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.