Why is this important?

When you love someone, you show and you tell. This is what we call worship: intentionally orientating your words, thoughts and actions towards God to demonstrate your love, respect and values.

Question

Can you think of different ways that love can be shown? Challenge yourself to write as long a list as you can.

What is your preferred way of showing someone you love them? What’s your preferred way to be shown love?

Suggestion

Take some time to observe someone you love, who you know loves you. Play detective, what is it that they do that shows their love for you? In what different ways do they engage with you, what can be seen, heard, felt?
Next time you’re in church, use those same observation skills and watch to see how others show their love to God? What do you think that looks like? How do you know it’s love?
Are you up for a challenge? Ask someone in church why they’re doing what they’re doing to show they love God.

Prayer Prompt

A lot of music is about love, whether it was written about God or about human beings. Spend some time researching some love songs, push yourself to explore different genres.

Find a song that you really like - as you listen, or sing along.

Say (or sing) ‘I love you’ to God, and see if you can feel it back.

Why is this important?

Worship is one way we respond to God’s love. Through worship we can encounter God, understand what God is doing in the world, be joined together as part of a wider community, and see we might go and join in with God. Our worship needs to be a place where everyone can feel that they have a place in the radical welcome of God, a way that their gifts can be used in response to God’s love.

Question

How could the worship your young people experience be made more inclusive – of their life experiences, of their cultures, of who they are? How could this transform the worship of the whole church?

Suggestion

Invite young people to reflect on their lives, significant events, discrimination they have experienced, change they have been part of, awe they have felt…and how they have seen God at work. Encourage them to write their stories or record them, and share them as part of worship, giving space for everyone to reflect and listen to what God is saying.

Prayer Prompt

In the moments before worship, pause, open your hands, your heart and your mind…and know with deep joy and excitement that somehow you will encounter the divine in this act of worship.