Worshiping . . . with children?

Jesus made it clear that children were very special to Him. He remembered what it felt like to be a child, be vulnerable, be filled with wonder, run freely, and live a simple and uncomplicated life. So He welcomed them, healed them, raised them from the dead, blessed them, involved them in His miracles, and told them stories they could understand. Several times He challenged His followers to become more like little children.

How does Jesus’ teaching about children inform our understanding of the role of children in our churches today? How can we place the same importance on children as He did? And how can we involve children in our worship experiences so that we can be inspired by each other, and help each other grow closer to God’s kingdom?

In children’s shoes

Pause for a moment. Take a pen and a piece of paper and draw a “stick person” picture of a child in your church. You know the one. The child who struggles to sit still. The one who is most likely to end up being taken outside during the sermon. The one who runs around and makes a lot of noise. The one who dreads coming to church because he or she always seems to get into trouble, no matter how hard he or she tries. The one whose parents are wondering whether they can face the struggle of coming to church week after week.

Now put yourself in this child’s shoes. What did they experience when they came to church last week? What did they enjoy most? What did they dislike? What made them feel happy, sad, afraid? What was it like sitting in their seat in church? What could they see, hear, and understand?

Whenever I teach a seminar on worshiping with children, I ask a couple of adults to sit on a table facing a blank wall. Then they listen to a sermon—in a language they do not understand. Imagine you have a friend from another country and they invite you to their church. Most of the service is completely incomprehensible to you, except for one of the hymns. Would you choose to return? Probably not. So what would you think and feel if someone made you attend that church for the next ten years? Many of the children in our churches experience our weekly worship services in this way.

Each time a child has a negative experience of worship, they are more likely to reject the church when they are older. But each time they have a positive experience of worship, they are more likely to make a positive choice for God.

Centuries of worship 

The traditional style of worship that many churches follow today is very different from the patterns of worship we see in the Bible. Adam and Eve walked and talked with God in a garden, surrounded by the sights, sounds, and smells of nature. Abraham worshiped outside; he built altars and on them offered sacrifices. The children of Israel worshiped in a woven and embroidered tabernacle with sights, sounds, smells, feasts, and various activities that involved the children. Jesus sat outside and stood in boats as he told the people short stories about everyday life that children understood, too, such as lost sheep, wedding feasts, and planting seeds. While the children listened to him, they probably picked wildflowers, counted sheep, and chased butterflies. They never sat still for an hour or so on an adult-sized seat that made their legs ache.

Shouting in the temple

Jesus’ heart sank when He walked into the temple. He remembered being in the same place a few years earlier. The merchants and traders were still manipulating the people, still encouraging them to buy their way into His kingdom. For three years he had loved and taught these people. For three years he had tried to show them a better way to live, tried to show them God’s love, and tried to help them focus on the most important things in life and not on the trivial and everyday details that made them look at the dust around their feet rather than the face of God. And they were still focused on the temporal rather than the eternal.

So He cleared the noisy traders out of the temple. Then He sat down, and the people came who needed Him the most. He healed them, forgave them, and set them free, and their hearts filled with happiness.

But the children really noticed what was happening. They were the ones who overflowed with such wonder and praise that they could not contain themselves. They ran, shouted, sang praises, and laughed.

And if the child in your sketch had been born two thousand years ago, he or she would have been the fastest runner and the loudest singer. But Jesus did not catch him or her in His arms and give him or her a good telling off. He did not grumble about the parents behind their backs. Jesus was totally delighted by these exuberant children because, in their innocence and wonder, they understood what was most important, believed in Him, and responded to His ministry with joy and praise.

The adults—including the priests— failed to understand. They grumbled and complained about the children’s “lack of reverence,” unaware that the children were full of wonder and worship, while the adults had lost sight of God’s kingdom.

Jesus’ theology of childhood

It is important to explore Jesus’ theology of childhood, because He has some profound teachings about the role of children in His kingdom. Through Matthew’s narrative, we read some of His most powerful statements about the position of the children in His kingdom:

“At about the same time, the disciples came to Jesus asking, ‘Who gets the highest rank in God’s kingdom?’

“For an answer, Jesus called over a child, whom he stood in the middle of the room, and said, ‘I’m telling you, once and for all, that unless you return to square one and start over like children, you’re not even going to get a look at the kingdom, let alone get in. Whoever becomes simple and elemental again, like this child, will rank high in God’s kingdom. What’s more, when you receive the childlike on my account, it’s the same as receiving me.

“ ‘But if you give them a hard time, bullying or taking advantage of their simple trust, you’ll soon wish you hadn’t. You’d be better off dropped in the middle of the lake with a mill­stone around your neck. Doom to the world for giving these God-believing children a hard time! Hard times are inevitable, but you don’t have to make it worse—and it’s doomsday to you if you do’ ” (Matthew 18:1–7, The Message). These verses help us understand the importance of children in God’s kingdom:

• Children are vitally important in the Christian community. They are central to the life of God’s kingdom, not peripheral to it.
• Jesus does not tell children to be more like adults. He tells adults to be more like children—in their simplicity of faith, wonder, and love.
• Jesus found that children felt totally welcome in His presence. When we welcome children into worship and help them feel special and at ease, we are also welcoming God into our presence.
• Adults need the humility to learn about God’s kingdom from the children in their congregation. They need to think more simply about God and trust Him completely and uncomplicatedly.
• Jesus feels angry when children have experiences that push them away from God’s presence. So, we need to ensure that nothing in our worship experience comes between the children and their relationship with Jesus.

