Creative Ideas for Your Young Adult Friendly Worship

with contributions from Meghan and Jayson Gray

• Young adults want quality. Prepare!
• Offer variety from worship to worship
• Drama or dramatic interpretation
• Worship by candlelight or outside
• Use video clips or YouTube-style home videos for “object lessons”
• Sit in another formation: circle, at tables, lines facing each other, etc.
• Music
  • Not all young adults want loud contemporary music – mix it up according to the needs of the worship and worshippers.
  • Try a variety of instruments and voices
  • Family-friendly: Include songs young kids know and like to sing
• Stuff that challenges us to think:
  • Rhetorical questions
  • Relation to audience's real life - “How does this sermon, etc., relate to me?”
  • Not only big picture concepts, but what does it mean in my life?
• Give ways to apply the message in life:
  • What do I do from here?”
  • Make it actionable.
  • Give examples
  • Make Disciple’s Generous Response and stewardship pertinent to young adult life issues
• Interactive Worship:
  • Informal dialog instead of a sermon
  • Solicit information and comments from the audience
  • Allow time to ask questions
    • “Even after this sermon, what do you still not understand?”
    • “What do you doubt?”
    • Don’t have to give answers for the questions…
  • Pray as a group for one or two individuals who are present – just because.
  • Break up into small groups for discussion and learning
• Worship by doing; outreach for the community
• Drawing or painting a picture while sermon is given to illustrate the topic
• Have worshippers look up scripture during worship and read it out loud
• Creative worship centers
• Have prayer or reading done in the congregation (i.e. with handheld microphone)
• Include dance
• Use PowerPoint for sermons, Disciple’s Generous Response, children’s moments, etc.
• Speaker is encouraged to move around and not just stand behind the podium
• Worship in unusual formations, like praying or singing in a circle at the end of a service
• Incorporate imagery or thought-provoking objects
• Lead a worship “campfire style”
• Invite a special evangelist, high priest or seventy to bring a unique blessing or focused ministry with the young adults
• Tag-team message from a young adult and a senior citizen; newlywed couple and long-married couple; etc.