Teen Brains and Worship Times

My friend Mark in Texas emailed yesterday asking what the optimal brain-based time for worship would be for families with children and teens. He currently has an 8:30 service, and 9:30 Sunday School hour, and an 10:30 worship. Here's my answer - with a comment on how to do teen friendly worship in an activist, engaging method:

Dear Mark,

The answer all depends on if you want the teens awake and alert during your education hour or not, and if you want an engaged congregation wrestling with texts, doing pastoral care while learning, and helping create the closing of the worship (rather than spectators watching your show).

If I were to design the optimal worship setting for families, it wouldn’t ever start until after 10:15, and it would feed them brain food, and it would include modeling “highs and lows” every week in an intergenerational surrogate adoptive faith family.

Here’s the timing argument:

According to Barb Strauch, the science editor of Time, in her book “The Primal Teen”,

The neurotransmitter melatonin that induces sleep does not kick in to the teenaged brain until about 10:30 at night… and it still is present in the brain until about 10:30 in the morning – and later during the winter in northern climes when the sun doesn’t rise until later.

Call me crazy, but I actually like to have awake kids in my classrooms.

Young families can do just fine at 9, but if you want to optimize the time with the tweens and teens, you don’t start any active learning until they are actually awake.

Soooo… you might want to consider a schedule that looks like this:

8:30 – 9:30 Traditional Worship
Leave this alone and keep your older folks happy (why mess with them?)

9:45 – 10:15 Adult Ed, Fellowship, live music and Brain Food
Want to feed the brain the chemicals it needs to be ready for learning? A meal that looks a lot like a European breakfast is your best bet. Hard boiled eggs, whole grain bread, fresh jam, whole milk, cheese, lean meats, tea) Read Eric Jensen’s “Brain Based Learning” – Chapter 6)

10:15 – 11:45 Blurred Family Education/Worship (Edu-Worship)

Don't just change the time of worship and expect it to magically appeal to tweens and teens. Change the type of worship to include them in a personal way. Here's my favorite model:

 1. Opening (15 minutes)

Music/Theme Unveiling/Learning Game on the theme in teams while people are still eating and talking. Could you start in the fellowship hall and move into the sanctuary? 

 2. Thematic Worship (25-30 minutes)

With energy music, this week’s theme song, the theme intro, art, a life-line (faith story on the theme), children’s sermon using the art the children did last week, drama on the theme, and an open bible expository style preaching where they actually highlight the key passage for the day in their bibles and learn it in song and sign language

 3. Small Group Time (20-25 minutes)

Share highs and lows, reread the text for the day, talk about how it relates to your highs and lows, pray together (and collect prayers for the closing) and bless one another. In Bible Song, they also make art together to bring to the closing.

 4. Closing (15-20 minutes)

Return when the theme song kicks in and invite every group to share something they learned today, some art they created today, plus a prayer to add to the closing. Sacraments may be done at this time and offering taken, too.

So, there you have it. You simply asked for times. You got a little more. Take the times seriously, but also the brain food, and the interaction with this activist model, and the parent/teen conversations, pastoral care, and action. (Liturgy means "the action of the people").

This is a system's approach to a system's problem.

Why would we do anything less with something so important?

Comments

[Angie]

Rich is right--I'd have them arrive at 10:15 and have them be greeted right away by peers/families. Give them food and drink and a question of the day to engage them with other families while music is playing in the background. Worship starts at 10:30, kids write their own prayers, families share their highs/lows, art work that they create is incorporated into the service, and time is spent not only giving information but processing information, too. Encourage doodling. Keep offering mixers and opportunities to share talents and thoughts. I'm just back from a week-long brain workshop...this is all pretty fresh in my mind!