Childrens worship

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Permalink Reply by Mike Kerslake on 26 February 2008 at 9:14pm

I've observed a loud band with energetic songs led enthusiastically has worked quite well at getting involvement from 10-14-ish age range. The problems has been calming them down when you want to do something a little more serious. What age range are you working with?

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Permalink Reply by Lucy Chalk on 26 February 2008 at 9:23pm

well the age range is like 3-10s really the boys are aged about 7-9

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Permalink Reply by Rob on 26 February 2008 at 10:07pm

Hi Lucy - good topic!!

Yeah I've done some kids worship with this age boys - mainly Great Big God songs. I don't need to tell you that songs that involve the whole body are much better than those that you just sing, especially with boys!! Unfortunately our culture has taken the masculinity out of singing, so you've got that misconception to contend with.

One idea is to get some simple percussion intruments - shakers, maraccas - can't think what the others are called, but you get the drift! Then encourage the kids to use these in worship. You may need to start by leading the rhythm before getting into the song. I've seen this done very effectively with vocals and a djembe drum.

Another, is to try and get the kids music you're doing into their parents cars!! I have two under two's, and the music we listen to in the car immediately makes certain songs familiar to our kids. You could do this by getting some kids worship CDs in for your church and selling them at the back of your church or bookshop! Some suggestions include GBG and Hillsongs kids, but there are loads of good stuff out there.

I know that people will suggest a loud (i.e. big) band, with drums and bass, but in reality that's a bit overwhelming for 15 kids, and I doubt you'll have that many musicians for a fairly small kids group. So I think something small that engages both sexes, but more importantly all of the individuals, and their particular interest, is a lot more effective.

Hope this helps. Let us know how this goes!

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Permalink Reply by Lucy Chalk on 26 February 2008 at 10:19pm

hi rob thanks for that sounds like sum gd ideas i will have 2 look into it we sing off trentvinyard kids and hillsong kids so i will let u know how i get on thanks!

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Permalink Reply by Matt Osgood on 26 February 2008 at 11:03pm

Nick Drake (no, not that one) - a friend of mine who's the worship pastor at St. Paul's in Hammersmith has just released a cracking album of kids songs called 'Big Family of God' that he's written together with his wife Becky (actually I think she wrote most of them) and produced by Matt and Dan Weeks. If you have a look at http://www.bigfamilyofgod.com/ you can listen to previews of most of the tracks, read all the lyrics, and even watch videos of the actions! Nice. Totally recommend it, especially as there's some rocking tunes on there for boys, but also the theology is more sound than you often get on kids albums.

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Permalink Reply by Lee Wyatt on 27 February 2008 at 12:50pm

Hi Lucy

We have a lot of boys of that age range in our youth groups and we have found that mostly using the songs they are exposed to, stuff their mums and dads listen to etc.at the start of Worship gears them up and then anything goes. Most ly active and faster paced songs! Things like the heart of worship and stuff, slower, dont tend to work too well to start with.
Getting them involved is great too, loads of our kids are learning guitars, bass, drums, sax etc and they just get stuck, can be noisy but they are all actively worshipping.

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Permalink Reply by Mig on 27 February 2008 at 3:08pm

Hi, there's some really useful stuff here guys. Totally agree with the comments about whole body involvement and use of percussion.
One of the things we've done is to write some child-friendly raps that use familiar stories. Rapping is usually considered cooler amongst the lads that don't like singing, although we've incorporated refrains into most of them to add a bit of melody too.
The advantage of a rap is that you can often get a call and response thing going between the leader and the kids so that those younger ones or those that don't read so well can still participate.

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Permalink Reply by Tim Naish on 27 February 2008 at 4:30pm

I help lead worship with children of that age both in a informal service and as part of a youth group. We lead the songs using a couple of acoustic guitars, but the songs usually have a lot of energy and actions. We've been using quite a lot of John Hardwick (http://www.johnhardwick.org.uk/) material recently but also use material from Ishmael.

Getting the children involved, e.g. playing instruments, works well for us in a service but we too struggle holding their attention with the slower songs.

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Permalink Reply by Rich Clarkson on 27 February 2008 at 6:54pm

We use a lot of stuff from the Spring Harvest "Kid's Praise Party" CDs (they've just brought out volume 3), they have some cracking songs on. I'd definately agree with the comments about action songs, it really engages them much more than just standing there singing. I do quite a lot of work in Primary schools teaching music and I've found that the boy get much more into the singing if they have something else to do as well (strange as it sounds). Give them a shaker or some actions and they are far more likely to sing as well rather than mess around at the back!

God bless, Rich

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Permalink Reply by Damian Herbert on 28 February 2008 at 9:07am

Hey Lucy,

I work with an itinerant children's ministry called BIG Ministries (www.bigministries.co.uk). As a team, we often find ourselves in the same sort of situation as you.

What we've observed is that older boys generally go for music which is either quite punky like busted or a bit more urban / rapped and generally just cool. I assume that you are probably leading with CD's but if not I would say give it a go for this number of kids. In terms of the music we use busted-esque tracks like 'So Glad' - Great Big God 3, 'Help Me Be Your Eyes' - Doug Horley, Fandabidozzie and Words Are Not Enough, which is on Spring Harvest Kids Praise Party Vol.2. The only rap track we really use is called 'Jump Up' from Fandabidozzie. A lot of Doug Horley's stuff is good for older boys but some of it is difficult to use.

If you're doing actions then stuff like playing 'Air Guitar' (If you can get your hands on them inflatable guitars work really well) or jumping are great. For me that is as much a part of our worship as singing if it's done for God. So Glad actions work because the chorus is so prescriptive - 'I will clap my hands and wave them in the air, shout your name so everyone can hear "JESUS!", jump as high as I can reach and dance around to show that I'm so glad that you love me!'

The other thing I would suggest is, if at all possible, getting a guy up front and doing actions too is good. If the boys see a guy doing it then often they know it's all right for them to do it too. It also helps to engage them from the very beginning as soon as they come in. If their engaged because you chatted to them about football (or anything else they might be in to) then they're more likely to be engaged in sung worship too.

These are just a few of my thoughts this morning, I hope they're helpful. Keep us posted.

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Permalink Reply by Lucy Chalk on 28 February 2008 at 3:01pm

hey everyone been reading all your comments thankyou for posting them for me. Yea im on my own at the min and working off cds and dvds that actions and stuff so ill give everything a gd try

keep posting!!!

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Permalink Reply by martyn burt on 28 February 2008 at 4:29pm

One other person you may want to contact is Paul Crouch. He has led some of the childrens worship at Spring Harvest (Whizz Kids and the All Age Worship) and some of the songs he has written with Dave Mudie (his brother-in-law) are good. They may be worth looking at. (I played in his band for a couple of years).

I think you should be able to contact him on www.chippingcampdenbaptistchurch.org.uk which is the church he now works for.

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