Liturgical Gift or Theological Burden? Teenagers and Ecumenical Liturgical Exchange Events

Abstract

Assumptions about the preferences of teenagers in corporate worship regarding format, style, musical selections, and other experiences abound. Recognizing that teenagers are far from homogenous, we sought to listen deeply to how they process and define their experiences of worship, particularly through the lens of encountering liturgical difference. Our research team spent one week with approximately 35 highly religious, majority-Evangelical teenagers at Animate 2023 in Birmingham, Alabama—a summer camp with an emphasis in worship and the arts. Based on data from individual interviews and focus groups, this paper articulates some of our findings—namely that these highly devoted teenage worshipers demonstrate liturgical curiosity, delight in their own agency, and often desire to adopt practices that are foreign to them, even when some of those elements are deemed “weird”. The lived experiences of young people are often missing from conversations about their liturgical practices in both the Church and academy. While this study is not generalizable, it offers a micro glimpse into one worship arts camp, aiming to provide tangible data points to address this lacuna.

1. Introduction

Most churches want young people in their congregations. Pastors and lay leaders alike offer no shortage of theories for what it takes to engage young people in their worship gatherings and ministry activities. One of these assumptions—with a strong historical trajectory in the secondary literature—contends that a key means of engaging youth in the church is through musical practice, particularly music that reflects their own popular musical sensibilities, something “contemporary” (Eskridge 2013; Lim and Ruth 2022; Payne 2024).

Although well-intentioned, many of these theories are detached from the lived experiences of young people. The young people with whom we work at the Center for Worship and the Arts at Samford University regularly counter the view that sees them as a liturgical monolith. Exclusively “contemporary” expressions of corporate worship do not universally align with what they perceive to centrally animate their worship and faith. At the same time, many remain reluctant to consider alternative liturgical models. Furthermore, we have observed how the theories themselves sometimes limit ministry leaders’ imaginative capacity to offer young people the space to experience corporate worship differently.

The site for this study is Animate, a week-long intergenerational summer camp in worship and the arts that has been the flagship program for the Center for Worship and the Arts since 2014. In its external communications, Animate presents similarly to other Christian summer programs in worship in the arts: a week-long camp focused on training young leaders of worship. Internally, however, the Animate philosophy is intentional about exposing students to diverse forms and traditions of daily corporate worship and related programming. When students sign up for Animate—and more often, when parents or church leaders sign them up—they are not aware of Animate’s internal philosophy. Thus, the research site of Animate is part and parcel of the method, as this study centers on introducing a group of devoted, young worshipers to practices of liturgical difference and then aims to listen deeply to their reflections on those experiences.

In 2023, researchers spent five days with camp participants to observe and listen to how teenagers process and define their experiences of participating and leading in varied practices of public worship. We discovered that these highly devoted teenage worshipers demonstrate liturgical curiosity, delight in their own agency, and often appreciate practices that are foreign to them—all in ways that seem to defy monolithic assumptions made about the liturgical affinities of the group. While our research does not make generalizable conclusions, we contend that, for these students, the Animate camp was simultaneously a liturgical gift and a theological burden. This study therefore offers an important micro-view of teenagers and their experience of liturgical difference, providing data and interpretive considerations that address important gaps in the scholarship on youth and Christian worship.

2. Theoretical Framework and Methodological Context

This project is situated within larger conversations on youth and religion, including the landmark National Study of Youth and Religion (NSYR 2001–2013) and recent reports on Generation Z religiosity (Springtide Research Institute 2023). Against the backdrop of declining religious participation in North American contexts, particularly by its youngest cohorts (Voas and Chaves 2016), the existing literature in academic and popular spheres presents numerous theoretical interventions for youth engagement. However, there is a dearth of scholarship regarding young people’s phenomenological experiences of various liturgical forms, settings, and musical practices. This study seeks to amplify the often-marginalized perspectives of young people in worship, addressing a critical lacuna in qualitative approaches to liturgical studies.

