Big Meetings

Ok, I haven't fallen off the face of the earth. The past few months have been filled with, well, Advent and Christmas, and then significant reading, researching, planning, praying, pulling my hair out, praying again...you get the picture. Blogging has been the last thing on my mind.

I've emerged not necessarily refreshed (I need a good vacation, really) but stoked and incredibly nervous at the same time for the exciting changes to come. This week is filled with meetings. Tuesday, we're planning Lent and Easter as a staff, which leads me into my next meeting--new Children's Worship!

For many months now, I've felt guided to change the children's worship at the church. As it stands now, children come in for the first 20 min of worship, have a "aw, look at the cuteypies" children's sermon, and then file out for less than 20 min of busy activities. Well, I take that back. That's what they used to do. Now we have a much better curriculum, but it still only lasts 20 minutes and is really more similar to Sunday School than to worship. There's no real worship going on. It's been nagging me for awhile, and now, we're planning something different.

We're starting with a pilot for Lent. We're pulling the kids out of the main worship service for the full time period (hear me out before you start groaning). The idea is to give them more of an emergent service, different from the traditional and even contemporary services now. Think of everything you know about emergent services (multisensory, visual, etc)--it mostly applies. Furthermore, we're comprising a group from our preteen ministry and teaching them about worship and about how to lead in worship, thus forming a worship team of these kids for drama, dance, music, prayer, etc. This team will actually start earlier than Lent, obviously. Then, on Palm Sunday, the kids (all kids) will join the adults, side by side, in leading worship. Emphasis will be placed on teaching the adults that the kids are not there for the "AW" factor but because they are members of the body of Christ and will lead side by side with the adults in the congregation.

The hope, then, is that if the pilot is well received (or mostly well), then in the Fall (summer is very slow in this community--many vacationers), the kids will spend 3 weeks out of each month in this type of worship, and then will lead and worship with adults on the 4th week. It will be a hybrid of sorts to begin with, with room to blossom into something more.

This is the vision; the meetings are Tuesday and Wednesday, so we will see what happens.

Also on the agenda is an intergenerational event, a Valentine's dinner. The kids will decorate, plan, and serve a catered meal to the adults who reserve a place. The older adults and many single adults and families are responding well to it, and the kids are excited about the opportunity to serve (well 90% of them, anyway). Some of the kids plan to serenade diners with piano, violin, and even recorder music. That meeting is Tuesday afternoon.

Much on the plate, and now I must sleep!