Is there a place for liturgy and ritual in youth work?

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe you are here; that you see me, that your hear me. I adore you with profound reverence, I ask you for pardon of my sins, and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Lord and my God.’ T

his was a prayer proclaimed by a priest knelt at the front of the church. He was surrounded by hundreds of young people and young adults all kneeling in silence, all listening to his heartfelt confession. It was a beautiful, powerful but at the same time an incredibly simple moment. It didn’t matter really whether we believed Jesus was truly present in the wafer-thin host held in an elaborate gold vessel sitting on top of what looked like a wooden Christmas tree. We were all united in that moment and the priest’s prayer became our prayer. We encountered Jesus on that Saturday evening in July.

What do I mean by ‘liturgy’? According to Wikipedia, liturgy is: ‘a communal response to the sacred through activity reflecting praise, thanksgiving, supplication, or repentance.’ In the Catholic Church, the celebration of the Eucharist, the Mass, is at the heart of the life of the worshipping community and the ultimate liturgy. The Catholic Church teaches that this liturgy is: ‘the source and summit of our faith.’ Catholic churches are known for being liturgical, but in reality all churches have a liturgy, a consistent structure or form of communal worship, whether or not they realise it.

In reality though, the number of young people who connect with church, especially its liturgy, is declining across all denominations, but that’s not to say young peoples’ non-attendance on a Sunday is reflective of an absence of young people’s spirituality. However, it does mean that young people are not engaging with church, or with its liturgy. Does this matter? If your ministry is anything like mine, what happens on a Sunday and what I do on a Friday night in the basement of the church do not always mix. Is this a problem? 

MAKING ROOM FOR JESUS TO SPEAK

Our Friday night basement group is all about building relationships with young people; relationships are at the centre of all good youth work. The problem that I’ve found though is that we do the whole ‘I know where you are at’ and the ‘sharing their place’ thing well, but can’t seem to get past that. For example, I spent a good two terms of the last school year unpacking the issues around relationships. As a group we looked at relationships with their peers, relationships with the opposite sex, relationships online and talked about pornography. The young people shared their experiences, their fears and their hopes. I thought it was great. I listened and mentioned Jesus occasionally. We even suggested some practical tools of how to live some of the changes out in their lives. But then we stopped talking about that stuff and life went back to normal immediately. All their relationships seemed to stay the same.

I read somewhere about how the Emmaus narrative of Luke can be ‘misused’ as a model for youth ministry. Jesus accompanied the disciples on the road to Emmaus, and many take this as a model for how we should accompany young people on their road of faith; as Jesus does with the disciples, we should accompany young people, speaking their language, getting to know their fears and breaking open the Word. The disciples in the narrative encountered Jesus and went back to Jerusalem transformed. What I’ve found is that I don’t really see young people transformed like that. One of the dangers of using the Emmaus model for ministry is that we put ourselves in the place. When we do this, we fail to help young people open their hearts to Jesus who is already walking alongside them.

I wonder if we give enough space for Jesus to speak into the hearts of young people. There has to be a moment when we accept Jesus into our hearts and say yes to him. Do we give young people enough space for that moment?

CAN LITURGY HELP?

Liturgy may be able to help us here. In our conversations with young people, in our week-on-week encounters with them, we need simple and non-threatening ways of creating space for Jesus to speak - and liturgy might just be the answer we are looking for. What might this look like in practice?

Liturgy is the corporate encounter between God and his people. Liturgy is about ritual and repeated symbolic behaviour. This might take the form of a structured time of intercessory prayer that can be as simple as sitting together and praying out loud for each other’s needs and the needs of the church and the world. Or it could involve prayer stations where young people have an opportunity to travel around different creative or meditative stations. Prayer Spaces in Schools offers a great starting point for young people to develop in personal reflection in an inclusive environment. I’ve seen it in action at one of our local secondary schools and it was beautiful seeing young people, of different faiths and none, travel through the stations in their own time and really engage their bodies, minds and hearts without judgement or expectation.

