One-Minute Worship and the Teenager

Sometimes teenagers can be really stupid. I think you may know this. And yet, sometimes, God grants those teenagers some wisdom.

Today, for teen Bible study, I told the teens we were going to watch an entire church service. I asked them to look for:

1. Something that was right.
2. Something that was wrong.
3. Something they wanted to try.
4. Something they never wanted to see at our congregation.

And with that introduction, we watched this video:

Now, before anyone freaks out, the pastor did that as a joke. If you want more commentary on the video itself, check out the commentary from this excellent Bread for Beggars post.

So, what do you think the teens said?

Personally, I expected them to laugh a little and say in that I’m-totally-honest-but-joking-if-you-call-me-on-it way: “It would be awesome if church was that short.”

But no one said that.

Instead:

“He didn’t actually forgive them!”

“That would be terrible for communion!”

“If I’m gonna get up at eight to go to church, you better make it longer than a minute!”

“If you did that here, I would hit you!”

None of them saw anything good or anything they wanted to try here. They found a lot of things they didn’t like, though!

I then asked them what a good church service should have. Again, their list impressed me:

1. Actually forgive sins.
2. Law and Gospel (Now that was awesome to hear from the teens!)
3. Jesus
4. Stuff. (Someone had to be a smart alec!)
5. The Bible
6. Praise and songs
7. Communion – real communion where they say the words!
8. A sermon

All in all, again, a pretty darn good list, I must say. The only major thing missing that I had to remind them of was prayer. Yes, there are some specifics that would be nice – for instance, while they picked up the necessity of the absolution, they didn’t mention the confession that really, really, really ought to go before it. Yet, they were so focused on the terrible absolution from the video that they sought to correct the error.

We talked about what praise could look like. They talked about not liking the music – “It doesn’t sound like praise. It sounds boring. When I praise, it sounds like this.” (I talked about how I was open to different types of music, but our congregation simply doesn’t have the talent here to make it work, at least for now.) They talked about more actual interaction instead of getting a lecture for the sermon. They talked about how they wanted to worship, but they were agreed on the content of worship – that it was to be based on Jesus.

If you look back at last week’s post, you’ll see that this shouldn’t be a given in my congregation. Many put church above God. And yet, the younger generation really does swing the opposite way – loving Jesus, but forgetting that church is a gracious gift from him that we are to use!

How do you take those two disparate groups and meld them into one congregation?

Well, you sure wouldn’t guess that a hand and a spleen belong together, and yet they both are important for the human body. God makes it work. My eye, my appendix, my uvula, my patella… they all are so very different, and yet they function together.

We all have different weaknesses. Maybe your weakness is loving the church more than God. Maybe my weakness is forgetting what a blessing church is. And yet we both find the center of our worship in the fact that though we are terrible sinners, God forgives our sins. And we both celebrate that our God suffered for our sins, no matter what those sins are. And we both turn to follow Christ, away from our sins, to worship him.

And that worship? It’s not kept within a one-minute barrier if football is coming. It’s also not kept within a one-hour barrier on a Sunday morning. Worship is something Christians do with their lives.

As far as the worship that we come together to do together on a Sunday morning… I was pleased at what the teens said today. I hope they continue to grow and celebrate the blessings God gives through the church.

And I hope I keep getting pleasantly surprised!