A few months ago God placed on my heart the idea of doing a worship event for kids. I didn’t want it to be the kids singing songs at the altar for a couple of hours, but I wanted kids to learn how and why we do what we do in worship, while still being excited about worshipping God. Often times we tell kids things like, “Let’s worship,” “Tell your friends about Jesus,” or “Pray every day,” but we tend to neglect telling them why they should do those things, and most importantly how they should go about accomplishing them.
We had our first Worship Night on January 18th and I believe it was a total success. The event was completely free for kids, K-5th grade, and we chose to do it on the same night as our adult Home Groups to make it convenient for parents to drop off their kids on the way to their Home Group and pick them up on the way home. For this first Worship Night, I decided to use Brian Dollar’s digital download Worship Curriculum as a starting point for making my service. Here is a basic outline of what our service looked like.
Pre-Service
- Drop-off – 4-5 pm
During drop-off time we had our video game stations out, craft and game tables, and outdoor games/activities available for the kids to choose from.
- Dinner – 5-5:30 pm
We simply provided pizza and drinks for the kids. I would suggest offering better pizza choices and of course some sodas with plenty of caffeine for your teen and adult leaders who have given their time for the evening.
Service – 5:30-6:45 pm
- Welcome – 3 min.
Welcome the kids, introduce the topic of worship, begin to set the tone for the night of focusing on spending time with God through worship.
- Intro Video – 3 min.
Brian Dollar’s curriculum comes with this video. It is great for getting the kids attention and introducing the topic of the sermon.
- Fast Worship – 8 min.
We started the service off with a couple of our kids’ favorite fast worship songs: Unstoppable by TobyMac and God’s Not Dead by Newsboys.
- Game: Don’t Forget the Lyrics – Worship Edition – 5 min.
For this game, I just took the idea from the show and used songs we use in Kid’s Church for worship. We picked 2 kids for each round and had them stand on either side of the buzzer stand. The song would play, and when the music stopped the first kid to buzz in and finish the lyrics won the round. We just picked new kids for each round. (kids love karaoke games)
- Transition Song – 4 min.
I chose the song Majestic because it is a great transition song. It is fast enough to have actions, but slow enough that it doesn’t get the kids to rowdy! (The kids were actually upset that we didn’t continue doing worship at this point!)
- Worship Skit – 5 min.
We used the skit from Brian Dollar’s curriculum to lead into my lesson. I chose to keep Wacky Wally (the character from the skit) out for the lesson to help me by acting things out and throwing prizes out to the kids!
- Worship Lesson – 7 min.
I used Brian Dollar’s lesson from the curriculum. It mostly focuses on HOW to worship, so I added some of my own thoughts and Scripture on WHY we should worship God too! I also made sure to have a lot of dialogue going with the kids to keep them engaged. I wanted it to be more like a conversation than just a straight up sermon.
- Break into Small Groups – 2 min.
At this point in the service, I wanted to be able to focus the activities and worship on the different age levels. We broke our group into K-2nd graders and 3rd-5th graders. We had 2 Rotations for the kids to go through, and each one would look different for each age group. I’ve attached a PDF of the small group rotations for more detail.
- Challenge Questions (optional):
We had a few challenge questions to do with the kids following the Sundae Bar. Here are those optional Challenge Questions:
1. What is worship
2. Give an example of a way we can worship.
3. True or False: Singing is the best way to worship God.
4. Why should we worship God?
5. What is your favorite way to worship God?
I hope that this outline will give you a jump start to planning your own Kids’ Worship Night! We didn’t follow our schedule to a T, but the event was awesome. Our kids left excited about worship and our leaders left saying things like, “All worship nights should be like this!” and “When is our next Kid’s Worship Night?” Make it your own, have fun with it, and be flexible. You won’t regret taking the time and effort to make this event happen for the kids in your church! For those who are interested in more details, I’ve attached my Planning Center plan as well as my small group PDF so you can see a breakdown of all the details.