When we had to close all the extra programs down at my church for the COVID-19 pandemic, we tried to get creative about including children in our worship services. Both my pastors at separate times invited me to consider adding a children’s sermon to the worship service that most families attended, and even though I consider myself a strong advocate of including children in worship, I was hesitant. I saw a lot of challenges with doing children’s sermons well and not a lot of benefits. But, desperate times call for desperate measures, and before long, I found myself preparing a weekly children’s sermon and really enjoying it.
What is a Children’s Sermon?
Children’s sermons are a specific time in the worship service where a pastor or other leader in the church gives a message to children specifically. Generally not lasting longer than about five minutes, these brief sermons have fallen out of favor in churches where children worship in a separate environment. In smaller churches and churches where children join for worship, it is much more common to find a children’s sermon still a part of the worship rhythm.
Challenges with Children’s Sermons
But even in many churches where children are integrated into the main worship service, you won’t find a children’s sermon. Like I did, some ministry leaders see and struggle with the obvious and not-so-obvious challenges they present. In addition to the fact that many churches don’t have children present in worship, there are challenges to doing this carefully and well. Children can be seen as entertainment, with adults laughing at their answers, ideas or questions. Children are naturally unpredictable and facilitating a time like this takes practice and can get out of hand quickly, especially with a leader who is not familiar with children. Finally, there aren’t a lot of resources available for creating good, high-quality children’s sermons.
New Opportunities
In addition to the challenges, however, adding a special time for children to the worship order presents valuable opportunities. Incorporating a children’s sermon gives a chance for the whole congregation to engage childlike faith together, elevates the place of children in your congregation, and provides a model for parents and other adults for how to talk about faith with kids.
When this time is envisioned not just with child-level content, but child-oriented faith engagement, it can be instructive and formational for the whole congregation. According to John Westerhoff’s styles of faith, experienced faith lies at the heart of everyone’s faith, and it still needs to be nurtured throughout life. Engaging skills like wondering, questioning, imagination, and playfulness during this time not only meet children in their areas of strength, but give the whole congregation an opportunity to become like children as they engage their faith in childlike ways.
Making Space for Children
Children’s sermons are also an opportunity to elevate children and give them a safe place to share their learning & ideas. Intentionally making space in weekly worship to engage faith in childlike ways through a children’s message or a time for children is a concrete way to demonstrate the value of children and childlike ways of engaging faith. It can also be a formational experience for children and adults alike. Participating in a part of the service that we don’t expect to be “for us” helps us to remember that the body of Christ is beautiful in its diversity.
The physical space children occupy during a children’s time also will shape how your congregation experiences and engages with the time. Will children come to the front row? Sit on the stage? Will the person giving the message join children on their level? If you read a story to children, how will you involve the rest of the congregation? The way you use the physical space will communicate what the time is and who it is for.
Modeling Faith Conversations with Kids
The practice of engaging children in worship also presents an opportunity to model for parents and other adults how to talk faith with kids. While some proponents of the children’s messages suggest that the senior pastor always gives it, I suggest a rotation of people who are practiced at engaging faith with kids and can provide a variety of examples and experiences that kids can connect with and adults can learn from.
Children’s sermons aren't dead, they just need some reviving. Here are three recommendations to consider as you implement them in your context:
- Focus on stories over object lessons: Of the few resources available for children’s sermons, many focus on object lessons. However, young children struggle to connect with object lessons, and they often do more to muddy the waters than a clear, brief story. Because it’s hard to give good, nuanced moral instruction in five minutes, instead, focus on telling a portion of a story from the Bible. Invite children and adults to imagine themselves in the story, ask a thoughtful question, or consider what the story reminds them of.
- Help people of all ages understand basics of faith: Children's messages also offer an excellent opportunity to help children understand and explore other parts of the worship service, explain or expand on song lyrics, seasons of the church year, sacraments, or other basics of the faith.
- Create spaces for children’s learning to be shared and honored by the congregation: A time for children can also be an opportunity to invite children to share their learning and life with God with the rest of the congregation. (It’s very important that as you do this, you also guard the vulnerability of children–imagine what it would be like to share your honest thoughts and feelings with a room full of people bigger than you, and be laughed at.) The way leaders engage with what children share will do much to shape how the congregation interacts with the children’s contributions.
Conclusion
Children’s sermons are an opportunity to speak directly to the children and allow them to engage with God in ways that are most natural to them. It also presents an opportunity to teach the whole congregation the basics of the faith and to give them an opportunity to nurture faith in childlike ways. They also provide an opportunity to bring playfulness into your church’s practice of faith and worship and to encourage participation.
Though I began giving children’s sermons reluctantly, they quickly became a favorite part of my job. I loved collaborating with the pastor to think about how the sermon stories could be shared in an imaginative way. It was so fun to try out various playful spiritual practices as a congregation, and kids perked up every time they saw me up front. I wasn’t surprised when adults came and told me how much they loved that part of the service every week.