The Session at the church I serve has recently announced that we will be switching up our morning worship schedule. Our church has had a variety of schedules in the past 10 years or so, but after 10 months of listening to the congregation in a variety of ways, the Session has decided that we will be switching to one Sunday morning worship service.
As a church with multiple desires for worship style, music and liturgy, this is the wonderful challenge that we now have, to rethink our worship service in the way that we believe God is calling us. If you’re interested, you can read Session’s letter to the church here.
We are a smaller congregation (around 150 in worship), with a small group of children who are a part of the congregation. One of the purposes of our new schedule is really to embrace a multi-generational worship service, so we are trying to think creatively about how to provide opportunities for the children to be involved in worship.
I’m wondering if anyone else out there has gone through a worship re-visioning process recently. What are you trying that’s new that you have found works? Have you found ways to engage children in age-appropriate ways that allow them to be a part of worshipping with the larger church body?
If you were in a similar position, and had a chance to do some new, creative things with a multi-generational worship service in a sanctuary like ours (pictured above), what would you do? What types of things would you try? How would you honor the past but move into the future?