Methodologically, this research most specifically aligns with Emery-Wright’s UK-based qualitative study of youth worship practices, which positions young people as active co-constructors of liturgical meaning rather than passive subjects (Emery-Wright 2012). By rejecting monolithic conceptualizations of youth liturgical experience, our study foregrounds the nuanced, contextually embedded articulations of teenage participants. The research design intentionally exposes participants to liturgical diversity and facilitates collaborative worship leadership through artistic contributions, thereby operationalizing a participatory epistemological framework. In keeping with Emery-Wright’s method, we contend that deep listening and the inclusion of teenagers in the context of planning, leading, and participating in public worship is an important mechanism to better understanding their faith and liturgical impulses.

Our project is also informed by discourse in youth ministry studies regarding intergenerational and age-specific worship contexts. Some scholars argue for generational-specific liturgical contextualization, especially contexts that more readily engage popular culture (Hall 2003; Cray 2003), while others prioritize intergenerational ecclesiastical assemblies as necessary theological expressions of Christian unity (DeVries 2004; Harkness 2012; Allen et al. 2023) and an important mechanism for fostering a young faith that will last into adulthood (Powell et al. 2012; FYI 2011). Our project navigates beyond this tension, exploring a more nuanced interpretive space that recognizes both the unique agential capacities of young worshipers and the complex dynamics of participating in intergenerational worship.

Three additional studies offer important interpretive claims that inform our project. First, emerging from the qualitative practical–theological work of the Research Centre for Youth, Church and Culture (OJKC), Sonnenberg understands youth liturgical participation to be a site of identity negotiation (Sonnenberg 2014; Sonnenberg and Barnard 2015). Similarly, our study further interrogates how creative contributions serve as hermeneutical keys to understanding emergent faith identities and liturgical theologies (Sonnenberg and Barnard 2015). Second, Lynn Davidmans’ sociological study of Ex-Hasidic Jews highlights the importance of the embodiment and the performance of identity in making theoretical claims (Davidman 2015). While her study does not offer generalizable claims of Ex-Hasidic Jews, the embodied stories she gathered in her research necessarily inform larger categories of religion, culture, gender, and community. Given our small sample size, our study at Animate does not seek to make generalizable claims about teenagers and worship, but it offers data points and interpretive considerations related to adolescent spirituality, difference, agency, and intergenerational worship.

A third study helps us understand research sites themselves as generative settings for qualitative work. Sorenson regards faith-based summer camps as transformative “faith-forming ecologies”. Therein, he explores how such liminal spaces might generate novel insights into youth religious experience and formation (Sorenson 2021). In a similar vein, the Animate camp—as described below—forms the conditions central to obtaining novel insights about young people, liturgical participation, and liturgical difference.

3. Research Site and Method of Investigation

3.1. Animate at Samford University

The Center for Worship and the Arts, housed in the School of the Arts at Samford University, hosts Animate annually each June. Due to the nature of the university’s student and alumni constituency, as well as its ecclesial connections, the Center especially works with students, pastors, and lay leaders who identify as, or are sympathetic to, Evangelical Christianity and are often Southern Baptist. Despite our majority constituency, the Center is an ecumenical organization, engaging congregations across Protestantism, as evidenced in this study. The principal investigators in this study also serve as directors of the Center.

The Center is not alone in its focused summer programming on young people and worship (Mathis 2022). As a result of the generosity of Lilly Endowment, Inc., particularly through a program which seeks to strengthen congregational ministry through youth-led initiatives, we have collaborated with three other universities on projects dedicated to young people, public worship, and its leadership: Worship Arts Lab at Azusa Pacific University, Worship Lab at Baylor University, and The Leitourgia Project at Seattle Pacific University. Additionally, the Awakening Camp at Hope College was a previous recipient of this same program line and continues to offer a worship and the arts camp. These camps, along with other university, denominational, and parachurch organizations tend to focus on musical worship leadership.

