As the worship team, our job is to lead, inspire, and guide people to and through a worshipful experience with God. That’s a huge role. How can we create a culture of worship in our churches? This post is part of the “Culture of Worship Blog Series”, aiming to answer that very question.

Many churches are introducing modern styles by actually creating two separate services with different styles; a traditional service and a contemporary service. This is not wrong, but I question its motive and effectiveness. With this model the older generation cannot benefit the younger! Ross Parsley of New Life Church (Colorado Springs) has a great equation for a healthy church:

(Wisdom and Maturity of Age) + (Energy and Passion of Young) = VIBRANT CHURCH

If we separate the younger and older generations, the next generation will make the same mistakes as the previous generation. What sense would that make?

It’s like the family dinner table. The whole family gathers together – mom, dad, grandma, and little junior. There is time when the adults and kids are separated doing their own thing – but when the come together for the meal, everyone is sitting together. The children dominate the culture of the family dinner table – there’s no way around it. Adults spend their time telling the kids, “Don’t stick peas up your nose” and “Stay in your chair.” And the teenagers need to respect that Grandma is sitting at the table as well. It’s the same way for the “Family Worship Table.” Everyone comes together.

So how do we create a “Family Worship Table” in our churches?

Let me first say that many churches claim to have “multigenerational worship” when in reality they have TWO separate styles or services. That’s bi-generational, not multigenerational. In my perspective, for worship to be multigenerational it requires integration (everyone sitting together at the same table).

The key here is blended worship. When I say “blended worship” let me be clear – I AM NOT TALKING ABOUT INTEGRATING HYMNS AND MODERN CHORUSES. If you want to truly have multigenerational worship – you must do blended worship with people, not songs. What songs you choose are irrelevant in this discussion. Let me share what I mean.

What do people see when they look at your stage? Take a mental picture of your worship team. Who is on it? Everyone under 25? Everyone over 40? In my opinion, the healthiest church will have a worship team with mixed ages. When people look at your stage they should see a diverse team, representing and leading the congregation. Let’s get the 65 year old tenor standing next to a 14 year old guitar player leading together. That’s multigenerational. (Multi-racial is accomplished the same way – representing your target area’s demographic).

This is not an easy thing to accomplish. I don’t mean to make it sound like a piece of cake. It’s hard work getting a 19 year old and a 50 year old to connect together. But it can be done. I’ll try to explain how in the next post.