Please Stop Idolizing Youth Culture in Worship

In recent decades, worship culture in many churches has been obsessed with youth, perpetually introducing new worship leaders along with fresh songs, styles, and ideas. How can worship be shaped in such a way that it confronts these obsessions? How does the music industry shape our expectations for worship leaders in particular and church leaders in general? What are some of the contrasts between the attitude of an aspiring artist and an aspiring servant?

This conversation with Mike Cosper, Kevin Twit, and Isaac Wardell discusses the possibility of a countercultural option—of worship as a feast, rather than a concert or a lecture.

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Mike Cosper is the founder of Harbor Media in Louisville, Kentucky and serves as the director of podcasting for Christianity Today and is the host of Cultivated: A Podcast about Faith and Work. He is the author of Faith Among the Faithless: Learning from Esther How to Live in a World Gone Mad (Thomas Nelson, 2018), Recapturing the Wonder: Transcendent Faith in a Disenchanted World (IVP Books, 2017), The Stories We Tell: How TV and Movies Long for and Echo the Truth (Crossway, 2014), and Rhythms of Grace: How the Church’s Worship Tells the Story of the Gospel (Crossway, 2013). Mike lives in Louisville, Kentucky with his wife, Sarah, and their two daughters. You can follow him on Twitter.

Kevin Twit has been the RUF Campus Minister at Belmont University since 1995. He previously served as a pastor at Christ Community Church for eight years. In 1999 Kevin began Indelible Grace Music with some of his students and has lectured widely on topics of hymns and worship.

Isaac Wardell is director for worship arts at Trinity Presbyterian Church in Charlottesville, Virginia. Isaac studied music at Covenant College and worked as director of music at churches in Tennessee, Georgia, and New York, before coming to Trinity in 2009. He also works as the director of Bifrost Arts.