Animate’s programming—the locus of this study—invites teenagers, emerging adults, and adult mentors to participate in intentionally diverse traditions of public worship throughout the week across the art forms (Mathis 2022). While attention to musical diversity is most obvious across four distinct services, attention to other diverse forms is included through worship gatherings designed to emulate the essentials of a particular liturgical tradition, including the contemporary worship tradition, the reformed tradition, the prayer book tradition, and the word and table tradition. These traditions were chosen to allow for flexibility in worship planning, incorporating multiple arts forms and music styles, and because they are representative of the various churches that engage with the Center for Worship and the Arts.

Through a pedagogical model loosely adapted from the disciplines of practical theology and youth ministry studies (Mathis 2022), participants are introduced to the liturgical diversity they will experience through the week at the camp’s opening, an effort to prepare them for what they will later experience and then reflect on through varied and related programming in small groups, workshops, and seminars. In the contemporary worship gathering, Animate worship designs prioritize a celebratory music and word-centered service, with particular attention to the music’s “flow” (Lim and Ruth 2017). In the reformed service, designers privilege the psalms, both sung and spoken, with additional focus on corporate confession and lament. Following a prayer book-based tradition, the third gathering employs a scripted and printed worship guide, including responsorial prayer forms and several Scripture lessons, and engages worshipers through choral and organ-led musical forms. The fourth gathering centers on a celebration of the Lord’s Table, with musical and artistic forms that especially convey Christian worship’s transcultural and cross-cultural dynamics.

The week builds up to the camp’s “Festival of Worship”, a series of fifteen-minute worship gatherings designed, facilitated, and led by small groups of teens who have been working and learning alongside one another throughout the week. On the day of the festival, small groups select a (literal) toolbox. Each kit is different, but all contain a Scripture-based worship theme, a song book, prayer resources, and other tangible and artistic materials they can incorporate into their service. All these resources intentionally reflect the liturgical and artistic diversities they have encountered in the week leading up to the festival. Students spend a full day designing and rehearsing their services of worship, receiving feedback from college student staff members and the resident expert preachers and worship leaders throughout the week. After their planning and rehearsing, teens lead an intergenerational assembly in public worship. The services take place back-to-back in the main worship space of the week, Bolding Studio at Samford University, which is a small performance venue with comfortable seating for 100 people. These mini-gatherings tend to be musically, artistically, and liturgically diverse, and often highlight the backgrounds and gifts of the particular student groups in leadership.

3.2. Study Participants

Thirty-five students participated in this study, ranging from ages twelve to eighteen, and including near-equal representation of students self-identifying as male and female. A total of 73% of those who completed surveys were in high school (grades 9–12), with the remaining in middle school (grades 6–8). Among focus group participants, 47% were in high school, with the remainder in middle school. Among individual interviewees, 72% of those interviewed were in high school, with the remainder in middle school.

Animate 2023 also provided for racial and ecclesial diversity. Participants represented ten different denominational networks, including Southern Baptist, Cooperative Baptist, Missionary Baptist, Non-Denominational/Independent, Presbyterian Church in America, Episcopal Church, United Methodist Church, Churches of Christ, Roman Catholic, and Evangelical Free Church of America, although approximately 50% of participants self-identified as belonging to a Southern Baptist congregation. The participant racial makeup was approximately 62% white, 22% African American, 8% Hispanic/Latino, and 8% mixed ethnicity.

Nearly all survey participants indicated that they are highly religious, maintaining active levels of participation in their local congregations. Investigators behind the National Study of Youth and Religion suggest that a minority of U.S. teens attend religious services weekly or more (Smith and Denton 2005). In contrast, approximately 52% of our study’s participants indicated that they attend religious services two or more times per week, with another 29% indicating that they typically attend at least once a week. Participants also self-identified as being “most involved” in their church, with approximately 53% of those surveyed self-describing as the highest level of involvement (choosing level six or seven of seven-point scale, with seven representing “most involved”). This study thus reflects perspectives of teenagers who are likely among the most devoted of American teenagers. Moreover, many of them have a dedicated interest in the leadership of corporate Christian worship.