The child’s reality

Look at the picture you drew of a child in your church. Is he or she central to your church or on the periphery? How welcome does he or she feel? What is he or she learning about Jesus by the way the adults in your church interact with him or her? What would he or she tell you about his or her experience of church last week? What would your church have to do differently to put the children in the center? What difference might it make to this child’s relationship with God, and his or her salvation, if you did?

A captive audience?

Every church service should be an amazing evangelistic opportunity. Every week our worship can help children grow their relationship with God, or it can make them feel that God does not care about children, that He is too complex for them to understand, or that He is too perfect and organized for their spontaneity, energy, and unpredict­ability. How does it change the way we worship as a community when we see every church service as an evangelistic event for our own children?

Keep the sketch you drew of the child in your church. Put the sketch on your desk. Whenever you are planning a service, or organizing any activity in your church, think about this child. Try placing him or her in the middle of your plans and look at what you do through his or her eyes. Will he or she feel comfortable, happy, and accepted? What will the children learn about God’s love for them? Will he or she learn that children are the most important people in your church? Will this worship service or church activity bring him or her one step closer to accepting Jesus, or one step further away?

Involving children in worship

Once we start to think outside the box of our traditional worship services, we can find simple and creative ways to involve children in our worship services. The kind of involvement we need to encourage is not simply listening to a children’s story or helping collect the offering. These are helpful, but not as useful for nurturing their spiritual development as active involvement that invites them to be reflective, pray, be filled with wonder and gratitude, listen to the Holy Spirit, and use their creative gifts.

How do you start worshipping with children?

• Pray—God wants to help you create the kind of worship experiences that will win children’s hearts. Ask Him to inspire you with the best ways to reach the children in your church through your worship.
• Reflect—Think about your topic from the perspective of a child in your congregation. Which aspects of your topic are relevant to children? What difference will this worship service make to their relationship with God?
• Wonder—How can you adapt your message, or at least one aspect of the worship, so that children will find the service memorable and enjoyable?
• Plan ahead—Involving children takes extra time and thought. Planning ahead makes this easier to find the resources you need, and it can give you time to prepare children to participate in a way that nurtures their spiritual development.
• Be flexible—Involving children in worship is not always neat and tidy! Be prepared for the unexpected and know how to respond. The most important thing is to keep the child safe—physically, spiritually, and emotionally. So do not blame or shame a child who does not get it quite right.
• Invite feedback—Ask the children what they liked best about theworship service so you can do more of the things they enjoy.
• Celebrate their gifts and strengths and use them in your worship.
• Help the children to share God’s love by serving others.
• Keep going—Gather a supportive team to help you, read books about all-age worship, search the Internet, and do not give up. You are planting seeds that may take time to grow.

Practical ideas

Churches that involve children often choose to sing one child-friendly song each week. Provide a selection of good-quality percussion instruments so the children can enjoy praising God.

Plan your scriptures several weeks ahead so that a small group of children can practice and read the Bible verses as a voice choir or narrative. Or invite one child to work with an adult mentor. They can study the scripture together to help the child understand what they are reading. Maybe they can find objects to illustrate the Bible passage, design a creative PowerPoint presentation, or dress as a Bible character to present the scripture.

Make space for children to bring their thanks, praises, prayer requests, and answers to prayer. Let them see that their prayer concerns are important to you. Pair them with a trusted adult so they can share a prayer request with each other every week. Ask a family to offer the main prayer and involve each of their children in performing different aspects of the prayer. Invite children to bring something to church that represents what they want to thank God for and to place it on a special display table at the side of the platform.

Children can decorate special envelopes to collect the offering. Or someone can hand children “thank You!” slips and ask them to write a thank-You note to God for something special that has happened during the week. These can be collected with the offering and several can be chosen to read during the offering prayer. The thank-You slips can be arranged on a bulletin board for people to read after the service.

Try telling the children’s story as part of the sermon, to keep their attention. Show appropriate video clips that help children understand the message of the sermon.¹ Involve them in physical illustrations and mini experiments. Or give them something quiet and meaningful to do during the sermon, such as inviting them to make posters that tell the world about God’s love. Display the posters immediately after the service.

After a sermon on the theme of the lost sheep, one congregation made a circle around the children. They blessed them and promised to look after them, like good shepherds. Children could also hand out blessing cards that they have decorated. The greeters at the door can place their hands on each child as they leave, and say a short blessing or prayer over them.

Try organizing a creative, spiritual activity for families to enjoy after church. After a service about heaven, we drew a road map of the heavenly city—basically three gold streets running north and south and three running east and west to give us 12 gates. Then we provided the families with folded cardstock houses and plenty of glue and sparkly craft materials. They worked together to create heavenly mansions and placed them on the shiny streets.

Create opportunities for children to work alongside experienced adults to make banners, posters, props, displays, decorated offering envelopes, program cover designs, etc. Remember tha the process of wondering, thinking, and creating is much more important to the child’s spiritual development than the quality of the end product.²

Yes, Jesus showed us how special children were to Him. Should we not do the same?