Worship, most simply defined, is our response to God’s goodness, our response to God’s invitation to love and to adore Him—an initiative that springs not from our goodness or worthiness, but purely from God’s grace, His incredible love and compassion for us as His children. A thankful life is a response of our worship of God.

The apostle Paul, in Romans 12:1, reminds us that our spiritual service is an act of worship. The youth class we teach, our work with the homeless, the time we spend on the church board – our daily lives will be revolutionized when we realize that this involvement is offered to God as a gift of worship.

One of the most significant needs in youth ministry is to help our young people understand that worship is far more than simply going to Sabbath School and church. How can we, as youth leaders, enable our young people to see that God longs for worship to have priority in their everyday lives? Here are five key considerations.

Five Worship Considerations

1. It’s clear that young people have an inherent ability to worship. If you’ve ever attended a rock concert or sporting event and witnessed the adulation of young fans, you know that young people can worship. We must ask ourselves some hard questions as to why our worship services are so often experienced by our young people as “boring.”
2. In this day of nonstop MTV, our youth long for an approach to worship that takes into consideration their social and spiritual needs. At times we complain that it seems all our youth are interested in is each other. Yet it’s important for us to recognize that their particular social needs, when met, can help us meet their spiritual needs as well.  Senior highers appreciate a variety of worship and musical styles, and enjoy helping to lead out in worship. Symbolism, varying prayer experiences, and small-group interaction appeal to their developing mental and emotional needs.  It’s imperative to remember that adolescents have the acute ability to distinguish between true and false worship. They are able to sense whether the adults who are working with them really believe what they are saying.
3. Young people want to belong. It’s evident by the way they dress and by the way they interact with each other. A church that longs to effectively minister to its youth will be a church that finds creative ways to help its young people know that they are needed and wanted; a place where they are challenged to think and where their responses will be thoughtfully considered.  We need to remember, as well as model, that it is in community that we have reason to sing louder, to pray more fervently, and to be more caring and compassionate. When we hear others speak of God’s goodness, we sense how good He has been to us; when we hear of one another’s struggles and hurts, we sense God’s healing in our own lives, and the renewed desire to be instruments of care. For this reason, community will be emphasized in youth worship.
4. Young people want to be a part of the church. One of the ways this is most easily accomplished is to not only tell them that they are needed, but also to use them. Involving them in the life of the church says far more about our commitment to their nurture than mere words can ever do.
5. To worship God means to serve Him. The youth of our church can show us how to do this.

Today, God is still willing to place His confidence in young people. We are powerfully reminded of this as we listen to the words of Joel:

I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams; your young men will see visions. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days.

How do youth worship? Young people worship best in the context of a stimulating community--one in which the walls of indifference and mediocrity are broken down and grace is modeled by caring adults.  A context where youth are challenged to worship with their whole being, creatively and radically living out their lives as disciples of Jesus and in the process, invigorating the church with their vitality and vision.

1. John Dettoni, “Worship That Fits the Worshipper,” in Youthworker (Spring 1990): 30-34. A very helpful source dealing with the way in which faith is developed over the entire life cycle is V. Bailey Gillespie’s The Experience of Faith (Birmingham, AL: Religious Education Press, 1988).
2. 2 Joel 2:28, 29.

“From: ABZ’s of Adventist Youth Ministry”
© 2000 John Hancock Center for Youth and Family Ministry
Permission to copy for use in the local congregation or group