Worship with Children: Agentive Participation in Dutch Protestant Contexts

Children take part in liturgical-ritual activities. In Sunday services, children’s church, Sunday school, and special services, children sit in pews, respond to Bible stories, and perform liturgical actions like singing in a choir, welcoming people, saying a prayer, or participating in the Lord’s Supper. Based on participant observations and interviews, this book describes and analyzes the variety of worship practices with children in Dutch Protestant contexts. A central concern is how people adapt worship to suit children and how children contribute to worship. The conclusions show children as agentive participants in worship. In addition, the conclusions nuance the debate on intergenerational worship, highlight the importance of spirituality for both adults and children, and explore how the material environment influences worship. This practical theological research gives a better understanding of Dutch Protestant liturgical rituals with children and their theological significance.

Ministry and Worship with Children among Churches of Christ in the United States: A Quantitative and Qualitative Investigation

Why do congregations have separate children’s worship instead of intergenerational worship? What connections do such practices have with the presence and work of a children’s minister? Is separate worship with children more common in certain kinds of congregations within Churches of Christ? In a mixed-methods study, we found trends between congregational demographics and worship practices. Our qualitative research revealed that children’s ministers often consider worship choices to be rooted in pragmatic decisions and not theological imperatives.

Deconstructing Ideals of Worship with Children

In most congregations, children participate in worship in various ways. In this article we pose the question: how can we describe and understand the variety in practices of worship with children? The case we consider is the Protestant context in the Netherlands. Archival research shows that since the introduction of differentiated worship for children, tension has arisen between worship with the entire congregation and worship aimed specifically at children. This tension between intergenerational worship and target-group worship persists; while most liturgists and youth work professionals argue for intergenerational worship, some defend the merits of target-group worship. However, in this ethnographic research we indicate that the portrayal of intergenerational worship as the ideal, and target-group worship as its opposite, or vice versa, leaves much of the normativity in worship with children hidden. We, therefore, deconstruct ideals of worship with children to open up other ways of understanding the variety of worship with children. In doing so, we argue that pedagogical and theological normativity influence worship practices in complex ways. Future research may advance this investigation by focusing on adults’ and children’s roles in shaping worship practices and exploring the theological implications of these practices in more depth and detail.