music

Warning: Don’t forget to do these 5 things when planning Youth Worship

October 20, 2011 By Gavin Richardson

This article was originally published October 20, 2011.

Recently we had our Youth Sunday service at our church. It was great, it really was, but it wasn’t without it’s headaches, stressors, and a few surprises along the way. Upcoming the last weekend of November is the ‘Student Sunday’ within the United Methodist Church calendar, which I believe is more geared for college students, but it could be a good time to do a special service with the teens leading.

So, if you are up for the challenge, when you are devising your Youth Sunday special service, here are some obvious and not so obvious things to plan for and watch out for.

1. Have Extra Music Practice.. Then more practice: With my all youth praise team we would practice at least 4 hours of the week prior, not to mention playing some of the songs ahead of time. But new songs take work and if you plan your music selections as I do, with the other generations in mind, we don’t want to just dump on them our standard praise sets. You get mad props for playing songs they like as well. If you are using the house band or musicians you can get away with less practice time, but you still probably need to set 2 hours. Music will make or break you, give it the extra attention. With that said, I give any kid a chance to sing or play. Many times they will practice and choose not to be live on Sunday, but it is open and I’m cool with it. This is a gift/talent/expression they want to share with the church, we are a safe place for them to do that. If they are on their electric guitar, however, I might incline them to keep the volume a little lower.

2. Ask if there are any strange traditions of Youth Sunday: With my most recent experience at a new church I had the service mapped out and sign ups filled out weeks ahead of time. I was feeling pretty good. When it came time for rehearsal I had some interesting to surprises “What adults are going to acolyte?” “What? None..” “Really, they always acolyte.” “Seriously??” Well, if they did before they didn’t this time, I hadn’t planned for it but in the midst of planning I never asked if there were any ‘different’ traditions of the service to plan for. Ask the question and if you get no responses you can move on.

3. Who do I need to tell to do something or not to do something? Again, in my most recent experience at a new church it was a few days later when one of the ladies stopped me to tell me that if I wasn’t going to use the ushers then I needed to tell such and such person. Good information to have now, but where were you weeks ago when I was planning this and as it was on the calendar for over a month? So ask the question, “Who do I need to tell to do something or not to do something?” and you will cover your bases and probably find out a little bit about the worship dynamics from week to week.

4. Get a Youth to do the Sermon!! This is Youth Sunday, not Youth Director Sunday, don’t get lazy and step into the pulpit (unless upon your senior pastors insistence). Pray over the service, pray for the group and ask for guidance in asking one or two to give the sermon for the service. It’s a huge leap for some kids, challenge for others, but with some coaching and some practice they can do great and the people of the church love it. Does not have to be the most theologically deep sermon, ie. don’t try and tackle the Trinity Sunday sermon (pastors regularly avoid that one). You may help in shaping this one, or it might be one of those where your pastor/s could would be willing to work with the youth on the sermon prep and coaching. That might be a great long standing relationship.

5. Rehearse step by step and write down notes: Though many of your youth, as do mine, participate in worship from week to week, rarely are they in these focal roles. So going through a rehearsal process is critical to making sure that the usher kids know their cues, even how to grab the plates (speak from experience on that one). Nothing is more scary then to look over where the youth are supposed to be and they are not there, in fact, they are still behind you.. “Oh Snap!” Go through a step by step process, it might seem trivial and exhaustive, but the youth will be thankful for it when it comes ‘go’ time. Write down notes through the bulletin/order of worship etc. so that they can reference later.

6. (wait this article says 5, I know, feeling generous) Use volunteers to focus on leading each segment. You cannot be everywhere for everyone all at the same time. So hand out responsibilities to your leadership to work with the youth on that one specific task. Your job then becomes the overseer and puzzle builder of the whole thing. So have a youth leader of yours operate the ushers, music, communion, etc. Trust me, this is important and you will thank me later.

Inevitably someone reading this will say that they don’t care for special youth Sunday’s because they exploit the youth in a fashion where we let them out of their room once a year then send them back while the big kids go back to doing church. If that is the case then I’m not in favor of that, but you need to start somewhere in integrating your youth into the full life of the church. They need to be active participants and not passive observers, so start them off somewhere. If they are already doing stuff then this becomes a neat experiment as they challenge themselves with new roles that they are not traditionally accustomed to.

Gavin Richardson is Digital Community Builder for YouthWorker Movement and the Short One at YouthWorker Circuit. He has been in youth work for almost two decades now, has been a writer and consultant on numerous internet and published projects for the church. He’s often a speaker around the country on church communications and community building. His current projects are working on developing online Youth Disciple Groups and finishing a new book “Sticky Sheep.” He is the part time youth guy at Good Shepherd UMC in Hendersonville, TN. If you ask, he will say that he is a “misfit” of the church. He lives in Nashville with his wife Erin, son Brooks and dog Crimson. You can connect with Gavin (and he’s totally cool with that) through http://about.me/gavoweb.

Wild Goose Festival a final gander

June 29, 2011 By Gavin Richardson

**This originally posted at Youthworker Circuit Blog. Kevin headed up the Wild Goose Festival Youth Community tent where he was able to get folks like Shane Claiborne and Brian McLaren came to share with the teenagers at the event.

When you get right down to it, there are more goose jokes than you might think.

