Last Sunday night we had our second Kid’s Worship Night. I had been looking forward to this event pretty much since our last Worship Night. Back in January, we had our first Kid’s Worship Night ever. Check out my post, Worship Night for more details. Our first Worship Night could not have gone better. The kids left excited about worship, the leaders left asking when the next one would be, and the parents sent encouraging responses about the night. I quickly put our second Worship Night on the calendar for May.
My goal is to have 3-4 Worship Nights a year. It’s a chance for our kids and leaders to get out of the normal constraints of a Sunday morning service, and just spend the entire night focusing on worship. If you haven’t tried doing something like this with your kid’s ministry, I wanted to encourage you to give it a try! In my opinion, this event is one of the most fulfilling, and you will see that all your hard work was completely worth it when you see those kids grasping the concept of worshipping God.
For this Worship Night, we ended up making a few last-minute decisions that I truly believe made a difference in keeping the kids focused. On Sunday morning, our air conditioning went out in our kid’s room. Since they were unable to fix the air conditioning, we were forced to move our Worship Night into the main worship center. Unfortunately, our main worship center is much bigger than we needed for this event, and I was initially concerned that the kids would be distracted and lower energy. However, we ended up putting up pipe and drape to curtain off just the center section of the room and the front part of the stage. It turned out to be very intimate and a nice change of environment for the kids. We also ended up keeping all the kids together during the second half of the service since we had a mostly 3rd-5th grade group.
For our first Worship Night, we used the Brian Dollar curriculum which focused more on the ways we can worship. For this Worship Night, I decided to do my own thing, and we re-capped the ways can worship God, but focused on why we worship God. See below for 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
- Worship Intro Video – 1 min.
We used this awesome video I found on YouTube for a nice intro into our service.
- 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.
- Fast Worship – 8 min.
We started the night off with a couple of our kids’ favorite upbeat worship songs: Unstoppable and Nothing is Impossible.
- 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 two 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).
- New Song: Love Come Down – 4 min.
I decided it would be fun to introduce a new worship song to the kids, and they loved it. Here is a live lyric video, and check out my motions video for Love Come Down by North Point Community Church.
- Worship Lesson: Why do we Worship God? – 10 min.
I came up with a very simple lesson for the kids to take hold of and run with it. I quickly re-capped the ways we can worship God. The majority of the lesson was focused on three reasons of why we should worship God. Here are the three reasons we focused on:
1. Because of who He is.
2. Because of what He has done/does for us.
3. Because we love Him.
I used a Scripture verse to support each reason. I wanted to make the lesson very interactive to keep the kids’ attention and get them involved. For each reason, I chose a kid to come up and hold a big piece of foam board with the reason written in the middle. I took ideas from the kids and had another leader writing them all over the board while the kids were saying them. The kids had amazing answers and this form of teaching kept them involved and focused. Here is the link to the full lesson outline if you are interested: Worship Night 2 Lesson pdf
- Break into Groups – 2 min.
We were originally going to break into 2 different groups (K-2nd grade and 3rd-5th grade) for this portion of the service. For our first worship night, this made sense, but we decided to keep them all together in the end. If you have a larger group, or a wider age-span you may want to break them up for this part of the service. If you decide to break your group up, you can have one group doing live worship, and the other group doing the small group activities.
- Worship/Altar Set – 15 min.
For our worship set we chose four songs: The Stand, One Thing Remains, The Anthem, and Show Me Your Glory. We had a nice intimate worship time with a live keyboard and three live vocalists. Our worship time was planned for 15 minutes, but we actually ended up going a little longer than that. It was truly amazing to see the kids pushing deeper into worship during this time.
- Small Group Prayer Rotations – 15 min.
We set up two of our smaller classrooms for our prayer rotations. We have Apple TVs in each of these rooms so we created a playlist of worship songs to have running in the background of the rooms to continue the atmosphere of worship.
Rotation 1 – Prayer Art: We covered tables in black butcher paper, put neon markers on the tables, and encouraged the kids to draw things/people/situations they would like to pray about.
Rotation 2 – Bible/Reflection: We provided Bibles on the tables for the kids, and a sheet of paper with lists of Scripture passages for them to look up and space for writing their prayers and reflections on the Scriptures they have read. Here is the link to the Bible/Reflection pages: Worship Night Bible/Prayer Journal We split our kids into a boys group and a girls group and each group went to a room for about 7 minutes and then switched. The kids got so into the small group activities that they ended up staying in the rooms for about 30 minutes.
- Challenge Questions (optional) – 3 min
We didn’t actually end up getting to these, but here they are if you would like to use them at the end of your service.
1. What is worship in your own words?
2. Give an example of a way we can worship?
3. What is 1 reason we should worship God?
4. Describe God in one word.
5. What is your favorite way to worship God?
I hope that this post will inspire you to get a Worship Night together for your kids. I promise, you will not regret it. I would say without a doubt that the two Worship Nights we have done have been our most successful events overall this year. I am not talking about the amount of kids who came out, but about the difference these events made in our kids’ lives. Here is the full Planning Center Schedule: Worship Night 2 PC Schedule. Let me know if you are planning a Worship Night for your kids. I would love to hear how it goes.