Andre Jordan “AJ” Wallace
Second-Year Student
Princeton Seminary
I sometimes wonder if the church has forgotten that bearing the image of God is a communal task (Genesis 1:26). I say this out of recognition of the cultural practice of not often including young people in our regular rhythms of worship. Yes, we have our Youth Sundays and children’s sermons that take up a few moments of a service, but many of our congregations probably don’t have consistent liturgies that are truly intergenerational.
Why don’t we have children regularly lead us in our worship services? Why do we seem to embrace the idea that young children cannot testify and bear witness to the presence of Jesus the Christ among us in this cultural moment? While I do not know all the in's and out's of Christian worship history and how we got to what we now call a Sunday service, I do believe that our contemporary rituals cannot exclude the kids of our communities.
May we always remember that the hands and feet of Christ are also the little ones crawling, coloring, and playing in our pews. Perhaps we can re-imagine new liturgies by actively involving the children of our community by asking them what they would like worship to consist of. I believe our little ones have a capacity for joy and adoration that we adults have grown out of. And while we might be able to recover fragments of it, we can't go it alone. If we hope to experience a renewed vivacity for life with God, then cultivating it in our worship spaces cannot be a task just for adults.
More IG Mix Nov-Dec 2021 articles
- FAQs for the NEW Intergenerational Ministry Starter Bundle
- GenOn Youth Summit 2022 Is On!
- Two Questions: Andrew Root
- Increasing Mutual Investment in Worship
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