Discover a new approach to ministry with children and families, one that goes beyond simply increasing attendance numbers. Dive into five innovative congregational models that faithfully and intentionally engage children in worship. Gain insight from real-life success stories and learn how to contextualize and scale the models, implementing them with the laity and leaders in your congregation.

The models include pray-grounds, sensory sensitive worship practices, outreach-oriented experiences, school partnerships in the arts, and leadership in band-led worship settings.

The book offers theological perspectives on the importance of worship in children’s faith formation. And it provides practical help as your congregation learns to support and serve children not as a means for church growth but as an act of faithfulness. See the Holy Spirit at work as you follow Christ’s example of embracing young hearts into the worship community.

This book equips the Methodist pastor, worship leader, or layperson to create meaningful worship moments for any group of people, any time, any place. It includes liturgies and prayers suitable for traditional settings such as worship services, funeral services, and administration of the sacraments. It includes words to use during hospital visits, retreats, church meetings, and other conventional settings. It provides words of blessing for departing members.

It also provides language for other spaces and places, like home blessings, blessings for foster care families, words for times of transition, liturgies for fresh expressions of the church, prayers before the beginning of work, language for protests and vigils, ritual moments for difficult conversations, and prayers for interreligious and ecumenical events. It offers words of lament to use after violent events and natural disasters. From pulpits to pews, from altar tables to dinner tables, from sanctuaries to streets, the Compact Guide can be used by all ministers—clergy and laity—to employ worshipful words as the Spirit leads.