Before I try and say anything of any great significance or depth I ought to begin by nailing my colours to the mast: I don’t really like action songs but, predominantly, for superficial reasons. The chief among these is that I’m terrible at doing the actions and I’m not great at singing. I can just about manage the Doug Horley classic ‘I’m Gonna Jump Up and Down’ or as we call it ‘the banging on the floor song’ but anything more advanced and I’m basically toast.
My performance is especially catastrophic when the song speeds up; this can leave me hopelessly exposed and reduced to giving up or wheeling out something best described as ‘the frog in a blender’. So any comments I make may have to be treated as a thinly veiled effort to try and get out of having to lead them again! All this accepted I’m not anti-action songs, nor am I looking for an outright ban. I do however have a few concerns:
1. They are not to be confused with worship. Often in the ‘children’s church’ action songs are used to mirror the bit of the service where adults engage with God through singing. The problem with action songs is that once the child is concentrating on getting the words and the actions right and in time with the music, I’m not sure there’s a whole lot of room left for God.
2. They are primarily an educational tool. It strikes me that the way lots of children’s worship songs are written is to help children remember stuff rather than engage with God. This often misses a key point about Christian nurture: you cannot educate a child into faith. When life is tough and God feels distant there needs to be something more than a catchy tune for children to fall back on. Children gain this by finding meaning themselves through their own thought, and not through us giving them all the answers.
Action songs are fun and it’s good to have fun, and they do prepare children for joining the ‘adult’ bit of the church by including them in corporate singing. For some children, they may become something more meaningful as their particular style of spirituality chimes with it. So I’m not saying scrap them, I’m saying handle with care and think about what you’re doing.
Obviously, some people disagree with Sam. In fact, it turns out, quite a lot of people do. Click here to read the response of Big Ministries.
