All Age Groups Participate in Worship. They enjoy Holidays, Together.

Yes, Lord, with Your help, we will arrange for adults and children to participate in worship activities, together, so that all voice your praises and edify one another, as your Word requires.

Yes, new leader, you are free to follow New Testament norms for worship. May the tears of repentance and the laughter of liberation flow freely! Balance quiet contemplation with spontaneous dialog, to strengthen, exhort and console.

Let all believers, including children, take an active part in corporate worship.

Have children perform brief activities during weekly worship, so they know they are a vital part of the church body.

Let all, including children, do something serious, during the week, to enhance their spiritual life.

Provide edifying activities for adults and children to do. Encourage all to participate joyfully. Recognize during worship what each one did during the week.

Heed the New Testament’s many “one another” commands.

God desires everyone to take part and interact when you come together, as we can see in  in the Gospels, Acts, Letters and Revelation. Make it easy for people to build each other up by …

• Letting each cell or home church gather at a time and place that are convenient.
• Letting each group discern what its members currently need, and choose which of the ministries required by the New Testament it will focus on next.
• Practice New Testament “one another” commands both during worship and during the week. These include teaching one another, consoling one another, correcting one another, encouraging one another, etc.

Celebrate Communion regularly, keenly aware of Christ’s Presence.

Help the entire congregation sing during worship.

Those who play instruments and lead the singings must avoid giving a  performance at which folk merely observe or listen to entertaining musicians. Some musicians should keep out of sight and play quietly enough so that the others in the group are encouraged to join in the singing.

Let youth lead and disciple younger ones.

Avoid excessive separating of your group by age. Children crave and respond to attention from an older child. Most children, especially teenagers, grow rapidly in their faith, when they work together to lead and teach younger children. Let those who brim with energy disciple younger children, serving as role models and helping lead meetings.

Let children do serious service.

Give children and young people important responsibilities.

Celebrate sacred holidays joyfully and meaningfully.

Special holidays can prove highly edifying for children, an opportunity to bring nominal believers to vital faith.

 

 Resources For While You…

Fix fragmented families. Keep families together; let children participate in meaningful worship and ministry along with adults:

What to do with children during worship

Restore the link between our right and left brain lobes. A must read. Use brief skits, role-plays and demonstrations to teach more effectively:

Stories and skits enliven teaching

Awaken sleeping brain cells. Make teaching times enjoyably edifying, by having believers encourage, instruct, comfort and correct one another:

Let all use their spiritual gifts during discussions

Reawaken your God-given instinct to play-act. Make it easy for children and for adults to act out stories together:

Let children and adults act out Bible stories together

Sing with David. Have edifying music in worship. Help all sing during worship, and recall songs to sing in their heart during the week:

Guidelines to employ music to enter God’s Presence

Remove a clown’s excessive paint. Avoid popular practices in worship music that fail to edify:

Rein in trends in worship music that go too far

Make the most of holidays and sacred seasons. Seize God-given opportunities to bring folk to Him:

Edifying holidays, seasons of Church Year

Hold a party during the Christmas season. Use this hilarious, Christ-centered skit about Christmas, in which all ages participate together, to enliven parties and holiday gatherings:

Countdown to Christmas, a fun party game that focuses on Jesus

Enacting the story of Bethlehem. Take part in Mary’s dismay at finding a “No Vacancy” sign at Bethlehem’s motel. Let this brief dramatization portray the importance of Christ’s birth:

Bethlehem’s Shepherds

Watch Adam bite. Portray dramatically the original sin. Present this brief, fun drama in a big or small group, adults and children together, to depict Adam’s and Eve’s earth-changing tragedy:

Brief drama, Escape the Dragon’s Fangs

Make labor for Jesus jolly. Keep volunteer workers happily on the job:

Let Workers’ Ministry Fit their Natural Personality Traits

Wave palm branches. Relive the powerful account of Jesus’ Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday:

Jesus entered Jerusalem as king seated on a donkey

Join John in glory. Let worshippers sense God’s presence by sharing John’s awe and reverence of when he was taken up to heaven in a vision:

John’s grand visions of Christ enthroned in heaven

Strive to stay small. Help leaders and strategy planners visualize this route to multiply cells:

jit 3e 76 Good & bad growth patterns for cell churches, graphic, 1 page

Teach how to teach. Use an effective variety of teaching techniques, including the “one another” dialogue that Scripture requires of believers when they gather:

Edifying alternatives to monologue

Develop Christian community. This document consists of fun exercises for a group to do, to develop active, joyful body life:

Develop Christian Community

Spice your teaching with occasional skits, scripted to act out:

Communicate with skits and role-plays

Enter a New Year. Venture by faith into the unknown future. A brief drama in verse:

Timekeeper at New Year’s door

Relive Adam’s experience with creation, scripted to act out:

God created all, Adam named the animals

Let children and adults act together to relive this dramatic Christmas Event:

Angels Announce Jesus’ Birth to Shepherds of Bethlehem, scripted

Enter a New Year. Venture by faith into the unknown future. A brief drama in verse:

Pilgrim hesitates at New Year’s door

Join High Priest Aaron as he ventures into the Holy of  Holies. Scripted to reenact:

Aaron enters the perilous presence of God

See creation from Adam’s point of view. A skit:

God creates all; Adam names the animals, scripted

Common Traps To Avoid

Fail to recognize some Evangelical customs for what they are: traditions of men.

Some “doctrines of demons” hinder the work of the Holy Spirit in meetings, and believers embrace them without realizing it. Some churches stifle free interaction during teaching times; other churches carry it too far.

Import models for worship and organizing from churches that work with different folk in other circumstances.

Leaders who entertain and perform in worship, leaving others to listen passively.

Avoid having folk merely listen to the beautiful music of performers instead of joining heartily in singing God’s praises. When most folk do not sing, something is desperately wrong.

Excessively segregate children by age.

Let children develop loving, edifying relationships with those of other ages. Allow time for children to mix with other ages as well to be with those of their own age.

Let a teacher’s spiritual gift eclipse other vital, gift-based ministries.

Good teachers and preachers often attract too much attention, crippling the church body.

Delay mentoring new shepherding elders for non-biblical reasons.

Establish 2 Timothy 2:2 training right away, by which shepherds mentor new elders in daughter churches or cells. You can multiply healthy churches or cells only as fast as you mobilize new leaders.

Dictate when or where small groups meet and what they do. Forcing all groups to follow the same patterns or curriculum stifles spontaneity, creativity and freedom to prophesy in the New Testament way. As Paul said, “Where the Spirit is, there is liberty.”

Make Communion just another teaching session.

Let the mystery and drama of the Lord’s Supper do its work, moving believers powerfully to appreciate Jesus’ sacrificial death. If communion becomes a “dead liturgy,” then it is we who have killed it!

Rely excessively on technology.

This sacred cow consistently hinders normal multiplication. Deal with the horned beast!