4 Opportunities for All-Age Worship
Vision and invitation for church leaders planning their ministry year
“Worship is no longer worship when it reflects the culture around us more than the Christ within us.”
A. W. Tozer
Several years ago, I had the chance to connect with Nick Drake and learn from him about All-Age worship, or what they call, “Worship for Everyone.”
It’s an approach to thinking about worship gatherings that isn’t “for kids” but is intentional about engaging with every age and stage of life.
Since then, I’ve experimented with one-off Sundays where we did not have regular kids’ ministry, first when I was a worship pastor, and now, pastoring a church myself.
This 2025 calendar year has been the first year where we’ve intentionally committed to all-age worship on a regular basis, and it has been PHENOMENAL.
I don’t use that word lightly, so I’d like to explain why I say this, and then, if you have some input in your church into worship calendar planning, I’d like to invite you to consider four opportunities for your church to engage in All-Age Worship this next ministry year.
Why We Need All-Age Worship
We have had two of our four all-age worship gatherings that will occur in 2025, and they’ve been two of the most impactful and powerful services in our church. But first, a little bit of the philosophy behind why we started doing this.
As I’ve been learning more and more about how our cultural assumptions frame our Christian experience, one concept that has stood out to me is just how commodified and consumer-minded our society has become.
We have niche places and spaces for every interest and age, and stage in life. There is nothing in and of itself about this that is bad, but something I’m noticing is how we live on a kind of ‘social conveyor belt’. At least in the suburban communities in which I have pastored.
Here’s what I mean:
You are born and within a few years enter the school system, one grade after another, and possibly go to college or get a job.
If you graduate from college, you then get a job, move into an up-and-coming neighborhood in a relatively urban location. Life is fun and free (not literally free, it’s crazy expensive, but you’ve got a good job and surround yourself with similar people).
Eventually, you meet that special someone and share life in that fun urban location a little longer before marrying and finding a place in the suburban sprawl to start a family in a good school district.
You spend those suburban, parenting years being heavily involved in kids’ sports, PTA meetings, and college preparation courses. At some point, your little ones are not so little, and they venture off on their own to one degree or another.
You then enter a stage of life where the conveyor belt keeps moving, but you are less socially tied into the surrounding community. As one of my congregants of adult children put it, “Once our kids were out of the school system, we lost touch with what was going on in this town.”
Eventually, the ‘social conveyor belt’ moves so far from most of what society is doing, that one begins to feel irrelevant to what is happening around them; another feeling also expressed to me by another in our community over 70.
Why does this happen?
I think much of this is the result of the Industrial Revolution, in which a greater dependence upon skilled use of machinery became critical to one’s survival in society, as opposed to the previous agricultural emphasis in which tight-knit communities lived a more cyclical life.
With the greater dependence on using complex machines came the need to continually master the skills necessary to operate them in an ever-changing technological world, and the increased dangers of not using the machines properly.
This created three distinct groups of people based on age:
- Childhood - the stage before the ability to use this machinery safely (though child labor certainly ignored this).
- Adulthood - the stage when one is competent enough to safely and effectively use the machines of the Industrial Revolution
- Old-Age - the stage at which one was no longer able to keep up with the demands of the machines or could not learn how to use the latest technology
This is a bit of an oversimplification, but it is true to the broad historical/cultural reality that has taken place across the industrialized world.
Even though we do not work in factories to the same extent today, we still see and live with the effects of this, as shown in the ‘social conveyor belt’ to which I described above.
This has led to a framework for society where the middle stage of life is the “relevant” stage of life for the purposes of production and utility. (It’s when we are most useful.)
The early stage is for developing future adults who can contribute well and sometimes view children as an investment to protect for the future.
And the final stage, honestly, I don’t think most of us know what to do with “them…”
When the church gathers, we are subject to this same cultural framework:
The children go off into their own space, teenagers find solace in their independence, and the adults are all together to learn and hear the bible preached, and the elders among us are often tolerated, but not considered in the structure of the service or sought out for voice.
I just want to insert here that it is helpful and appropriate to have age and stage-specific space to wrestle with the unique challenges each phase of life in our culture presents as we follow Jesus.
But we’ve gone overboard, creating a consumeristic approach to church where we will choose to leave a church (especially in the suburbs) if they don’t have “programs for our kids”.
This will sound a little blunt and feisty, but I think that it is almost always a bad reason to leave a church. But I digress…
Why Has All-Age Worship Been ‘Phenomenal’?
The Church, the people of Jesus marked by the Spirit, are of a different breed than this cultural framework leads us to believe. As Joel prophesied and Peter affirmed, the Spirit is poured out on “young and old...”
We often read this in the sense that says, “we each get the Spirit…separately.” But that ignores the unifying principle at work through God’s Spirit. We are not alone in our filling of the Spirit; we are brought close and unified through the Spirit as God fills young and old together.
What all-age worship does is help disrupt the assumptions that say “we are formed separately because our seasons of life are irrelevant to each other,” and leads us into an attentiveness to the unifying power of the Spirit already at work among our community.
