Worship For Everyone

Unlocking the Transforming Power of All-Age Worship

Nick Drake, Becky Drake

• Publisher: SPCK Publishing
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780281085873
• eBook ISBN: 9780281085880
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

Multi-generational worship is important for most church leaders, worship teams, and children's workers - but how can you truly engage everyone so that all age worship can thrive in your church?

Worship for Everyone offers an inspiring vision crucial for bringing longevity and life to all age worship as well as a practical guide bursting with ideas and resources.

Nick and Becky Drake, pioneers in multi-generational worship ministry, provide a theology for bringing all ages together that draws on their years of experience. Alongside this they give advice and tips on running intergenerational worship sessions and dealing with the many challenges that face the church in producing meaningful all age worship.

Worship for Everyone contains all the resources pastors, children’s workers and church leaders need to run all age worship services. Service plans, talks, recommended songs, Bible readings and more are all included, so you can make your all age worship engaging and significant for every generation.

This is a book for anyone with a heart to see new generations engaging with God.

Part 1

THE THEORY

1

Our story

For me, Becky, the early experience of church could have been enough to put me off Jesus for life. Growing up in a small Lincolnshire market town, I attended a traditional Anglican service each Sunday that consisted of several hymns from The English Hymnal, the same liturgy week in, week out and an incomprehensible sermon every time. There wasn’t anything for children. There was no Sunday school, as there were very few volunteers and even fewer kids. My brothers and I made up the majority of under-sixties. The hour-long gathering was an endurance test for the three of us. We found countless ways to distract ourselves from the agitating boredom we all felt. My oldest brother would do a whole load of advanced maths on the hymn numbers set out on the old wooden hymn board and come up with some extraordinary sum. My middle brother typically fell asleep on my mum’s shoulder, while I would study the patterns on the kneelers or scrape my fingernails into the wooden pews. Mum would do her best to engage us by flicking through the Bible to see how many times we could find our names—being called Rebecca, Matthew and Simon (with equally Biblical middle names), there were plenty of name-spotting points to be won!

As if this weren’t a bad enough reflection of the Christian faith, even worse was the attitude of one of the church wardens. I will never forget the day I had brought my young friend to church. We were eight years old and utterly relieved as the end of the service came. As soon as we could, we darted out of the nave and arrived at the church hall first in line to get biscuits and beakers of strong orange squash—the highlight of Sunday morning. As we opened the door and reached out for custard creams, we were greeted by the church warden with a harsh ‘Those biscuits are for the ladies!’ Deflated and embarrassed, we sat down, biscuitless, and waited for my mum to arrive. Clearly, in this church worship wasn’t for everyone but only for some (in this case, ‘the ladies’!), and certainly not for children like me.

Thank goodness for my parents, who faithfully lived out a genuine relationship with God throughout my childhood. At home, there was no question I couldn’t ask, prayer was part of daily life and my mum and dad modelled Jesus in how they loved us unconditionally. If only the way our little nuclear family lived and worshipped could have been reflected in the wider gathering.

Not only do I have my parents to thank, but also Spring Harvest—the second reason I count myself a Christian today. Spring Harvest, an Easter Christian conference that my family attended every year of my childhood, showed me that Christianity could be alive and relevant. It gave me Christian friends, engaging Bible teaching and songs to sing that would sustain me throughout the year. I felt thoroughly welcome there, and—even more than that—time and work had gone into planning this with every age in mind. The sessions were crafted to serve and facilitate my involvement. I learnt the joy of singing and dancing in worship; I encountered the Holy Spirit there for the first time when I was twelve years old, during sensitively led prayer ministry; I learnt to pray out loud for others over my teenage years. None of this happened through my home church—I learned it all purely during this one week of my year.

Furthermore, throughout my childhood, Spring Harvest was the one place I could be a missionary. I would happily take friends with me to the Butlin’s site we met in, and many were impacted by their time spent in worship. I genuinely looked forward to this week of the year more than Christmas, and we wept on the way home each time (half grief at leaving my spiritual home behind and half exhaustion)!

Although the children’s groups at Spring Harvest were dynamic and engaging for a young girl, the deepest, most lasting impact of these holidays was the time I spent together with my parents in the evening celebration. Together is such a key word and value when pursuing intergenerational worship. I so clearly recall the atmosphere of praise all around me. It felt uplifting and reassuring. I sensed heaven in the venue time and again over the years. I remember days we were invited forward together as a family for prayer ministry and times when I watched the whole room with their arms in the air. I also remember occasions I drifted off to sleep in my parents’ arms, with a deep peace and sense of belonging. It wasn’t necessarily that these sessions were crafted with children in mind, but just knowing that I was welcome and could join in with the whole body across the ages felt very special. I didn’t understand everything I heard during those times in worship, but I still felt part of it, and I believe that my young heart and mind was being shaped and discipled in that space in many unseen ways.

Worshipping together without generational borders is so rich for all these reasons. It’s a space where we get to learn together, unite together, feel the sense of God’s family together and reflect a more complete image of the body of Christ.

