in affinity/age stratified groups helped make the learning environments more “appropriate” for “educational” purposes. Still, they weren’t buying the idea of being apart (good boys!) Nevertheless, they had a blast. This church gets big points for making church fun!

Secondly, the lack of biblical depth concerned them greatly. They wanted more meat; they wanted to be challenged and changed from the Word (good boys!). We are thankful to be in a church fellowship that values the exposition of the Word. The Word doesn’t have to be dressed up to be relevant!

My concerns, which I already knew existed in this church and others like it, is the lack of biblical discipleship in the worship experiences. This lack of biblical discipleship affects the lack of intergenerational ministry as mentioned in the first point. The surface level biblical teaching does not bode well for our rising generation of believers. Knowing only some biblical concepts creates confusion for the young believer who does not know the Truth in its fullness. Just as Tozer rightly states, without a strong biblical foundation, liberalism abounds. It’s time we reverse this trend and take the in-depth study of the Word seriously…for future generations.