3.3. Method of Investigation

Research for this study took place between 26 and 30 June 2023, on site at Animate. While the camp was taking place, a team of three researchers conducted focus groups, individual interviews, and an opening and closing survey with nearly all the teenage camp participants. The research protocols and questioning routes for the surveys, focus groups, and individual interviews were approved in an expedited review process through the Institutional Review Board of Samford University (Appendix A). As a part of Animate’s registration process, researchers obtained a signed informed consent document from parents and a signed assent from minors. The study was deemed low-risk. In order to preserve the anonymity of participants who, at times, offered critical feedback about their home churches or criticisms of worship traditions in their family, the raw data are unavailable.

For the focus groups, each researcher hosted three groups, each of which met two times over lunch for approximately thirty minutes. Focus groups included six to eight individuals of various ages, races, and denominations, with one comprised of females, one comprised of males, and one mixed-gender group. The questioning route was semi-structured and centered especially on teenagers’ responses to the various liturgical practices they experienced at Animate and other encounters of liturgical difference. Because the focus groups met once on day two and once on day four, we were able to gauge their adjustment to the camp and record their responses as they prepared for the Festival of Worship.

Eighteen students participated in fifteen-minute individual interviews, which included participants of various ages, races, and denominations. Interviews were conducted by two researchers on days three a four. These questions were more focused on general stories of encounters with difference and observations about worship at their home church. There was less of an emphasis on the programming of Animate. There was no overlap in student participation between the focus groups and the individual interviews. All interviews and focus groups were transcribed then coded using NVivo Release 1 qualitative research software.

4. Findings

The collaborative coding process was inductive in approach, with researchers identifying themes, categories, and patterns as they emerged in the data (Saldaña and Omasta 2022). We have organized our findings according to three overarching categories: “Appreciating Difference, Mostly”, “Delighting in Agency, Mostly”, and “Adapting for Home Church, Mostly”. In the findings that follow, we offer the following points of information about the frequency of comments and recurring themes. When we say “many” students, we mean seven or more references; “several” means four to six, “few” means three, and anything less than that is noted as one or two. Given the small sampling size, we find non-numerical descriptors to be more compelling and appropriate to the embodied theological and non-generalizable nature of this qualitative project.

4.1. Appreciating Difference, Mostly

The theme that consistently stood out in our learning was the teenage worshipers’ near-universal delight in experiencing liturgical difference. Five worship practices were frequently emphasized as having been experienced “differently” at Animate: musical style, singing or speaking in languages other than English, varied models or styles of proclamation, diverse forms of physical participation in the worship gathering, and prayers of lament.

Beginning with musical style, many students at Animate simply referenced that the music was “different” and “more varied” relative to what is typically employed at their home churches. In other cases, students mentioned the varied instrumentation, highlighting both the fact that it was different but also that, at Animate, it was more diverse in its utilization of multiple instruments. Additionally, several students emphasized that some of the music was “new”. In this, they underscored Animate worship’s inclusion of songs that were relatively new in composition, not simply new to the student.

Second, students overwhelmingly expressed appreciation for the practice of singing and speaking in languages other than English in worship. To our surprise, many hoped to maintain this practice in worship gatherings post-Animate. Transcending notions of “fun” or “interesting”, one worshiper reflected theologically on the practice like this: “The idea of worship was still so clear within the song [“Somlandela”, sung in Zulu]. I knew what my heart was saying, even if I didn’t know what my mouth was saying. I thought that was really powerful, to say something in Zulu, which I’ve never even attempted to learn before. But to know I am offering up praise to God. He doesn’t speak any language or anything. It’s all about the heart”. Given that nearly all our worshipers were coming from contexts for which this practice is foreign, we did not anticipate the frequency with which it was enthusiastically referenced.

Third, students regularly emphasized varied and dramatic practices of proclaiming scripture. In this, students appreciated dramatic and enthusiastic preaching styles, models that were perceived as “passionate” and “authentic” on the part of the preacher. Students also noted that Animate employed (a) more than one preacher for the worshiping assembly, and (b) a male and a female preacher, both practices diverging from what is normative for most of their home worship contexts. Finally, students frequently highlighted Animate’s dramatic presentations of scripture, which were nearly always read aloud by leaders professionally trained in theatrical arts. This was another practice students highlighted as wanting more of post-Animate.

