So, I read this certain blog a lot. Carlos writes it. I dig what he does. Creativity is his junk, so he had this idea. How could we get a bunch of great ideas out of this creative group of people who read this blog? Creative Chaos. Click that link to get the DL.
Here’s my contribution for the week. I’m leading worship for our middle school ministry this weekend, Tsunami. One thing that we have been trying to do, as a band, is to teach the kids how to worship. We have a great opportunity here. We could just play loud and fast songs all the time, let em jump around. They’d love it. I love it. And that is all part of worship. But this week, we’re going to hit up Salvation is Here into Take It All and then right into an abridged version [P.C 2x's, 1/2C. 2x's, C.] of From the Inside Out.
One thing that I have seen with middle school kids is that when you pull out a slower song for them, they have usually lost interest by the second verse because they want to be jumping around and being a middle school. Slower songs usually don’t appeal to a mass of middle schoolers. So, we want to take the momentum and energy from the first two songs and continue it into the last song. By cutting some of the song out and building from nothing from the beginning of the song, we hope to keep their attention. By keeping their attention, we can allow them to maybe focus more than usual on the words, thus teaching them how to work. It’s tough stuff, but teaching another generation how to worship is a privilege and challenge I’m stoked for.
What are some idea’s you’ve got floating around in your head?
3 responses so far ↓
Creative Chaos - Middle School Worship « Technical Creativity // March 7, 2008 at 7:42 pm
[...] Creative Chaos. It got me thinking that my church does nothing creative. Wrong. I started reading a post in the midst of the chaos, and realized that perhaps I wasn’t [...]
jimkastkeat // March 7, 2008 at 10:36 pm
I’m totally with you on the struggle between high energy vs. a more contemplative feel. I work with the fifth and sixth grade ministry at a church in Grand Rapids, MI leading the band (among other things).
We’ve done our best to create a rhythm to always end on a more contemplative beat, if for anything else to better set students up for their next steps at our church in the main service and the junior high ministry.
We always end with, what we simply call StopAndBreathe. We all say those words together and then stop and breathe. No music. No leading question. Just breathe, knowing that you can always find God as close as your very breath.
Then each week I don’t have to try to create some ending or landing point for our worship segment, but simply move to StopAndBreathe.
thoughts?
cdenning // March 8, 2008 at 11:53 am
Yea boss, thats a real good idea. How many kids are at a given service? How many songs do yall usually play? Its kinda tough to get 100+ kids to stop talking let alone ponder how awesome it is that God loved them first hah.