Abstract:
This article dealt with the relationship between education and youth worship in Protestant contexts
in the Netherlands. Consequently, it dealt with the relation between Liturgical and Educational
Studies. Our interest in the research project on youth worship in Protestant contexts centred on the
question: How do young people, in a late-modern context, participate in youth worship? In our
qualitative research, it appeared that ‘learning’ is a key word with regard to youth worship. This
article discussed the questions: How are youth worship and ‘learning faith’ related? And, what
are the qualities of learning faith in youth worship? Empirical results of the research in local youth
worship services and national youth worship events were presented. These results concentrated on
the dialogical dimension in youth worship gatherings and gave indications about the contents of
what 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 youth
worship along the line of ‘(do not) have to’, with regard to a Christian life style, their relation
with God, ethics, and doctrines. Moreover, themes in youth worship gatherings often focused
on a specific Christian lifestyle, on its boundaries and its spaces. Some reflections with regard
to the question ‘Why is learning faith a dominant element in youth worship?’ were given. The
conclusions that the cognitive element is important in youth worship and that the explicit aspect
of 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’.