Fourth, while not as frequently referenced as the first three practices, students articulated an appreciation for the varied and enthusiastic physical participation that was common on the part of both worshipers and worship leaders at Animate. Many students noted that they came from home contexts for whom physical participation was minimal. However, at Animate, dancing, hand motions, clapping, and verbal responses (e.g., “Amen!” and other expressions of affirmation) occurred frequently, with students reflecting that they would like to engage physically in worship more often and freely.

Finally, practicing lament in worship is an element of difference that was mostly appreciated. One participant reflects on the benefit of lament thusly:

“This kind of opened my eyes…being able to worship when you’re not always happy all the time…[M]ost churches don’t show that side of worship. They just show the songs of joy and always being happy when you’re praising God. But I think it’s a healthy thing, and God encourages it, to show him your emotions through worshiping him. And because he knows we have emotions, he has emotions. He gave us our emotions. And I think it’s another aspect of talking to God when you are worshiping him in your lament and your sadness and whatever you’re feeling”.

On the other hand, some students also noted how foreign the practice was from their home contexts, and how they did not believe it would be a welcome practice there. A few expressed skepticism toward public lament, noting that it was difficult to understand, confusing, or “weird”, highlighting the fact that lament was perceived to be more unfamiliar than other liturgical practices experienced at Animate.

Recognizing that liturgical difference is integral to the Animate experience, it is important to name that there was minimal coaching or explicit teaching that addressed the topic of appreciating difference. The 2023 Animate camp was the first in-person experience since the pre-pandemic 2019 gathering, so there were no returning students. Moreover, staff members did not communicate the Animate philosophy to parents, nor were students aware of it before the camp registration process. With this dynamic in mind, we were surprised by the posture of openness these students had toward liturgical difference.

Recent research about curiosity, however, would indicate that we should not be so incredulous. A 2021 study in the European Journal of Ageing gave some empirical validity to an oft-assumed sentiment: with increasing age comes decreasing intellectual curiosity. The inverse of this also rings true, namely that curiosity is more strongly associated with childhood and adolescence (Chu et al. 2020). While many students at Animate were quick to name worship forms or styles foreign to them, these differences were not immediately dismissed. One student noted, “It is sometimes weird to get used to singing in a different language. We sang in Zulu, but I think it’s cool that we are doing that”. Even though the practice was admittedly “weird”, this student and many others gave it a try and gained an appreciation for difference.

Experiencing difference can also be more “interesting” to young people, which may trigger their curiosity. In a 1992 study about reading comprehension in teenagers, a team of psychologists demonstrated that teenagers were more interested in complex and opaque passages to read rather than simple and straightforward ones (Garner et al. 1992). They were also better able to remember the passages when asked to recall them. This phenomenon resonates with the individual interviews at Animate, wherein students were asked to reflect on a time when they visited a friend or family member’s church. While the stories were diverse, many students quickly recalled memories that focused on encounters with liturgical difference.

The curious nature of students at Animate may also connect to notions of socioeconomic status. Development psychologist Susan Engel points to “a clear empirical link” between the curiosity of children and the education levels of their families (Engel 2015). Many participants from the Animate camp come from wealthy suburban communities near Birmingham, Alabama. Students and their families live in cities such as Homewood, Vestavia Hills, Mountain Brook, and Hoover, known for their college-educated populations and well-resourced school systems. It is reasonable that many Animate participants were already habituated to curiosity by extension of their upbringing.

4.2. Delighting in Agency, Mostly

One of the overarching goals of Animate is to empower teens to be creators and initiators of ministries where they engage their gifts, talents, and interests. Recognizing the complex nature of the term “agency” in an interdisciplinary context, our research finds resonance with Leersum-Bekebrede et al.’s definition in their study of worship with children: “agency in worship refers to how they co-construct worship by bringing their wishes, behaviours, interpretations, and beliefs into worship and its social context” (Leersum-Bekebrede et al. 2022). At Animate, the instances of agency in our research accord with this definition and is most explicitly evident through the skills-based training “Toolbox” classes and the “Festival of Worship”.

