How Do You Teach Worship

As a father and youth leader, I am always wondering and thinking about teaching kids about worship. It is hard enough to help adults understand what worship is all about, but gets tougher when we are talking about young people.

Worship to me is an extremely important expression of our Christian faith and as such, it seems like we as leaders need to be concerned about teaching this to our children. Seeing a young person engaged in worship, where they are really connecting with God is a sight that I will never get tired of.

My thoughts to this point has led me to believe that modeling worship is a good way to teach it, but I'm wondering if there is more that should be done. That is not to say that other teaching isn't taking place, such as teaching on God's character and his interaction with His creation. It seems like we have done a good job in teaching about Christianity, but have we done enough to explain that worship takes us into the courtyards of the King Himself. Have we explained that God does indeed inhabit the prayers of his people. If not, how can we really do this?

For me, worship did not come easy, in fact it took me a while to understand why people in church would ever enjoy all the singing that they did. I wanted to skip the singing and get on to the good stuff, I thought all the singing was a waste of time. It took time for God to capture my heart and for me to realize that it was happening. Worship went from singing songs to an interactive experience, where I moved closer to God and where He came closer to me. It was a place where I could be totally exposed before Him and where He could speak to me and deal with me in all the ways He desired.

In the end, I guess I am left with more questions that answers, but my desire is and will always be for more and more people to experience real worship. I want to help others to find this place, this special place where the veil between us and God is especially thin.