Educating young people through Christian youth worship : reclaiming space for learning in liturgical contexts

摘要

This article dealt with the relationship between education and youth worship in Protestant contextsin the Netherlands. Consequently, it dealt with the relation between Liturgical and EducationalStudies. Our interest in the research project on youth worship in Protestant contexts centred on thequestion: How do young people, in a late-modern context, participate in youth worship? In ourqualitative research, it appeared that ‘learning’ is a key word with regard to youth worship. Thisarticle discussed the questions: How are youth worship and ‘learning faith’ related? And, whatare the qualities of learning faith in youth worship? Empirical results of the research in local youthworship services and national youth worship events were presented. These results concentrated onthe dialogical dimension in youth worship gatherings and gave indications about the contents ofwhat adolescents learn in youth worship gatherings. This ‘what’ referred, amongst other aspects,to the important content of ‘rules and freedom’. Respondents often valued and appropriated youthworship along the line of ‘(do not) have to’, with regard to a Christian life style, their relationwith God, ethics, and doctrines. Moreover, themes in youth worship gatherings often focusedon a specific Christian lifestyle, on its boundaries and its spaces. Some reflections with regardto the question ‘Why is learning faith a dominant element in youth worship?’ were given. Theconclusions that the cognitive element is important in youth worship and that the explicit aspectof learning is a main approach in youth worship were discussed in relation to J. Astley’s (1984)theoretical notion that the language of worship is ‘performing non-cognitive’.