Is this Worship?

This week a magazine called Vision appeared in my mail box. It's purpose is to help churches minister through multi-media. I found an article entitled "A Kid's Eye View Of Worship" that seemed to be a great illustration of the way Children's Ministry in North American churches has lost its way.

Check out the link and tell me what you think. There were so many things about how this church works with its children that I found objectionable that I could spend an hour ranting about it - but I'll just give you a couple of examples. When kids arrive at this experience they can go to the bank and redeem memorized Bible verses and friends brought for "cash" to spend at the Good News stand. Kids who have birthdays on a particular week are invited on stage to "enter the phone booth filled with flying cash to see how much they can grab in 10 second" OK, OK - every church program uses extrinisic motivation for kids to memeorize Bible verses and bring friends. When I was seven or eight I was intensely motivated to bring my friends to vacation Bible school because of the prize I could win (can't say, that, any of those childhood friends are actively following Jesus because of it). But there just seems something blatantly consumeristic and money hungry about this fake cash and especially the phone booth. That's a long way from giving a kids a Jolly Rancher or Starburst for memorizing a Bible verse. But, what would make it slightly more acceptable for me (and less all about the money) would be if the leaders of the program encouraged those winners of all this "cash" to give 10% of it to the kids who didn't win anything that night. At least that would begin to teach something about generosity.

And I find the over emphasis on the entertainment environment with "gross" games (for some reason this is a way to worship God - thought I'm not sure I get how - so do the kids really see this as worship?) and the seeming lack of one on one interaction with adults and other kids as not something that can truly contribute to the spiritual formation and soul care of these children.

Sure the kids have fun - what child wouldn't want to come to something like this (shy ones, children with asperger's syndrome, children who have difficulty with environments that over stimulate,childreh with ADHD to name a few). But, what is the hidden curriculum? What are the long term implications for the soul's of our children if this is the community of faith they are exposed to each week? Tell me what you think.