We just had a church weekend conference. In a later session the youth groups were telling the whole church what they had been doing. One lass said "we were doing extravagant worship." I have no idea what the content was (I expect it involved bopping! Why is it that teens bop? Too many E numbers?), but knowing the teens and leaders in question, I bet it was brilliant. I bet God loved it and so did they.

I love the fact that our teens are coming to know God and that the focus of our children's work is helping them be disciples and worshippers and witnesses - as opposed to creating nice, well-behaved, vaguely christianised youngsters who don't do naughty things. One of the (just) pre-teens talked extremely coherently and movingly about forgiveness.

One of my favourite Bible stories is of the sinful woman in Luke 7. She worships Jesus unashamedly despite the embarrassment - even outrage - of other people at the dinner party. She didn't care. Jesus loved it. She was worshipping in an extravagant and costly way.

I wish I was a teenager again! (VERY wishful thinking!) I am hoping that as a result of our church weekend the teens have even more of a taste for "doing extravagant worship", and so does everybody else. I want to be in an "extravagant worship" church, whatever one of those looks like :-)