Editor’s note: In the May 2009 issue, Karen Holford addressed involving children in the divine worship service. This month, she expands the discussion to include involving children in other church events.
What would happen if we took the time to consider the children’s experiences in our congregation and put their needs at the heart of our church? What would change if we worked out our worship, mission, and service from this radically different perspective?
Here are some ideas to start you thinking about involving children in the special events of your church. Churches are in different places along the journey of child inclusiveness, and various cultures find some things unacceptable or have different local meanings for actions and symbols. So, a wide range of ideas has been included, not as prescriptions, but as ideas to stimulate thoughtfulness and creativity.
Involving children in baby dedications
1. Invite children to welcome the new baby into their church family by coming to the front of the church and whispering in unison, “Hello (name of baby)! Jesus loves you and so do we!” or use another welcoming phrase. If you have just a few children and the parents are willing, each child could gently touch the baby’s feet.
2. Give older children a sheet of paper on which you have printed the baby’s name, one letter to a line, along the left-hand edge of the page. Ask them to create a simple blessing, prayer, or phrase where each word begins with one letter of the baby’s name. Include the name of the child who wrote the blessing and their photo, if possible.
Collect the pages and give them to the family in a scrapbook for them to treasure.
3. Give the children pots of bubbles to blow over the baby being dedicated or handfuls of flower petals to throw over the baby and the baby’s family. Explain that, as they blow the bubbles or scatter the petals, they are to pray a silent prayer for the baby or think of a special blessing (give them an example of a blessing to spark their creativity) for the baby. You can do this outside after the service if it isn’t appropriate to blow bubbles in your church. A sheet on the floor can catch drips from bubbles or the flower petals for easier cleanup.
4. Create a picture for the baby’s bedroom. An adult can paint a design in the center of a blank canvas, including the child’s name, a Bible verse, and a simple picture, such as a lamb in a fi eld. Protect the picture with a piece of clear, sturdy plastic and let the children of the church write their names, prayers, blessings, and pictures around the edge of the canvas. Remove the protective plastic and give the picture to the family as a unique gift.
Involving children in baptismal services
1. Make sure the children can safely see what is happening. As someone is being baptized, give each child a few red paper heart shapes (or rose petals) to scatter onto the water. Use this action as a reminder that baptism is our response to God’s amazing love.
2. Give each child a piece of plastic cut into the shape of a person. Let them use a nonpermanent marker or pen and write down some of the things they have done wrong. Provide a large tank of water at a height that children can access easily (place a large piece of nonslip protective cover over the fl oor and the furniture under the tank in case of spillage). Then let the children “baptize” their plastic people in the water, and wipe them clean with a piece of paper towel.
3. Involve children in creating a promise box for every person baptized in your church. Give them unprinted business cards, and invite them to write their favorite text as neatly as possible on the card. Collect the cards, put them into an attractive business card holder or box, and give the promise box to the candidate. Adults can add promises to the box too. It can also be meaningful if every person writes their name on the back of their promise card, so that the recipient knows who has written the promises.
Involving children in weddings
Some couples may wish to involve children in their wedding. Perhaps they are actively involved in children’s ministries themselves and want to find a meaningful way to involve the children. Or perhaps the marrying couple believes that marriage is a community celebration that needs to involve their friends, whatever their age. If you are marrying a couple that wishes to involve children in the wedding service, here are a few ideas.
1. Invite the children to hold hands in a circle around the bride and groom during the wedding prayer. The circle of children can represent the circle of God’s love around the couple and the support the community promises to offer them.
2. Children can be asked to read Bible verses about love, and say what they think those verses might mean for a married couple. They can practice ahead of time with a responsible adult who will help them think about the verses and will write down their creative responses.
3. Children coming to the wedding could be given a small bag of quiet things to keep them amused during the service. Providing some Christian activity and sticker books, for example, can also be a witness to the children and families who wouldn’t usually attend your church.
4. Provide each child with a sheet of card stock, printed with an attractive frame design, and some crayons. Ask the children to draw a picture of the couple in their wedding clothes, and then write some ideas on their picture about how they can stay happily married. Collect these in a scrapbook to give to the couple as a unique memento of their day.
5. Ask an artistic person in your congregation to design a work sheet about weddings and marriage for the children to complete during the service.