Students largely expressed delight in these kinds of high-impact pedagogies and noted a sense of agency that was perceived as real and deep in these practices. The Festival of Worship was consistently characterized as a process and event that was approached with a nervous energy. This was mainly connected to the context of working with and then leading an intergenerational group that was not one’s home congregation. The context of the festival was described by many as a “safe” one, a lab-like environment designed for student experimentation, “safer” than the student’s home church context, in part, because students will not have to re-enter this particular assembly again nor will they be concerned with meeting the expectations of their own congregations in the service they will lead.

The process of “building it [the worship gathering] from scratch” was noted by students as a distinct aspect of their work, one that, we believe, was particularly formative, setting it apart from other projects and works (such as “drama club at school”, for instance) that were perceived as having been “already made”, such that “we’re not really coming up with anything from scratch”. Although student groups were given some parameters for their worship gatherings (scripture choices, alongside recommended resources for designing worship), we observe that the act of involving students in the design process from the beginning contributed significantly to the sense of agency on the part of the students, enabling them to feel as though they, too, are worship leaders in their own right. Contributing deeply and tangibly to the worship gathering in this way was noted as significant, as evidenced by this reflection offered on contributing to worship: “I think that [contributing deeply and regularly] molded my viewpoint of worship today. Now I’m just so used to being involved, that’s how I worship”.

Many students reflected that preparation for this event fostered a nervous, yet enthusiastic, energy that propelled participants with a sense of confidence and excitement. This energy was nervous, since it asked students to engage skills and practices with which students were largely unfamiliar (e.g., designing a worship gathering, practicing it with a small group, contributing to its implementation in various ways, leading the congregation in its entirety). On the other hand, few felt unprepared or disqualified for the task; students reflected on how both the process and product were invigorating and empowering. We have drawn parallels from this process to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s psychological concept of “flow”, described as a state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; that the experience itself is intrinsically rewarding, and not simply the final product; and in which an optimal balance is achieved between challenge and skill (Csikszentmihalyi 1990). In this state, participants are drawn intensely to the work, creating a high-impact pedagogical environment resulting in energy, enjoyment, and empowerment from the event. This appears to be an apt model through which to clarify the Festival of Worship experience.

While students overwhelmingly described the Festival of Worship as an empowering, high-impact experience, we noted that there were a few who suggested that their home church, rather than Animate’s lab-environment, was the “safer” context, i.e., that their home church provided a more comfortable, risk-free environment in which to practice worship leadership. While no one explicitly named race as a factor, we find it worth noting that this commentary came from a few of our black teenagers who (a) sometimes identified as ones who already regularly contribute to the intergenerational Sunday service of their home church (particularly as a service musician), and (b) constituted a racial minority within the majority-white space that was Animate. We would like to explore both of these aspects more fully with future participants, such as the level of regular contribution to the home church’s primary worship gathering on the part of the black student as compared to white students, and explore more explicitly the dynamics of inviting young black worshipers to lead in majority-white spaces.

Research from the Fuller Youth Institute (FYI) reveals that churches who invest in the leadership development of young people are more likely to continue the cycle of “growing young” (Powell et al. 2016). Young people who are given agency, or in FYI’s terms, “load-bearing roles”, are afforded to be “purposeful co-participants in the life of the body rather than junior participants of future members” (Powell et al. 2016). Moreover, they contend that giving students agency increases their connection to the church for years to come. We can affirm this on a limited basis from the individual interviews conducted at Animate 2023. When asked to imagine their lives ten years from now, almost all interview participants envisaged themselves as being plugged in to the life of their church for many years to come. Interestingly, they often articulated the idea of being plugged in to their same church into adulthood, while also expressing a desire to train the next generation of young people.

