Dear SJB family,
Over the summer, most of our 11am services will be All Age Services, with 2 exceptions on 11th & 18th August.
All age services have something for everyone, (even the oldest family members) and have a number of wonderful benefits to us as a church. In fact, many churches deliberately choose to do a lot more All Age Services than we do at St John’s to reap these benefits! These include:
We get a sense of heaven, where people of all ages, tribes and tongues will worship Jesus together. Our young people see our praise and response in worship, giving them the opportunity to join in.
Children can set us a good example with their sense of awe, innocence, spontaneity, vitality, transparency, inquisitiveness, unembarrassed joy, unencumbered faith, and absolute trust in a heavenly Father who loves them. We often lose these kinds of things as adults, and that hinders our worship! “From the lips of children and infants you, Lord, have called forth your praise.” - Matthew 21:16
An engaging message that catches our imagination and creativity, yet teaches and applies to us all. They are also often more memorable!
All age services are good for newcomers in the sense that families with children won’t feel any pressure to send children out with unfamiliar adults, or worry about their children making noise – because the other children will still be there.
Those adults usually serving out in groups are released to serve and receive in the main service.
In order to do this well, we need our young people to stay with their families during the service. That means as parents you need to be sat next to or behind them, in order to help guide them through the service because:
You may want to point something out that has connected with you.
They may have a question about what is happening
You may need to remind them the reason why it’s important to engage with a particular part of the service if they have got distracted.
Parents of very small children (under 2 years) and babies will be able to retreat to a separate room (which will be signposted) when you need to. That room will have the service live streamed into it, but please do re-join the rest of the church family as soon as you feel able to.
Designing all age services is difficult, because we are trying to include something for everyone, so we won’t get it right every time. But we must try! For God is calling his people to prayer, to confession, and to the reading of scripture. In every case in the Old Testament, children were specifically mentioned (see Joshua 8:34, 35; 2 Chronicles 20:13; Deuteronomy 31:11-13; and Ezra 10:1). God apparently considered children to be an integral and important part of the community. Indeed, it is implied that the community is incomplete without them, and Jesus himself had something to say about that in Matt 19 too. The same goes for those of grandparent, and great-grandparent age – we all benefit from spending time with those older than ourselves.
Comments