Rethinking Worship Services

Youth ministry has an unwritten rule of what every worship service should look like. A game, a few announcements, 3 songs, and a 30-minute sermon. We build it this way, hoping students will find a place to worship God together and grow in their faith. And for most of us, it works fine. But what if we mixed it up every once in a while? What if we tapped into ways of worship that might be new or out of the ordinary to a lot of our students?

Here are three ideas to try.

Prayer Walks

Start the service with a 3-5 minute lesson on prayer. Keep it simple. A basic definition goes a long way. It’s fair to assume that some of your students have literally never prayed or heard someone pray out loud.

Then release them into the prayer walk. Hang 8-10 papers around the room with different prayer prompts and focuses. Add a topic, a Bible verse, and a few ways to pray for each situation. Let students move at their own pace and take a seat when they’re done.

Pro tip: play instrumental music so it is not awkwardly silent.

Group Projects

Remember doing a group project in school that ended in a presentation? For some reason, those stick with us. What if you brought that same energy into a service to boost participation?

Try splitting students into groups. Pick a topic, such as Psalms or parables, and give each group a different passage, along with a poster board and markers. Then give them a short list of things to put on the board.

A few ideas:

• Draw a picture of what happened
• Summarize the passage in 2 sentences
• Write down 1 thing you learned about God

There are many other things that could be done in this format, but you get the idea. Make sure you have leaders in those groups. You don’t want a student feeling embarrassed because they didn’t know what to say about a passage.

Pro tip: Consider having Study Bibles available for groups to provide commentary and application.

Chapter Annotation

I hated annotating in English class, but I have to admit it helped me. It’s a creative way to help students dig into the text and pick up some skills for reading their Bible on their own.

Print off a chapter of Scripture, one copy per student, and hand out a pen and highlighter. Give simple instructions: highlight what you love, circle what confuses you, jot down two questions, start something you’d never heard before. Give them time to work through it on their own, then open it up for the group to share what they found. Use that time to walk through the chapter yourself and keep pointing students back to engaging with Scripture for themselves.

Try Something New

Mixing things up every once in a while brings fresh energy into the room and challenges students to think about their own relationship with God in a new way. You don’t have to overhaul your whole program. Just try one of these next month and see what happens. Be willing to explore, try new things, and have fun!

Share your thoughts with others in our YM360 community:

1. Which of these three ideas feels like the best fit for where your students are right now, and why?
2. What’s one part of your service that feels routine? What would it look like to shake that up this month?