Worship

Psalm 100:2

New International Version (NIV)

²     Worship the Lord with gladness;
    come before him with joyful songs.

In working with children one of the things I love is how they worship with abandonment.  Nothing holds them back.  They do not care what the people next to them are doing and they each have their own style. You may worship sitting, standing, singing, praying, dancing or even laughing.  In Xtreme kids I have noticed we have wild worshipers, performers, serious worshipers, and the "I'm too cool for this" crew. 

Each week there is a small group of children who are wild worshipers. You will find them hip hop dancing in the back of children's worship. They even dance wildly during the slow songs. Everyone will be singing softly lifting their hands and voices to the Lord and these children are singing and doing the coffee grinder or cartwheels in the back of the room.  It makes me smile knowing they can worship with all their energy.  On a few occasions I have thought about correcting them with the whole "This is a slow worship song speech".  You know the one where children are told "let's stand still or sway during the slow songs".  However, each time I start to head in their direction I am reminded that David danced before the Lord and who am I to tell them how to worship! They are engaged, participating and having a blast worshiping our Savior. Dance on kiddos!

In the front of the room, there is a group of girls that are all about the motions and the words on the screen.  They are the performers putting on a show for Jesus each week. They giggle and dance with each other and interact with the praise team.  They are all glitter, bows and everything frilly.  Along with them are my cool boys!  They enjoy worship and doing the motions and dance moves. Those boys can certainly rock out on the air guitar on every guitar solo during worship (that's when the girls giggle and try to join in the air guitar playing as well).

There are the serious worshipers,  they are contemplating the words of each song as they sing them, raising their hands in praise, eyes closed and totally unaware of anyone around them.  You can just see the praise on their lips and the joy in their souls as they give all their worship to the Lord as a gift they are placing on the alter. No one would dare speak to them or interrupt their worship time.  As a matter of fact, if you tapped one of these serious worshipers on the shoulder to get their attention they would jump in fright because they are so tuned into worship.

The "I'm too cool for this crew", who sits but reads the words on the screen and enjoys watching everyone else around them.  They can fully tell you the meaning behind every song but if they actually had to participate it just might kill them!  Along with them are a handful of boys usually 5th & 6th graders who think they are too cool but realize worship is just so much fun they can't stop.  They stand near the wall with arms folder for the first few minutes but something inside them overtakes their bodies and they begin to worship! However, if they are noticed or "caught" worshiping arms are quickly folded and the cool stance is assumed until once again they just can not contain themselves. They make me laugh and make me sad at the same time.  It is fun knowing they love to worship and just can not contain themselves.  It is sad to know that somewhere along the way their creativity and freedom of worship has been stifled.  Maybe it was a look or a comment from a peer, maybe it is just the awkward age they are experiencing trying to grow into a "cool" teenager but living in a "fun" child's world.  I will often go over and dance near them just to make them laugh!  I tell them "It is okay to have fun in worship, no one is really looking at you!".  

 Worship really gets interesting on weekends when we are invited to go into "Big Church" for a part of worship.  I love taking the kids in with the adults however... I'm not sure the adults would agree.  You see, children are for the most part active worshipers.  Somewhere after the 6th grade there is a decline in how actively engaged you are in worship.  I always ask the adults to stand and participate with us.  Most of them stand, about 5% actually participate.  However, the children rock out for Jesus anyway.  I find this so interesting because a survey taken by the Barna research group stated this:

Worship Was Top-Rated
Upon examining the pillars of faith practice, the survey revealed that three-quarters of all adults, and 92% of all churched adults, said that it is very important to them to worship God. Next most important to adults were the ability to learn about their faith (63%) and to experience moral and spiritual accountability (59%). Slightly more than half of all adults listed serving the needs of the poor as very important (54%). A minority of adults described each of the other four endeavors as very important: sharing their faith with non-believers (44%), feeling like they belong to a community of faith (41%), donating their time and money to the church (39%) and meeting with other believers (39%). 

If worship is top rated why do so many people feel inhibited to worship freely as they enter into adulthood?  How do you worship? More importantly what kind of example of worship are you setting for your children?