Involving children in Communion services
As adults, we help create the reverence around the Communion table, and we need to find ways to help the children participate just as the children in Jewish families are actively involved in the Passover experience. The way we do this must also fi t with our beliefs and ideas about how Communion services should be organized.
Some families avoid coming to church when there is a Communion service because their church eliminates the children’s story that week, the service goes on too long, or the event is very solemn and the children are not included in the activities. We need to be aware of this and find fresh ways to involve families in this important celebration.
Here are a few ideas for including children more actively in a Communion service.
1. Help children make a small booklet describing the meaning we give to the different parts of the Communion service. Fold a piece of paper in half and put a title on the front cover, and then make a page for footwashing, one for the bread, and one for the juice. Provide precut shapes that children can stick on the pages with different texts and words that they can write into the book to help them understand.
2. Invite Junior class children to research the symbols of bread and wine used in Passover and Communion.
Help them make a presentation of their discoveries in a creative way during a Communion service.
3. Give each child a gray and black, smudgy cardboard heart before the Communion service, and explain that this represents their heart full of all the times they have broken God’s laws.
Then, during the service, let the children swap their gray, smudgy hearts for white heart-shaped Communion bread wafers, made especially for them, to illustrate that Jesus gives us complete forgiveness.
4. Show the children a child-friendly video about Jesus’ death and resurrection or the Last Supper during the time when the adults are having their feet washed.
5. Let the children draw or write on their feet to illustrate the things they have done that they would like God to forgive. Use easily washable pens or water-dissolving pens from sewing shops, so that the marks come off easily during footwashing. Let them choose a fragrant body butter or lotion that can be rubbed into their feet afterwards to remind them of what Mary did for Jesus when she poured the perfume over His feet.
6. Prepare a room for family footwashing where the children can help their parents wash each other’s feet, and perhaps, the parents can wash their children’s feet too. Make sure the children understand why we are doing this and why this should be a respected event. In one church, the pastor knelt and washed all the children’s feet during the foot-washing service.
7. Purchase the book Daniel Asks About Baptism and Communion.* Read it to the children while the adults are involved in footwashing. Scan the images into your computer to make larger pages for everyone to see, and use the pictures as a PowerPoint presentation or buy each child their own book.
Involving children in Thanksgiving services
1. Ahead of time, invite the children to choose an object that they are especially thankful for and bring it to the Thanksgiving service. Interview the children about their choices, or make a display of the items together with a card from each child saying why he or she chose his or her thankful object.
2. Invite the children to come to the front and then go through the alphabet, asking them to think of different things they want to thank God for that begin with the different letters in turn, such as apples, Auntie Jane, bread, bikes, chocolate, crayons, etc. Or preplan this and create a voice choir of thankfulness where children take turns to name different things for which they are especially grateful.
3. Give each of the children a child-friendly Thank-You card as they come into church. You may be able to find designs in stationery stores with simple outlines that children can color. Invite them to write a Thank-You letter to God during the service or draw things they are thankful for inside the card. Create a place where the children can display their Thank- You cards after the service, and encourage the adults to read what the children have written.
4. Bring a Thank-You tree into the church. A couple of weeks before the Thanksgiving service, give all the children a few simple luggage or plain gift tags already threaded with string or yarn to take home. Encourage them to write a Thank-You note to God on each tag and draw or stick a picture of whatever they are thankful for on the reverse of the tag. During the service, help the children hang the tags on the Thank-You tree at an appropriate time.
5. Invite the children to dress up just before the service as something for which they are especially thankful or related to their thankful object (it may be easier to come as a baker than as a loaf of bread).
Provide a few extra costumes for children who forgot, didn’t know, are visiting, or whose families would find it too difficult to organize a costume. Have a minicostume parade as the adults or children sing a thankful song, or invite the children to say why they have chosen their outfit.
Conclusion
It can be challenging to find ways to involve children in your services, but it is worth all the investment to help them feel that they are a special part of our community and their church willingly thinks about their needs, involves them, and values them.
If you are short of ideas, there are plenty more for you to explore on Web sites such as www.barnabasinchurches.org.uk and www.lightlive.org, where you can search for specific activities (prayers, stories, interactive ideas, etc.) or via Bible stories or themes.
And remember, whatever you do for one of these little ones, you are doing for Jesus.
Heather Hanna, Daniel Asks About Baptism and Communion (Nampa, ID: Pacifi c Press Pub. Assn., 2005).