Liturgy may also be a time of structured or guided meditation on scripture. Lectio Divina is a dynamic way of reading the Holy Scriptures, involving meditation and prayer intended to promote communion with God and to increase the knowledge of God’s word. Like all Bible study, scripture is not treated as texts to be studied, but as the living word. Lectio Divina has four stages: we read the passage several times, we meditate or ‘mull over’ the text without analysing it, in prayer we have the opportunity to share with Jesus what has come to mind or what is beginning to stir our hearts and we contemplate by sitting in silence and quietly listening to him. Over time it’s meant to help you build that vital bridge between your encounters with God and everyday life with its joys, humdrum and challenges. It can be something you do on your own or in small groups. The amazing thing about this time of sharing is hearing how the Holy Spirit has spoken to us all in different ways through the same bit of scripture, and those words stay with you. 

The Catholic Mass itself can also offer a structure for our youth work. We start Mass by confessing that we are sinners. We recall our week, when we have steered away from God. We ask for Jesus’ mercy. Then we praise God and listen to his word. We hear preaching that helps us to see how to live out the Living Word in our lives. We unite in proclaiming the creed, taking it into our hearts once again. We pray for each other. We then prepare ourselves to enter into Jesus’ presence, a time when heaven and Earth meet. We encounter God. We kneel in prayer and contemplation. We are then sent out into the world to proclaim the gospel of Christ. I once ran a four-day youth summer camp following this structure. We basically split up the Mass over four days and it meant that all of our activity and reflection stood within the grand story of the Mass, actively participating throughout and not just observing it.

I remember there was a moment after the celebration of the Eucharist where we all stood outside, in front of the barn that we occupy, holding hands and kneeling in silence in front of this huge lit up cross. It was simple but incredibly powerful. God spoke to so many of the young people in that moment. There were many tears that night but also a sense of peace that I’d never experienced before. We still talk about that night.

There are small moments that stay with me too. We use Urban Saint’s Energize curriculum with our 11-14’s, and they always include a short prayer liturgy at the end of the sessions. One week we placed an empty chair in the middle of the room. We asked the young people to sit around it. We dimmed the lights and asked them to imagine that Jesus was sitting on the chair. We asked them to think about what they would ask him. They wrote down their questions on a post-it note and then in their own time stood up and placed their question on the chair. There was a boy in our group who had lost his mother a couple of years ago and had been struggling with his faith ever since. He didn’t want anyone to see his question, so he handed it to me and asked me to look after it. His question was, ‘please can I see my mum in heaven?’ I was moved. I am so glad we gave him the space to ask that question. I wonder if the boy opened his heart enough to Jesus to answer.

Whatever form it may take, liturgy gives us space. It gives space for Jesus to work in our hearts. On that Saturday evening in July, in that time of adoration, sitting in Jesus’ presence, we didn’t need to respond other than in silence. What we were doing was described on that night as like sunbathing. In that silence, our awareness of Jesus’ presence increased. He spoke, and we listened.

LITURGY AND ME

I went to an academic youth conference recently where someone presented a piece of research they were doing with outreach youth workers. They found that the young people they were working with were not interested in going to church. During the Q and A, I asked if the youth workers she was interviewing were themselves engaged in their churches. The researcher said no; a lot of the youth workers felt very much on the fringes of their church communities.

If youth workers are not engaged in their church’s liturgy, I don’t blame young people for not being engaged in the life of the church as well. We are all drawn to things that are alive, especially to things that give us life. If you do not find Jesus in something, it is my experience that neither will your young people. As J. Baker puts it in Rite Stuff, ‘When people encounter a ritual performed by committed worshippers who own what they are doing and who find in it a communion with God, they do not see a corporate activity, but begin to glimpse something of the reality of God.’ Young people should be able to have an opportunity to glimpse this reality and be transformed by it.

Is there a place for liturgy in youth work? I guess it depends if I’m willing to stop and do some listening.