Eric L. Mathis - Worship with Teenagers: Adolescent Spirituality and Congregational Practice

Kenda Creasy Dean

I spent the summer of my sixteenth year trying to make my churchs worship look more like camp. The reason was screamingly obvious (to me): worship in my congregation felt like a flat Sprite, while worship at camp felt fizzy and alive, which made Jesus feel alive as well. Obviously (I surmised), my church was doing it wrong. Clearly, they needed my help.

Trying to discern just what made worship alivewhat makes you sure God is in the houseturned out to be trickier. Was it the singing? (Strong chance, but soaring songs from camp sounded cheesy in the sanctuary.) Was it the peer-led service or the youth-friendly sermon? (Possibly, but back home Youth Sunday came up only once a year.) Was it the Communion liturgy, when teary young people streamed forward to receive the elements from peers and counselors who meted out love and affirmation along with bread and cup? (Likely; sacraments seemed holy in both contexts, but our congregation only celebrated sacraments a few times a year.) At camp, the unapologetic emotion, the palpable sense of divine connection, the peer leadership, the embodied physicality, the participative spiritall were at play. I left camp worship believing God was afoot. I left church worship convinced that God was at camp.

I was lucky to attend a small, struggling congregation, one of those churches where you need everyone with a pulse to pitch in or the whole thing falls apart. So youth participation in worship was not revolutionary; teens sang, read Scripture, prayed, played instruments, served as greeters, lit the candles (I didnt know what an acolyte was until seminary), and occasionally shared relevant announcements or experiences. The congregation received our offerings with unabashed joy-joy-joy-joy down in their hearts. Most people in the pews were retired (whatever that means if youre a farmer), but they knew us by name, asked about our school activities when the service ended, and let us call them Ed and Marcia . Bob Whiteside doled out Tootsie Rolls after every service as a reward for getting through it.

Nothing much came of my worship reform summer save for some bad guitar playing on my part. I still wanted to put a fork in my eye on most Sunday mornings. I counted ceiling tiles, stared at the stained glass, and practiced crossing my eyes slightly to take in the altar candles (the blurry flames seemed more magical). I became ridiculously well acquainted with the hymnal since it was the only reading material in the pew other than a Bible. Sermons evaporated from memory before the benediction landed. Baptism and Communion Sundays were the exceptions; these mysteries needed no commentary. As babies wailed, resisting the water, grace sank into them (and me) unbidden. As the Communion elements entered my digestive tract, bread and juice, body and blood, girl and God all became one mysterious entanglement.

Something took.

This book is not about doing worship wrongor right. It is about the multiplicity of ways we invite young people into worship (I had never counted how many different ways we do this until now) and what is at stake in each of them. Eric Mathis has written a book unlike any I have read in youth ministry. He explores, with impressive depth and scope, the various ways young people worship and how these experiences both reflect and shape their faith and lives. He shows how sticky wickets (like emotions) can also be holy portals, and he never once blames youth for shallow worship. In fact, he avoids judgment altogether; after all, todays youth werent even born during the worship wars of the 1990s. He does all this with disarming honesty and joyhallmarks of his character as well as his writing.