All-Age Worship helps those of us who are older and more experienced in our faith live obediently to the words of the Psalmist, such as,
“What we have heard and learned that which our ancestors have told us— we will not hide from their descendants. We will tell the next generation about the Lord’s praiseworthy acts, about his strength and the amazing things he has done.” (Psalm 78:3-4)
All-Age worship helps children learn to live into the calling of Psalm 8:2:
“From the mouths of children and nursing babies you have ordained praise on account of your adversaries, so that you might put an end to the vindictive enemy.”
Which Jesus himself affirmed as the calling of Children in Matthew 21:12-17
This passage in Matthew, incidentally, is when Jesus clears the commodification of worship out of the temple. I don’t think it is an accident on Matthew’s part that the removal of this commodification from God’s house coincided with the children’s worship!
We are not commodities to be plugged into various church programs.
We are not to be subject to the powerful forces of the market and commodification in our post-industrial society - in fact, this is exactly what All-Age worship disrupts.
It brings us ALL together as one people in God’s presence to enjoy God’s presence, and the children often help lead the way!
Further, All-Age Worship helps all of us become obedient to the words of Psalm 145:3-4:
“The Lord is great and certainly worthy of praise! No one can fathom his greatness! One generation will praise your deeds to another and tell about your mighty acts!”
As I said at the beginning, the space we’ve created for all-age worship in our church has been nothing short of phenomenal.
I find these Sundays, there is a different kind of joy in the room as we intentionally seek to proclaim the Lord’s greatness “one generation to another.”
The children remind the adults, the adults remind the children, the oldest among us remind us of out of their depths of experience that God is faithful beyond the highs and lows of life.
The other thing that happens is I’m forced to preach VERY differently. I’m not doing a “kids’ sermon”. But I am crafting a message that is engaging for all ages. Which means I have to distill the core message or truth in the text and find creative ways to communicate.
This has led to some of the most enthusiastic feedback I’ve received all year. “That sermon was powerful” is a common theme I hear after all-age worship gatherings.
Because I don’t try to overcomplicate things but communicate the Good News of Jesus in a meaningful way to our whole congregation, the Word of God has an impact on people’s lives far beyond what my own intelligence and insight could produce. Far beyond my most clever wordsmithing.
It is a work of the Spirit, through the Word.
Four Opportunities For All-Age Worship
I hope I’ve painted a bit of a picture of how important All-Age Worship is for our discipleship in the modern world.
How do we plan for it?
This next year presents one of the easiest on-ramps ever to try it out in your church.
Post-Easter, usually Late April through June, is when we are in the process of ministry planning for the September-August ministry calendar in our church.
We just finalized the calendar last week, including when our All-Age Worship gatherings will be happening.
Every year, we plan to do our All-Age worship gatherings whenever there is a fifth Sunday, which happens four times each year.
This year, those fifth Sundays fall on some days that might make it the best year to try this for the first time.
1. November 30, 2025 - First Sunday of Advent
Not many in my evangelical circles really understand Advent, but what a great opportunity to communicate its significance in simple terms, not to mention you have a built-in object lesson with the candles and can easily captivate a child’s attention, thinking about Christmas!
2. March 29, 2026 - Palm Sunday
In addition to the powerful quotation of Psalm 8:2 that Jesus makes after riding in on a donkey and clearing the temple, the use of real palms can be a helpful tool to engage children on the day with the story and the worship at hand.
3. May 31 - Trinity Sunday
There is no more central reality for Christians than who God is as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Yet it does not tend to be discussed very often. This provides a helpful way to teach about who God is without overcomplicating it - just make sure your object lesson doesn’t border on modalism! :)
4. August 31 - Last Sunday of the Summer
I realize some kids in the States go back to school earlier than this, so it isn’t true across the board, but in the Northeast, school is often still out until after Labor Day. This is usually a low-attendance Sunday and provides a sometimes welcome reprieve for the kids' ministry volunteers to not be scheduled an additional Sunday, but also allows for some really creative engagement in the summertime when people might have more time to help plan and be involved.
A few things to keep in mind when planning all-age worship…
Communicate Vision - before, during, and after
This can be as simple as the couple of weeks leading up to it, reminding people what you are doing, that it isn’t a “Sunday off” but part of how we learn to be the family of Jesus together.
Kick off the gathering by reminding people of the importance of worshipping together and learning together across generational lines.
Debrief and celebrate it! Share stories of how God has spoken or met people through those gatherings.
Do It As A Team
The theme of our most recent All-Age Gathering was the Fruit of the Spirit, so I invited a couple of crafty/creative types from our kids’ ministry team to help me plan around the big idea: “When we’re close to the Holy Spirit, God grows the life of Jesus in us.”
The result was one of our over 60 congregants using their artistic gifts and art degree that they hadn’t utilized in years! What a gift to the whole church!
Choose Engaging Songs
Keep it light and focus on the big picture of the good news of Jesus and praising God
Keep It Simple
The theme and the message need to be simple - (I’ll practice what I preach and leave it at that)
I think this year presents a unique on-ramp for your church to try out All-Age worship, as many of the Sundays have some built-in themes ready to assist you.
I would love to hear if you try this and what other thoughts and questions you might have.
Have fun!