All Age resources from Engage Worship review by Becky Lawrence
All Age resources from Engage Worship review by Becky Lawrence, Youth and Kids Worker at St Mark’s MK
Our church is a church plant without our own building and with a very non traditional model and format – when we meet together we always sit round tables as we find it provides a much more accessible, friendly, and welcoming environment, especially for people not used to traditional church.
For the last few years as we’ve grown and our numbers of kids and youth have grown, we’ve worked hard to not only provide separate age appropriate sessions for them (sometimes – not usually every week) but also to proactively work on how we learn together as a community with all of our ages together. We’ve found more often than not the children and youth have insights or perspectives on things that can really teach us something as adults. It also makes journeying and growing in faith much more transferable to family settings at home, when we model how to do this at church.
Traditionally in a lot of churches that have members of all ages – age groups are usually segmented and children/youth are taken out of the service during the preach or talk which is aimed at the adults. Segmenting age groups is great sometimes, but when we do this all the time I feel we miss out on the beauty of journeying together as a community of multi age Christians, learning from each other. For us at St Mark’s MK, as a church with the type of people we have in our community, doing things as a ‘village’ all age, have mostly been embraced. It’s not always been easy but when we’ve tried extra hard to creatively engage every age group with the content and to encourage learning, conversation and activities together it has usually been recieved really well. It has enabled our kids and youth to feel like an integral part of our church community, not just an ‘add on’.
All age worship isn’t just about music, but its about how we connect with God creatively as an all age community – we believe in a big God who longs to connect with each of us at every age! We also all connect with God differently, some through art, some through music, some through liturgy, some in other ways – when we use creativity and try different options from the front of church, it opens peoples minds to other creative ways they can use in their own time to connect with God.
I recognise some churches struggle to do all age worship or teaching and might face opposition or sighs of disgruntlement from the congregation when the monthly, termly or perhaps only annual, ‘family service’ is mentioned. When we’ve been used to segmenting ages, suddenly having people together can cause fear and worry to the members and the leaders. Some people don’t like change, some people have not seen all age worship work well so they think its aimed at just the kids and won’t be fun for them, or they have other wrong misconceptions. Successful all age worship engages all the age groups, the kids, youth and adults together and helps them connect with God – all feel valued, welcome and understand that God wants to teach them new things. I think its something we should all try and cultivate as i’ve seen God use All Age Worship in really powerful ways.
Sometimes it’s the little things that really help with All Age Worship too, perhaps changing the language we use, being more creative with the format, involving more ages to lead or be involved at the front, stepping up a level in interactivity or other choices. All age worship doesn’t have to be a whole service aimed at all ages either, it could be an activity you do as part of the service before or after the children go out to their groups. You could start small, play to your skills or be boldy creative – God can give you wisdom of what will work best in your context.
Whatever format your church usually takes, perhaps you do all age worship all the time, some of the time or none of the time – I hope this review will help you think about and develop the opportunities you provide for everyone of all ages to journey and connect with God together. It is so much easier to begin creative worship and faith journeying that successfully engages all ages when you can use ready made resources that are designed to do so. This is where this weeks resource recommendation comes into its own!
Engage Worship, is run by Sam & Sara Hargreaves and Gemma & Timo Scharnowski, they have a website bursting with creative ideas and resources – which does what it says on the tin – helps engage all ages in worship! There are other contributors too, who help provide the vast array of ideas, articles, books, downloads, videos, a podcast and more!
Here’s what Engage Worship say about themselves:
“engageworship is a new expression of the Music and Worship Foundation, furthering the vision and values of MWF for a new generation. We aim to resource local churches for creative, innovative and world-changing worship; engaging with God, each other and the world around us.
This vision is achieved through:
- Running training days and workshops at churches, conferences and events.
- The development of our website, as a searchable resource for creative worship ideas and articles.This aims to be a channel for ideas springing up from local churches, leaders and artists who are pushing forward into innovative worship.
- Leading worship services, celebrations, and other events, to inspire participative worship from the whole church. Also involvement in teaching and leading at church weekends and retreats.
- Our published books and printed resources, such as Whole-Life Worship, Simple Worship and Outdoor Worship, and How Would Jesus Lead Worship?. Some of these are partnerships with other organisations such as LICC, Rural Ministries, Thy Kingdom Come and God for All.
- Resourcing conferences such as Spring Harvest, the Youthwork Summit, denominational days and local church initiatives, leading musical worship with the engageband and/or creative worship.
- Sam also writes worship songs and is part of the leadership of Resound Worship, and he teaches at colleges such as London School of Theology and Roehampton University.
We are aiming to take people broader and deeper into all that worship can be. We are committed to excellence and breadth in music, but also exploring other forms of worship and creativity in church. We are particularly interested in the intersection between worship and other areas of life – worship and mission, worship and the outdoors, worship and creativity… and so on.”
Whether you’ve done all age worship before or not I really recommend having a browse on the Engage Worship website, and why not bookmark it for future use and register for a free log in so that you can access all the resources. I hope it will be a useful source of resource for you long term helping you creatively engage all ages in worship and providing opportunities to grow in faith together.