I was listening to the Simply Junior High Podcast earlier today and they were talking about worship with youth groups. They were saying it was great to get young people involved as it helps to engage the group in the family service. Now I’m sure it wasn’t meant in this manner, but during the discussion they kept referring to the inferior quality of using young people in the worship band. There was a general assumption that using young people is good, but won’t be up to the usual standard.

Yesterday I lead worship at Arun Community Church and used some of the young people from our Ignite group. We had a drummer aged 11 on the first song who was just phenomenal, two singers aged 12 who carried every song beautifully, and a bunch of children signing actions to a Doug Horley song. At no point was it ‘cheesy’, ‘ropey’ or ‘poor quality’ but rather uplifting and inspiring for the congregation to see these young individuals using their talents to worship. It was an amazing and humbling time. They really are fantastic!

In addition, we also handed out glass nuggets (like the ones above) at the beginning of the service to symbolise ourselves as beautiful in God’s eyes and then encouraged people to bring them forward during the worship as a gesture of bringing ourselves before God. This seemed to really inspire quite a few and served to engage the parts of the congregation that switch off during ‘singing’.

So please do use young people in your worship services, but give them the credit they deserve and expect them to shine!