Older children will be able to participate in worship in different ways than younger children. They'll process worship differently. Maybe by the time your children reach school age they will have come up through this kind of worship. If not, you may want to start with some of the same engaging tactics that were in the last two posts. You'll just have to make them a little more age appropriate!
School aged children can not only participate in worship but also serve on a team with or without their parents. (Look for ways that young children can also serve.) Set up, take down, meal prep, choir, dance, drama, lighting candles, passing offering, music, reading announcements, creating visuals ... Remember we've come to bring ourselves and our gifts and talents to the Lord.
School aged children will also be able to go beyond Sunday worship to help in community service projects, House Blend, seasonal Immersed Worship, Prayer & Fasting, specific creative gifts and ideas for other activities. There may be instructional/fun small group opportunities, rites of passage teaching and celebration (tools to study the scriptures, dating, bat/bar mitzva,baptism...)
Two or more families can do things together - church related and not. One advantage of only two nights at church is that you have all the other nights to rest, be a family at home, get together with others, do other activities or serve in your larger neighborhood community.
Anything is possible! Hopefully, at that point, just as you worshipped together you can take your worship and your lives in Christ beyond the walls of the sanctuary and out to the world!
I hope that you are getting to engage in some of these "out of sanctuary" ideas that you shared. I would love to hear more about what you have learned from those.
ReplyDeleteWelcome by the way!
ReplyDeleteOne of our pastors has a now seven year old who's participated in most of these activities (with the exception of bar mitvah and dating of course. . .)
This is our brain-storming blog. It keeps me from overloading my pastors' email boxes (and other members of the community) with long thinking emails. And, to be honest, alot (some?) of these ideas are theirs!
We're actively working to implement more and more of the things we've been talking about. So that's exciting but as I say, it's very very challenging to work through the practicals. Tonight someone likened what we're doing to a Beta-something. A computer test prototype maybe? Not sure but it's not a fish and it's not the Greek letter.
Some of the comments reflect a bit of what's happening. You can always ask questions. We like to ask questions around here!
Thanks for all your comments! You're welcome to drop in any time! Tell us what you folks are doing, too!