At Sutton Vineyard we aim to create a space for Kids of all ages to feel welcome, safe and to grow in their understanding of faith and their relationship with God. As adults we understand the importance of worship; it creates a personal relationship between us and God. It also helps us to create community as we worship together on Sundays and across our programme of church events.

We want our Kids to feel the power of worshipping God and enjoy developing in their faith alongside friends and leaders. Engaging Kids in church can sometimes be challenging, and worship can be one of the greatest hurdles for us to navigate as leaders and parents. Why is it that engaging kids in worship can be difficult? And what can we do to encourage participation?

Why can Kids worship be difficult?

Picture a jigsaw puzzle.

To manifest the picture on the box you have to place puzzle piece after puzzle piece.

What quality does that kind of activity need?

Patience.

And as Kids leaders and parents will tell you the world over, one thing a lot of children are still developing is patience.

Kids are full of amazing boundless energy, but that also makes them squirmy, wriggly and fidgety.

When we’re encouraging our Kids in worship but getting them to concentrate is difficult, it is also on our leaders to model the patience and engagement we so want to see in our young people. This need for continual patience can be tricky. One of the reasons we are so blessed as a church is the amazing character our leaders exhibit to our young people, but keeping that up can still feel like a challenge!

Our role as parents and leaders in Kids ministry is to train our young people in a lifestyle of knowing Jesus and worshipping God. On Sundays we do this through many kinds of activities that encourage personal faith development, one of which is worship. Finding methods to encourage our Kids to explore the power of worship is an important part of how we do church on Sundays and during the week.

How to engage kids in worship

Given we know encouraging our kids into worship can be a challenge, it’s important for us as leaders to think about ways we can help our young people navigate these activities.

Here are some of ideas we think about and use as a Kids ministry to welcome our young people into worship:

Knowing where our kids are in their journey

We’re all at different points of our faith journey with God, and for our young people they are certainly at the early stages!

We shouldn’t encourage anyone to run before they can walk in their faith development, and this also goes for our Kids.

By having an understanding of where they are in their journey, we can more easily gauge what parts of worshipping they are engaging with and where they need some helping hands from leaders and parents. Allow and trust God to move through our young people as they are ready.

Create a safe space for Kids worship

If you’ve ever been in an unfamiliar situation surrounded by others and not known quite what to do, you know just how daunting it can be.

We want our Kids to feel safe in our space to explore the act of worship, find ways of worshipping that suit their individual personalities and feelings and to feel encouraged in listening and speaking to God.

We use our worship time in Kids ministry as an opportunity for stillness, to wait on God and listen to what He is telling us. By modelling this for our young people and encouraging individual participation we have seen some amazing moments of God working through our Kids.

Make worship fun!

Although in this article we are discussing Kids worship as a discipline, that doesn’t mean we don’t have an awesome time praising God with our young people!

When choosing our Worship songs on Sundays we include a few different styles of song.

To create stillness to wait on God we choose softer, more reflective songs.

But it’s also so important to bring songs that get Kids up on their feet and having fun!

Get them doing actions, jumping, making noise; Kids have bundles of energy so use it!

Get the Kids involved in the music

At Sutton Vineyard we’re blessed to have so many passionate musicians who bring their energy and expertise to our Kids ministry.

Being an Orange church (read up on the Orange Philosophy here) we want to encourage our Kids to ‘do the stuff’, to play their part and to be an active member of our church community.

Encourage Kids who have any level of musical instrument knowledge to play! And even for the ones who aren’t quite there with an instrument, they can still join in with percussion!

We’re also encouraging our Kids to help lead our worship through singing and leading actions at the front. This helps to foster individual participation, community growth and bringing them into a fuller lifestyle of worshipping God.

Be expectant

This is one of the most crucial aspects of encouraging worship for our leaders.

Our kids are amazing, and surprise us week after week.

By underestimating our Kids in worship, we are doing them a disservice and starting our efforts off on the back foot.

Come into worship sessions full of optimism and be excited to see and feel God working through our leaders and kids.

While we should be expectant for God to move, we often need to put aside our own preconceived ideas of what it looks like to worship ‘well.’ If our hope is to have a room full of children with peaceful looks on their faces, eyes closed, arms in the air, visibly connecting with God in a ‘classic’ worship position, we’re likely to end up disappointed. Some children will be wiggly and bouncy, some will be shy and quiet and many will be somewhere in between. It is not our job to make a room full of children reach their hands to the sky in worship, it is our job to create an environment in which our kids can connect with the Lord in a way that is authentic and genuine to them. Much like with grown ups, this will look different for different people and if we expect the Holy Spirit to work in our children’s hearts, little by little, prayer by prayer, song by song, He will.

Engaging kids in worship

We know and understand the importance and power of worshipping God, and we want our Kids to feel that too.

Encouraging them into worship can feel like a difficult task at times, but there are many methods and opportunities for us to help nurture their faith development including:

Know where Kids are on their faith journey
Create a safe space for Kids worship
Make Kids worship fun
Get Kids involved in worship
Be expectant

If you want to find out more about kids worship, engaging young people and serving our Kids ministry, please feel free to get in touch!

Drop us an email at kids@suttonvineyard.org, or come to speak to one of our Kids team on Sundays (they’re in the bright orange t-shirts, you can’t miss them!)