The congregational worship setting in which this agency is given is also important. In Eric Mathis’s book Worship with Teenagers, he offers four models of worship with teenagers which have varying impacts on a young person’s agency and future connection to the church: all-church worship; camps, conferences, and retreats; “Youth Sunday” worship; and youth group worship. In the first two models—all-church worship and camps, conferences, and retreats—adults are the primary leaders of worship. In models three and four—“Youth Sunday” and youth group worship—students are the primary leaders. Mathis argues that models three and four “have the most significant impact on teenagers in the faith community because they put teenagers in a position of leadership…and the best versions of these models encourage mentoring relationships with adults in the worshiping community” (Mathis 2022). The Animate camp is most akin to the “camps, conferences, and retreats” model but is supplemented by the high-impact moments of youth-led worship planning and leading in the festival of worship, which is performed and experienced intergenerationally.

4.3. Adapting for “Home Church”, Mostly

The final theme from the interview data concerned the portability and translatability of worship practices. At Animate, many students expressed enthusiasm about bringing their new skills, as well as these various components of liturgical difference, back to their home congregations. On the one hand, this dynamic can be linked to a positive view of their home congregations. In the individual interviews, students consistently viewed their churches as safe places in which they have experienced minimal to no discomfort. On the other hand, it is worth reiterating that these students rate themselves as “most involved” in their churches. Many already have a perceived or real sense of purpose and agency within their leadership positions at church in which they could implement—or influence the implementation of—these practices.

In coding the interview and focus group data, an interesting pattern emerged: the internal tension of students being excited about the skills and practices gained at Animate, but also their estimation that many of these things will not “work” in their home churches. Students often referenced the imagined perceptions and opinions of adults who might show resistance to the “different” things Animate introduced. Three practices were frequently named as not likely to work in their home churches: singing in other languages, incorporating lament, and the utilization of varied instrumentation.

Singing in different languages was not viewed as a feasible portable practice. The two students who commented directly on this both referenced the same dynamic: the homogeneity of their congregations. One female student at a large church puts it this way, “I think it’d be really cool to hear everybody in our sanctuary singing Spanish, or Zulu, or some other language…but it’s probably not ever going to happen now. Most people in the congregation don’t know how to speak Spanish”. Implicit in this sentiment is the perceived inflexibility of older adults. It is also important to note that most of the congregations represented at Animate are (a) racially and ethnically homogenous, and (b) do not have worship leaders modeling the incorporation of multiple languages.

While lament was one of the practices that was “mostly” appreciated, only a few students wanted to bring this back to their congregations to better “express emotions to God” in a communal sense. Some were already familiar with lament as a form of individualized confession of sin (one student mentioned the long “awkward” silence of confession at her home church), but no one had lamented communally. However, among most other students, communal lament was viewed as a “weird” practice that would not work in their home churches because of the unfamiliarity. Similar to singing in different languages, the practice of lament had not been modeled by leaders in their home churches.

Incorporating multiple instruments in worship was a strongly desired portable practice; however, many students noted the limited talent pools in their congregation and/or the lack of functional space for more and varied instruments. Students coming from smaller churches were more cognizant of this dynamic than those who come from larger churches. While students did not name any particular instruments they wanted to see in their home churches, Animate regularly utilized drums, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, bass guitar, keyboard, synth, violin, and a team of vocalists. In the Wednesday “traditional” worship service, organ was also featured alongside a brass quintet. For students who wanted to incorporate more instruments at their home churches, the barrier for portability is not philosophical but rooted in utilitarian limitations.

In all these scenarios—singing in different languages, lament, and varied instruments—practices once viewed as liturgical gifts at Animate took on the form of a theological burden when students considered the translatability of these practices to their home churches. However, the perceived burden in portability can also be viewed as fodder for growth. In writing about congregational song in worship, theologian John Witvliet speaks of a “real-time sincerity gap” between the message of the song and what people are feeling. He writes that even if a song is superbly performed, the “gap” can still be present. But this is not a bad thing. He argues, “it’s actually a necessary experience for worship to be formative. I need to experience a gap between how I have already been formed and how I need yet to be formed if I am to grow” (Witvliet 2016). Perhaps this experience of difference at Animate and the reality of what “could be” might be the formation students need to grow as leaders in their home contexts.

