Advice on All-Age Services

Sometimes it's good to share your experiences. For example, any young and/or inexperienced preacher, first setting out on life, might benefit from the words of advice that a seasoned worship leader can provide. And today I thought I'd let you have the benefit of my advice on the leading of All-Age Worship. If you've just received your first invitation to lead such a service, or you've just volunteered to start one up when the vicar's away/at the other church/moved on/dead, these are the things you need to know.

Run and hide. This is the best advice I can give you. If you heed this advice, you won't need to read any further. However if you don't, read on. And may God have mercy on your self-esteem.


Don't call it a "Family Service". Very important, this. There are people in your church - and you probably know who they are - who are professionally engaged in being offended on the behalf of others. The term "Family Service" will always set their antennae twitching and they will ask what you have against people that don't live in a traditional family. By the time that you've explained that everybody is part of God's Family (in which case, one might ask, why does one need a special service?) you might as well give up and just call it All-Age.

Don't call it a "Children's Service".  No adults will turn up - as clearly it's not for them - and no children will turn up - as they'll expect to be patronised.

Children are like Amazonian frogs. The smaller ones are often surprisingly deadly.

Aim your talk at the average theological competence of a 10-year-old. And some of the adults might know what you're talking about, for a change.

Don't use Flannelgraph. Not unless you live in 1952, or Devon. If you don't know what Flannelgraph is, don't even Google it. Frankly, just forget I even mentioned it.

Don't use crude literalism - such as implying that God lives in space, or heaven is on a cloud. Save that for when you're preaching to the adults.

Don't use Powerpoint unless you can use Powerpoint. There's nothing worse for a congregation than spending an hour or so looking at the back of the leader's head, while s/he reads off a screen. Depending on the leader's face, obviously.

There's a time limit on asking the congregation what's going to happen in a couple of weeks / just happened when it's Christmas.  By the time you reach Easter, you should barely mention Christmas at all.

Don't use any of the readings in Acts that mention Circumcision. It only takes one voice from the floor to ask "what's that, then?" and you're going to have a tough time no matter what you do.

Avoid any mention of  Biblical Criticism. Let's face it, you only get it wrong and embarrass yourself when you've only got adults in the congregation. The last thing you want is any children ridiculing the half-baked ideas you only partly digested on your preaching course.

Don't dress up as a Clown. Look, I know you've registered all that stuff about being "fools for Christ." But you wouldn't arrange a funeral with a hearse where the wheels fell off, would you? No matter how informal you want to be, you're meant to be helping people to touch the infinite, and dressing as Coco is not going to help. There's about two people in the world that can carry it off, and you're neither of them. And besides, clowns terrify me.

Don't throw in references to "Snoop Dogg" or "Grandmaster Flash". You won't show you're down with the kids.

Make sure that there will actually be children. I remember the day a visiting preacher turned up at our old Extremely Primitive Methodist Church to discover that all the children had gone away to camp on the weekend of the All Age service. The sight of a score of octogenarians doing the actions to "If I were a butterfly" will live for me forever.

Don't quote Karl Barth in the original. Some children learn real German at school, and may correct your translation or accent.

Children can be surprisingly good with silence, and contemplative aids such as icons. But be careful - they can terrify the adults. Especially the silence. Scary stuff, silence. You never know what you might hear.