Worship with Teenagers by Eric L. Mathis

Author:Eric L. Mathis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Youth Ministry/Worship;Christian teenagers—Religious life;Spiritual formation;Public worship;Church work with teenagers;REL109030;REL055020
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2022-01-04T00:00:00+00:00

Linking God’s Story to Teenagers’ Stories

Remembering God’s Work in the Past for the Present and Future

Linking God’s story to teenagers’ stories begins with a pattern of worship that situates worship in the story that it calls to mind. For Webber, this is a biblical pattern of worship that “remembers God’s work in the past, anticipates God’s rule over all creation, and actualizes both past and future in the present to transform persons, communities, and the world.”48 Worship remembers God’s work in the past through “historical recitation” and “dramatic reenactment.”49 Historical recitation involves naming and remembering the acts of God throughout Scripture and history through preaching, creeds, and song. Dramatic reenactment “draws the worshiper into the action, not as an observer, but as a participant.”50 This occurs through the Lord’s Table, the Christian Passover (Easter), and the Christian way of marking time.

Remembering the past, however, is not enough; worship should also connect the past with the future by anticipating the future that God has for the world. Ultimately, this is “God’s rescue of the entire created order and the establishment of his rule over all heaven and earth. The eschatological nature of worship has to do with that place and time when God’s rule is being done on earth as it is in heaven.”51 Worship that anticipates the future “holds up God’s vision of a new heaven and earth and an eternal community of God’s people living in fellowship with God, doing God’s will on earth, walking in God’s ways, and fulfilling the vision of creation.”52

Connecting Sunday with Monday

Worship that connects past, present, and future brings together worship and “holy living.” It “shapes the ethical behavior of God’s people to reflect kingdom ethics here on earth. Consequently, the ethical life of the church is an eschatological witness to the world of how people should be living and how the world will be under the reign of God.”53 This combination of worship, spirituality, and ethics reminds worshipers they are “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that [they] may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called [them] out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Pet. 2:9).

While a central role of worship is to call teenagers from the noisiness of the liturgies of the world to focus and name priorities, it is equally true that a second role of worship is to form disciples of all ages who are better equipped to follow Christ faithfully in the world. If worship regularly invites teenagers to escape from the world and recharge their spiritual batteries, it promotes a partial view of God’s story and a partial view of their stories. For teenagers, this imbalance is ultimately an issue of honesty. In the words of a young evangelical, this kind of worship is inauthentic:

Worship is where we as individuals leave our other loves and come together to share our common first love. We leave things that we are doing, to honor [God] in his house with his children.

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