One of the reasons I am so passionate today about the whole family being included in worship is that I experienced both extremes so keenly as a child. At one extreme back in Lincolnshire I may as well not have existed in the church body, and at the other end I was welcomed completely, which was hugely significant for my life. We might think today that because our children’s programmes and hospitality are more kid-focussed and engaging, because we have dedicated children’s pastors and rooms set aside for the youngest, we are in a different camp from the church warden I encountered as an eight-year-old girl. In some ways, of course, all of the above reflects a value placed on children that perhaps hasn’t always existed in our churches. But I would also caution us to consider whether underneath the surface there are some similarities to what I experienced in my youth. Is our priority actually ‘biscuits for adults’ and everything that can mean in terms of our worship, or are we truly hosting a place where the newborn to the ninety-year-old are equally welcome in all aspects of church life and able to regularly worship together? Is our goal that we might encounter Jesus side by side? Or have we lost our sense of direction, and has it all become a bit of a duty? Perhaps our intergenerational worship, if we’re honest, feels more like religious ritual than a spirit-filled, Jesus-centred gathering. Maybe some of us have given up on it altogether.

The fact is, it isn’t easy. It is far easier to narrow our ‘target market’ and deliver an age-specific style of worship and teaching every week. It requires less thought, less planning, less mess, less distraction. If we make everyone in our congregation as comfortable as possible each Sunday, we’ll feel it’s been a success. However, John Wimber of the Vineyard Church once said, ‘It’s neat and tidy in the graveyard. It’s alive and messy in the nursery.’ I know where I would rather be!

We truly believe intergenerational worship, Worship for Everyone, is a vision that is worth chasing. Many have tried and have found it unsatisfactory, or too hard, and it can be tempting at this point to give up pursuing the vision. But let’s not make that the end of the story! The goal isn’t that we should create a monthly event that we’ll have to endure, but to be part of a church community that delights in worshipping and experiencing God’s presence together; that our churches might truly show a glimpse of the fullness of God’s family, male and female, black and white, young and old; varied, beautiful, diverse.

We have wanted to write this book for a few years now, but a combination of hectic family life and ministry have prevented us. We’ve also partly delayed writing because we feel a certain trepidation! We are acutely aware that we are not giants in the world of intergenerational worship. We are essentially songwriters and parents. There are some incredible writers and theologians out there who have been studying intergenerational worship for years. But we believe that God has given us a vision that is bigger than us—and we are growing in our understanding of what it is, year by year. In some sense, we have come to see ourselves as ‘commissioned’ by God to both defend and promote intergenerational worship. We truly believe that God cares deeply about this issue. He cares that the church find ways to worship as a whole body—not just part. So, we believe a key element of our calling is to write songs for everyone, teach on how to do it and pursue it within our own community, as much as we can.

Worship for Everyone: how did it all begin?

If you’re reading this and are somehow involved in church ministry—perhaps a worship leader or church pastor—don’t let me fool you into thinking we always had a deep passion for intergenerational worship! It’s highly likely you’ve picked up this book because something isn’t ‘working’ in your church, or perhaps you feel stuck or lacking inspiration. Whenever we speak on this topic across the country, similar themes emerge. Do any of these statements resonate with you?

‘When we have an all-age service, some people don’t bother to even come!’

‘The children are fine, but the adults look bored.’

‘The adults are fine, but the children aren’t engaged.’

‘No one enjoys these services! They are a trial to be endured!’

‘The action songs are cringey! The adults don’t want to join in.’

‘We don’t know what to do about the youth—how do you engage them in all-age services?’

‘We don’t have any skilled all-age leaders.’

‘I feel we should do this, but it’s not bringing us much life!’

‘I’m fine leading worship with adults but don’t know what to do when children are in the room!’

‘Do we really have to be together? Can’t we just keep separate?’

‘Our young parents are exhausted. They need a break from their kids!’

‘We’ve tried and failed and have given up completely now.’

If you’ve nodded your head to any of these statements, then be assured you are not alone. We would have been nodding along to several of these statements back in 2003, when Nick took up his first post as worship pastor at St Paul’s church in Hammersmith.

We were in our early twenties, and we had spent the previous three years in a Christian rock/pop band called Coastal Dune. (Don’t worry, you’re not alone if you’ve never heard of us—Battle of the Bands winners, 1999 Durham University!) We had enjoyed songwriting, performing across the country in a whole host of music venues, pubs, universities and underground clubs in Soho, and in between gigs, we were passionate about leading worship whenever we could. We had encountered the Holy Spirit in worship, and there was no greater joy than leading other people into God’s presence, standing on the truth of what God has done in Jesus. We’d spent our teenage years at Stoneleigh, Soul Survivor and Spring Harvest, and we knew what was possible when God’s people gathered together in worship. They were exciting times in the wider church and in our own lives.

So, when we arrived at this big London church, a new plant from Holy Trinity Brompton, full of people who were pursuing God and doing amazing things for him, we couldn’t have felt more at home. Except that every single week there was a dedicated time of ‘all-age’ worship which felt to us like it jarred with the rest of what we were leading. The style was different; generally speaking it felt more date...

Table of contents

• Cover
• About the Author
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part 1: The theory
• Part 2: The practice
• Appendices
• Notes