I came into Wild Goose in a kind of hodge-podge, last-second decision kind of way and managed to experience it in a similar fashion. At the outset, I was alerted to its existence by a Twitter mention from Gavin: “@elvisfreakshow really wants to go to this, he just doesn’t know it yet.” It was the end of February, I think. So I headed over to the Wild Goose site, which at the time was less cool and more borrowed looking. I poked around a bit, but apart from a sense that Derek Webb was involved, there wasn’t much information. “Maybe he was kidding,” I concluded.

A few months months and a circus of communication later, I was asked (two weeks ahead of the festival) to lead the youth team. Which, as it turned out, was a bit of a blank page considering how close we were to the festival. My experience of the festival, then, was from the perspective of both insider and outsider. The most common sentiment I picked up throughout the festival from everyone I encountered was that we were all so glad it was happening. I don’t know if any two people came away with the same story; everyone seemed to be moving through in their own way. Two truths: I missed about half of the bands and speakers that I would like to have seen. And I would do it again the same way.

Because I approached the festival as an attendee, I came with my family. Because at the very last I became staff, my family and I had very different experiences of the festival and we were careful to evaluate our time together and apart as we went along, to avoid the former intention being ruined by the latter obligation. Late one evening we arrived at this conclusion that I think pretty fairly sums up the Wild Goose experience: in no other set of circumstances over any other 4 days would we ever have encountered such a powerful collection of moments. And all those moments added up to a sense of worthwhile that is difficult to express.

Ordinarily the event is about, well, the event. The right speakers, bands, whatever. At Wild Goose, it felt like the event was about those in attendance. Conversations you’d have nowhere else. People you’d meet nowhere else. Presenters and performers that were present for the duration of the event. When does that ever happen?

Sure, it wasn’t perfect. There’s probably a mighty check-list being nailed to the wall somewhere as you read this (“#16. Don’t attempt to transition from soul-warming Americana to intimate worship by putting a comic in the middle. #17. Especially if you’ve just passed out 1,000 marshmallows to the masses). But the spirit of the festival was picked up by the crowd entirely; walking the grounds the last day of the festival felt like the last day of a mission trip. Something special had happened. People weren’t streaming for the exits; they were lingering, savoring.

I’m all in for next year; I suspect I’m not the only one who has already Googled, “Wild Goose 2012″ with unreasonable optimism. I’ll be making my case to head next year’s youth team later this week; people seemed to resonate with this year’s efforts–imagine what I could do with more than a week and a half of preparation!

Hope to see you there next time.

Peace,
K

One Day I’ll Be Waiting For…

May 2, 2011 By Gavin Richardson

in the light of the craziness that has followed the killing of BinLaden and reflecting on a decade of war I am listening over and over to this proclamation by Matisyahu

Images of : National Youth Workers Convention

December 14, 2010 By Gavin Richardson

This posting originally posted at YouthWorker Movement

I had a really cool blessing at this years National Youth Worker Convention here in Nashville. I was asked to take photos for the convention, specifically the “Big Room” settings. Here’s a review of the National Youth Workers Convention, in Images. –gavin

NYWC : Reflecting on National Youth Workers Convention

November 23, 2010 By Gavin Richardson

This past weekend (and a bit of the week) was the east coast swing of the National Youth Workers Convention. This has been a staple of my life since early 2000’s. When the convention comes to Nashville I take on a bit different of a role. The role of volunteer.

I email whomever and say, ‘put me to work.’ So I’ve done things like the prayer room or labyrinth many times. This go round, Adam asked me to take photos. So off I went with my new gear set up (more on that later) to chronicle some of the event through my camera lens.

I am working on uploading all the images onto flickr to sort through. You can take a glimpse at them all.. warning: There are quite a few

The best part about NYWC is that many times it functions as a family reunion. So many of my favorite people on earth are there, working, attending, or teaching. Some even crash.. Had so many heartful, fun, and building conversations that, for that reason only, I would love for NYWC to go on and on for weeks.

Some of my favorite images from the convention that was

I’m a big contemplative type. So a stop into the Sanctuary for compline prayers was a great end to the day. Many thanks to Mike King for leading & Lilly for Design. It’s a great gift to give space.

My friend Nita, who has worked at 61st Ave UMC for as long as I can remember was brought to NYWC as special guest and “Queen” for the conference. I loved her face in this pic, it is so her. I’m actually surprised I got some good shots during this as I was pretty much in tears the whole time. She deserves something good like this more than anyone I know.

This is just a neat picture to me: 1. cause I think he’s looking at me 2. the colors are just fabulous & I don’t have any other pictures from the event that look similar than this series. 3 can’t reflect on an NYWC event without mention of the David Crowder Band

Never heard of New World Son before (which wasn’t any surprise to me since I’m so out of the CCM know). They were some high energy fools. Music was pretty good too. It was a real test to get some photos of these guys, but this was a real fun one.

The Haggards are an interesting duo. 1. I think Gayle is salt of the earth.. On stage and behind the stage, she was really gracious and sweet all around. 2. Tim has some more “unbuilding” to go. He built himself up for so many years & much of it crumbled, but there is always remnants that are still part of him that he’s got to work on. He also wants to move on, but I say, his past is what makes him human.. because before all the outing happened some 4plus years ago. I didn’t like the guy one bit as a representative of Kingdom.

We’ll wrap this posting with the closing moments of one Starfield’s songs. Endings of songs are great, the lights are moving, lots of movements & energy. I just like this one.