Kids need more from worship music than dance motions, silly lyrics, and singsong melodies. Musicians like Keith and Kristyn Getty and Shane & Shane are constructing a body of songs with theological depth and musical simplicity to assist disciple young believers.
“Jesus Calms the Storm (Hymn for Anxious Little Hearts),” a recent single released by the Gettys in collaboration with Sandra McCracken and Joni Eareckson Tada, sets clear, profound words for moments of worry or uncertainty:
When my heart is full of fear
Like a stormy sky
Jesus says, “Be not afraid”
He is at my sideThere’s a rock where I can go
Keeps me protected and this I do know
Deep inside my troubled soul
Jesus calms the storm
For Keith Getty, who produced the one, the psalms offer children something that nothing else can: each the affirmation they long for and hope for what lies beyond the current.
“We can say what we feel, what we learn about God, and move through to where we are able to look beyond our circumstances,” Getty told CT. “Not to resolve it like a Disney completely happy ending or a bumper sticker slogan but toward something hopeful.”
Kids’ mental health is front and center today, with best-selling books by Jonathan Haidt and Abigail Shrier exploring contributing aspects to childhood anxiety and emotional struggles on the rise amongst young people. Concerning trends like increased suicides and high rates of loneliness have many researchers scrambling to assemble data about what is perhaps contributing to this intensifying public mental health crisis.
Christian counselor and creator Sissy Goff has written several books on the topic; her most up-to-date, The Worry-Free Parent, confronts parental anxiety and its potential effects on children.
Haidt and others have identified that participation in religious communities seems to correlate with positive mental health outcomes for youngsters. And with substantial research that links community music-making—particularly choral singing—to mental and physical health improvements, the local church is positioned to function a uniquely powerful space for youngsters to specific joy, find belonging and peace, and seek communion with God.
Keith Getty points out that songs of the religion, especially those we use in corporate worship, have to offer voice to a variety of experiences. Worshipers expect and wish that variety as adults, and the church should offer the identical to kids.
Children’s musician Yancy Wideman Richmond, who performs as “Yancy,” agrees.
“Just such as you wouldn’t feed anyone you’re keen on a weight loss plan of only cotton candy and sweet treats, you’ll be able to’t only lead kids in ‘Father Abraham’ or ‘Church Clap’ and expect that it’s the substance they’re going to need when the going gets tough,” she recently wrote in an article titled “Helping Kids Exchange Anxiety for a Garment of Praise.”
Richmond is the creator of Sweet Sound: The Power of Discipling Kids in Worship. She believes it’s necessary to acknowledge that youngsters undergo “real life battles,” be it illness, a automobile accident, or other family trauma. And the financial, relational, and physical struggles of adults profoundly affect the youngsters of their lives.
“Are you giving them prayers to sing as they war within the spirit over their self-esteem, friendships and family?” she asks.
Music therapists indicate that music has observable positive effects for babies, young children, and adolescents. It can calm infants and help children discover and reflect on complex emotions. Children who learn to play instruments or to compose music seem to profit from having an area of life through which they will develop creative control and mental focus. Musical ensembles provide community for older children and teenagers.
The church stays one in every of the few places where people habitually gather to interact in communal music-making, and kids profit from the musical and spiritual formation that happens in that setting.
With the top of the varsity yr and the season of vacation Bible school across the corner, it’s a very good time for leaders to think about their approach to kids’ worship music.
The impulse to supply children a straightforward resolution to a Bible story or problem often shows up in Christian music for youngsters. Repetitive mantras like “My God is so big, so strong and so mighty” are words we wish our youngsters to learn, but they’re able to doing greater than singing spiritual positive affirmations, says Lindsey Goetz, a master’s student in educational ministries and the resource director on the Center for Faith and Children at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.
“Jesus is aware and present to children in a way that we are able to never be,” she said. “Children are capable of getting real relationships and encounters with Jesus now.”
Goetz also warns against leaning too heavily on high-energy hype songs when on the lookout for ways to welcome children into corporate worship. “Children can enjoy quiet. Children enjoy being taken seriously.”
The Gettys are within the strategy of compiling a hymnal in cooperation with Crossway (forthcoming in 2025); it would include a piece of hymns written with children in mind.
Keith Getty says that the songs within the section are all intended to show foundations of the religion, to be easy enough to sing at home, and to sound timeless enough to be usable and appealing in ten years.
“We want our children to know great hymns that they will carry with them for his or her whole lives,” said Getty. “Singing is an excellent opportunity to ground our joys, our memories, our faith.”
A father of 4, Getty reflected on the special significance of the hymn “Be Thou My Vision” for his family and the script its verses provide for various phases of life—“be thou my wisdom,” “riches I heed not,” “High King of heaven.”
“To carry these words with you, what a present,” said Getty.
Hymns and songs of praise can provide a vocabulary for teenagers in moments of crisis or struggle. Songs like Shane & Shane’s “Take Heart (John 16:33)” can teach kids to carry on to Scripture and the guarantees of God—“take heart … You have overcome the world”—when life feels overwhelming or scary.
By giving them music that takes their worries and hardships seriously, we point children toward a God who can handle their questions and doubts.
But taking a utilitarian view of the role of music for teaching and faith formation also can rob children of their spiritual autonomy, warns Goetz. “Are we on the lookout for authentic engagement on the a part of the kid? Or are we on the lookout for the kid to provide something that makes us think we have now achieved what we set out to perform?”
When it involves helping children who’re fighting anxiety, it could be that oldsters are projecting their very own fears onto the music, books, and academic materials we provide somewhat than allowing young people to take part in music-making with curiosity and freedom.
“We don’t know what it’s prefer to grow up in a world where everyone has a cellular phone of their hand on a regular basis,” said Goetz, who sees that reality as a call to trust, to not seize more control of youngsters’ lives. And offering more agency and freedom in children’s participation within the lifetime of the church is one significant method to lean into that trust.
“We have to improve at equipping parents. Not with more spiritual busywork, but with a peaceful assurance that Jesus is here, working now in us and in our youngsters.”
Parents, maybe even greater than children, will profit from the words of “Jesus Calms the Storm” as they work through their very own fears concerning the world their children are facing as they grow. They can find comfort in knowing that they and their children look to the identical source of peace in every storm.
