One Thing That Unlocks Kids Worship – Part 1

Wouldn’t it be great if there was a magic key to presenting meaningful kids worship? You know–”worship glitter” you could throw in the air, and make authentic worship easy, and in reach for everyone? While there is no such thing as “worship glitter,” worship can be easy, and it’s supposed to be part of the spiritual life of all Christians, young and old. There is no age limit in the Psalm 150 exhortation, “Let everything that has breath, praise the Lord!” By taking a look at how kids are wired by God, we’ll find one thing that can unlock your kids worship.

How kids worship works

Kids worship doesn’t look like adults worship. It looks like kids. Psychologists will tell you that kids learn and express “multi-sensorily,” something that kids ministry workers recognize as meaning that kid’s brains and bodies are connected. Kids access their world through multi-sensory, “mind/soul/body” processes, all at the same time, while grownups tend to do “mind/soul/body” processes one at a time. Practically, that means that kids move, feel, and think about things all at once, while grownups tend to do things sequentially. As a result, an adult may first think about something, next develop feelings about it, and then those thoughts and feelings inform their movements and what they “do.” Kids, on the other hand, run the sequence all at the same time, and experience each stage more deeply than adults. Apply those processes to worship, and you’ll begin to see how to present worship for kids.

See Part 2

Bob Singleton is the head worship guy at God’s Kids Worship, and thinks it’s ok for kids to have really noisy worship.

Comment from Susan:

While looking for music ideas  for our Kids Church, I came across this video,  “What Does Kids Worship Look Like?” It opened my mind as to what good kids worship looks like.

They are NOT miniature adults. Kiddos do not have the attention span, emotional/cognitive maturity, and likes of adults. Their worship time, if it is to be meaningful,  needs to have different characteristics than an adult worship service.