4.4. Concluding Survey Data

The concluding survey for Animate included six questions and was administered on the final day of the camp (see Appendix A). Some of these questions were directly related to research, while others were quality control measures for future programming. Overall, the survey reinforced the data received from focus groups and interviews, namely (a) the enthusiasm surrounding the festival of worship, (b) the appreciation of multiple art forms represented throughout the week, and (c) the initial discomfort towards—but later embrace of—singing in different languages. Despite Animate’s philosophical underpinnings of encounters with liturgical difference, most students rated the “forms of worship at Animate” as “somewhat familiar”. In describing the worship style at Animate, respondents employed words such as “diverse”, “multi-stylistic”, “varied”, “unique”, and “different”. Regarding faith formation, most students said they grew in their faith significantly. The final question about key takeaways did not have any recurring themes, with some students commenting on practical skills gained (“I learned how to run ProPresenter”), others citing theological revelations (“there are many ways to worship God”), and others valuing community (“the people”).

5. Conclusions

This study offers a unique glimpse into the experiences of teenage worshipers as they engage with diverse liturgical practices. Through the lens of Animate, a week-long worship and the arts camp for teens and their adult mentors, we document the degree to which young people exhibit liturgical curiosity, agency, and appreciation for practices outside their own traditions. While acknowledging the limitations of context-specific research and lack of generalizability, this project offers data points that challenge the prevailing assumption that young people are a monolithic liturgical group, one primarily aligned with contemporary liturgical expressions. Our research evidences a small sampling of adolescents who demonstrate interpretive flexibility and ecumenical openness. These teens exhibit a readiness to embrace unfamiliar worship forms, including diverse musical expressions, multilingual worship practices, dramatic presentations of Scripture, and varied practices of lament.

The Festival of Worship, a site of participant-led liturgical practice, illuminates young people’s desire for agency and ownership in select settings. The majority of students found this new agency empowering, articulating aspirations to reimagine these worship practices within their home church settings. The tension observed between their enthusiasm for bringing new practices back to their home churches and the anticipated challenges in doing so reveals an important consideration frequently raised among participants: their ability to foster renewal in their congregations’ worship gatherings is tied to addressing the perceived or real resistance from adults in those settings.

Our research suggests that by providing opportunities for exposure to diverse liturgical traditions, we can cultivate a more nuanced understanding of young people’s relationship to worship. The flexibility we observed is undergirded by an operant theology of worship characterized by curiosity and appreciation (mostly). Animate participants expressed this operant theology mainly in relation to the diversity of worship services offered. As one student in a focus group remarked about their encounter of difference, “Well, it’s still worship. And no matter what we do, if we do it with our whole heart before God, I think that’ll bring us to a familiar place of worship”. This statement encapsulates a theological orientation that transcends common ecclesial boundaries and liturgical particularities, suggesting a more capacious understanding of worship.

Ultimately, we hope this research opens new pathways for understanding how liturgical diversity can serve as both a pedagogical gift and an ecclesial challenge for young worshipers. This point has practical ramifications for practitioner-leaders interested in adolescent worship practices and liturgical formation. By fostering worship sites that encourage youth to not only honor a diversity of traditions but also make room for their own creative contributions, practitioner-leaders have the opportunity to ensure that young voices and experiences remain central to the ongoing liturgical life of the Church.

By centering young voices and their complex hermeneutical negotiations, this study models an approach that privileges participant perspectives in liturgical theology. We have aimed for a more dynamic, reciprocal understanding of liturgical formation—one that recognizes adolescents as active theological agents capable of profound liturgical participation, leadership, and reflection. Future research should further explore the intersectional dynamics of youth worship contexts, examining how factors such as race, gender, socioeconomic status, and denominational background mediate worship experiences and values. Additionally, more longitudinal studies are needed to trace how the types of liturgical encounters described in this study may shape long-term faith identities and practices.

This study has modeled the importance of listening deeply to the voices of young people, allowing them to articulate the perceptions that shape their own worship experiences. In doing so, we hope to have identified important data points and theoretical considerations, as well as avenues for future research and practice in addressing important gaps in the scholarship on youth and religion.