It was day one of the Preteen Ministry Leaders’ Conference, put on by my friends at FourFiveSix. I walked into my first breakout session and with a halfhearted waive of his arm, Sean Sweet invited us to worship. Not unexpected for a breakout session on leading preteen students in worship.
Then the music started. It was a slow, awkward song, with no apparent point or message. Surely this wasn’t worship. Sean didn’t seem to know the words, and neither did the person who created the slides. The animated background was a swirling mess of color, spinning at a pace not consistent with the song.
Finally, Sean gave up. We hadn’t worshiped, but he had made his point. And he began this way, “The natural state for us, for preteen students, is worship. We were designed to worship. God is worthy of our worship. So when you look around the room, the place where you worship, and you see your fourth grade boys aren’t worshipping, maybe it’s not because they’re missing something—maybe it’s because we are.”
That’s not a direct quote. I couldn’t write as fast as he was talking, but it is the essence of his message. Romans 1:20 says that God has revealed Himself in such a way as to leave us without excuse. We, and the students we lead, have no excuse but to worship our Great God. When they don’t, we should dissect what we’re doing, and see if we have left barriers to worship.
It’s an important challenge—for us. Instead of looking around and being critical of the students, saying things like they’re stubborn, or they just don’t get it yet, we should take a critical look at our own leadership and methods and the environment we have created for worship. Sean’s song selection, attitude, and choice of space were intentional—designed to make us feel how our students may feel when they walk into worship.
The breakout confirmed for me that the shift we made only a couple of years ago in our Preteen Retreats at SpringHill Camps was a move in the right direction, and helped me understand why it was working.
During my first season, I had looked around our auditorium full of fourth, fifth and sixth graders and thought, These kids seem to want to worship, but all we’re giving them are funny songs with exaggerated motions. They seem to want more. And they did.
So, we hired a different kind of worship band. We hired ones that loved to worship. We looked for bands that had a great, familiar sound that we thought kids would sing along with. And we picked bands that understood the unique dynamics of this age group.
We didn’t discard fun or motions. We didn’t treat them just like adults. But we did create a space for them to express in worship what they had already known. And it was a home run. When we offered our preteen students a real opportunity to worship, they did. They had wanted to all along—after all, it’s what they were made for.
What are you doing to help your preteen students engage in worship?