We had such an amazing year with worship at youth group!
Davis Pomrenke continues to do a great job providing leadership to this ministry with support from Pastor Alisha, Levi and myself. Davis is on staff with the tech department, but also has an amazing heart for worship, music, and youth. He does such a good job of providing opportunities for youth to get involved in this area. He is so patient with the students as they learn and grow in their understanding of worship and their musical skills.
We continue to invite more seasoned worship leaders from around town to come and lead worship with and for the youth on Tuesday nights. They share their story of how God called them into worship leading, how He molded and shaped them into the worship leader that they now are. It’s so awesome to hear how they got started, for a lot of them it was at youth group, and it inspires our youth to dive in and get involved.
Another concept that we’ve had a bit more time for is steady recruitment and on-boarding of youth/young adults into the bands. Davis is one of the instructors at RL Music & Worship Academy, and we’ve began a sort of informal partnership with this organization. If a youth has an interest in serving in the area of music and worship, but has no skills yet, we can point them in the right direction. We now have a more clear path of steps that they can take.
We do find that the biggest challenge is to move kids from interested in getting involved to actually joining a team. The informal partnership mentioned above helps with that, but we wanted to do more. We launched a small scholarship program where one deserving youth has their lessons paid for by the church for the year. They must have a heart to learn and grow and get involved. Maybe this will expand into something bigger?!
With the help of Davis, key volunteers like Denver Knodel, Karalee Friesen, and Rhea Nayak will setup, have a prayer time with the youth band, lead rehearsals, and lead worship at Tuesday night youth. I continue to help with the administrative side of things like; making sure resources are there for preparation, guiding and mentoring Davis and the worship leaders, and maintaining the equipment. Levi is there each Tuesday helping with the technical needs.
We have 2 full-ish worship teams on rotation, and some more acoustic style smaller teams. There have been some awesome new volunteers that have joined this year. They are in the older youth to young adult age range. It has been an amazing year of growth where both the youth and the band leading get to grow and learn about what it means to worship the one true God. There is a new depth! It is not just “let’s sing our three songs and move on”, but experiencing the things of God in a new way. The worship leaders are leading the youth into the spirit of worship and the youth are responding!
There are a few more special times of worship throughout the year including times of worship at the weekend youth retreat, and a morning that the youth team led on Sunday morning! I know this was a highlight for the youth who participated. They were so excited and it sparked a new interest and passion to serve in that way. It was also cool to see how the congregation responded to their leadership. The seniors were especially supportive and encouraging towards them. So cool!
Our youth band was also able to be involved with worship around the city. They led and participated int the Rend 21 Days of prayer that was hosted by YWAM Selah. Not only are they leading and encouraging our church, but also the city-wide church!
We would love to get more young people involved in worship! It is an awesome chance to serve and grow together, to learn some skills, and most importantly to give God the glory that He deserves.
If you know of any young people who might like to get involved, let me know!