It’s so cool the way the Holy Spirit puts things together. A couple of weeks back, we had our regular DC (Disciplemaking Community) at Diaspora. And parts of it were led as always by a variety of our people. And it was beautiful — songs, prayers, word, fellowship — all came together beautifully. Those who led ranged in age from 8 to 17 and it was awesome!
Now you might think, “isn’t that great, they had a youth service”.
I remember years ago working with youth to do a service for the Sunday morning service at church. That included working with teens to preach the sermon. They did a good job. But there was a sense in parts of the congregation that it was less of a sermon and kind of cute that the teens did it.
And in one sense, that Saturday, we did have a youth service since we specifically asked the younger members of our tribe to lead. But in another sense we didn’t, because those same young people often lead parts of our time together. And there was no sense of seeing the ‘kids’ doing their thing which as somehow less compared to our usual. It was awesome — not sub par, not less powerful, not shallow, no less the body of Christ worshiping and learning together.
I like the way author Neil Cole puts it,
“When a child receives the Lord,
the child doesn’t receive a junior-sized Holy Spirit and a Jesus action figure.’
We do children a disservice when we don’t include them in the worship of the Church. They are part of the Church the same as adults are. We are all part of the Body of Christ and we all can bring worship to our Lord.
I don’t think anyone in church would say children are less important parts of the body of Christ but in practice we lose something when they don’t get to express their love of God.
