Creating a Dynamic Worship Experience

Church Misfit Podcast

What is your goal with worship songs? Is it to clear a pathway from the creators mind and heart to your peoples? What if someone doesn’t like the music? What if the are distracted by the singing or feel weird swaying, closing their eyes or raising their hands or singing in front of others? Is 3 songs and a prayer the best way to teach people how dynamic worship is?

Joe, Zac and Kaitlyn break down their answer as to how they create a more dynamic worship experience for the next generation. There are some ideas in here for your ministry that you won’t want to miss!

The following show notes speak to ministries working with teens:

Worship is for sure tricky. Ultimately, we want to teach teens how they can connect with God through music. It helps to breakdown the 3 main challenges.

1. The lyrics in worship songs don't always connect with teens because it comes across as just spiritual phrases they hear all the time and have lost their meaning or they don't connect to what they are currently experiencing or where they are currently at in their relationship with God.

2. The melody itself is not as good as the secular music they love and follow. How many teens actually listen to worship music outside of church? Not too many. It simply doesn't connect and inspire most of them.

3. It's awkward. They are forced to stand, clap, and even raise hands if directed to by the worship leader on stage. Elements that all make worship feel more like a forced ritual rather than a personal experience.

Here are some suggestions that still work amazing for us and that we use with adults, mixed audiences and teens.

1. Don't lead with a traditional worship song, instead, lead with a secular song that tells a story that can connect with a larger biblical truth. For example, Adele's song Hello, one would assume is about an ex-boyfriend but Adele had a bigger picture in mind. They song is meant to identify with the pain and regret that comes with relationships that are not working out. Read more here: https://www.songmeaningsandfacts.com/meaning-hello-adele/

Explaining this to teens and setting up the song by challenging them to think about some broken relationships in their life (including one with God) set up a time of reflection that will have lyrics they relate too and melodies they enjoy. Now everytime they hear the song in the future they might be prompted to think more about God that some boyfriend/girlfriend.

2. Never start a worship song without setting it up first, especially if it's a worship song. We would stop in between songs to talk about the next one. If there were lots of Christian-ese type sayings we would break down what they meant in a way students could relate to. The above example is how we would break down secular songs. Bottom line is we lead people by telling them what to think about before the music begins.

3. Probably most important of all, we give students as many options as possible to express themselves during worship. Getting rid of the rows of chairs was the best thing we ever did. We replaced them with what we called rhythm stations. You could still stand and worship if you wanted to, just not in straight lines :) This video is a tour of our program Equinox that gives you an idea of what I'm talking about: https://www.facebook.com/search/top/?q=Catalyst%20Collective%20equinox%20tour&epa=SEARCH_BOX