Object Lessons for Adults

Gospel for this Sunday (June 3, 2012). John 3:1-17

“The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

Object: With children, precut a paper pinwheel and pin it to a straw. With adults, plug in an electric fan.

Talking points: Wind is a wonder. On a hot summer day, we turn our faces toward the wind for relief. Come winter, we shield our faces behind our mufflers. We know there is power in the wind and we try to harness it. We try to create comfort in our environment by adding air conditioning or directing fans. We build windmills on top of our hills to channel its power. Now and then, when storms blast and break the limbs of our trees or tear off the roofs of our firmly constructed homes, we are reminded that the wind is more powerful than we are.

Wind is a challenge to us. There is little we can do to control it — but still we try! “So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”

Nicodemus joined Jesus in the night on the roof garden, just trying to make sense of things. He was an old man, a respected authority on scripture. New ideas were turning his world upside down like a tornado. The rooftop garden was a good meeting place, away from public scrutiny. But in the hot Palestine night, it was probably a place where Jesus hoped Nicodemus would feel the gentle—or not-so-gentle—breeze of the Holy Spirit.

Today’s Alban Institute Roundtable discussion again references the book, Scattering Seeds, by Stephen Chapin Garner, pastor, and Jerry Thornell, layman, of  UCC, Norwell, near Boston. It is interesting that the Alban article lists only the pastor as author, leaving off the name of the lay co-author.

That’s what this book is all about, the changing roles of pastors and lay members. 2×2 will be reviewing it later this week.

Meanwhile, today’s discussion focuses on a favorite topic of 2×2’s: children in worship. This was the biggest surprise as our Ambassadors visited 41 churches in the last 18 months. We thought the Lutheran tradition was to have children worshiping side by side with their parents, deeply involved in the communal worship experience. We found that the overwhelming number of Lutheran churches dismiss children from worship before the Scriptures are read. In one church we visited, the fairly healthy attendance at worship dropped almost in half as a surprising number of adults accompanied the children out of the sanctuary.

The findings of this book support our concern. The Norwell experience found that the inclusion of children in worship created a more vibrant youth presence. There was more continuity between childhood, teen years and adulthood. We thought this was always understood among Lutherans!

Children in worship are important to the life of the congregation and continuity of Christian family. You do not exclude children from the family dinner table because the conversation is “over their heads” or not of interest to children. Children become interested in the concerns of the adults in their lives by listening. They learn the rules of social interaction by watching the give and take. The day will come all too quickly when the young child adds his or her two cents to a topic no one realized was noticed by the youngest. All heads may turn for a moment, but the conversation will go on . . . and grow.

Adults benefit. They have a chance to connect with their children and learn about their concerns. They begin to see the world through the eyes of a new generation.

Similarly, this book advocates for a stronger educational experience for adults. 2×2 suspects this is vital to healthy congregational life.

Redeemer, our parent church, followed this advice. Children were very active in worship and often volunteered when they thought they were ready for a new role. Children led prayer. Middle schoolers often told the children’s sermon story. They shared church leadership. They sang and accompanied music. When they came back from church camp, they insisted on teaching the songs they had learned to the congregation. They acolyted, they took the offering and read lessons. Our church, like Norwell, was experiencing significant growth.

Sadly, they have been locked out of their church for a significant part of their childhood.

A fundamental problem facing the Church today is educating members as well as the community. Who are Christians? What do we believe? What difference can we make?

The Sunday School is no longer efficient or particularly popular and is generally seen as a service to the very young. We’ve all seen the kids dropped off so mom and dad can grab a cup of coffee and read the paper in peace.

Vacation Bible Schools have shortened their offerings and limited their outreach— again, to the very young.

Many children are gone from church life by the traditional age for Confirmation training. Even large churches have fairly small confirmation classes.

Children’s sermons have become popular over the last few decades, perhaps to fill this void. Our Ambassadors have observed quite a few. In most cases, they addressed only the very youngest children. Interestingly, the exceptions — where older children were involved — were some of the better sermon offerings. In one suburban church we visited, children as old as 12 or 13 joined the gathering of children. In another, led by a lay member, older children were enlisted to act out part of the sermon. The message of both sermons can be remembered weeks and months later. The ones where the pastor spoke awkwardly to unfocussed preschoolers, while adults giggled at the children’s responses, are long forgotten. (No wonder older children don’t participate!)

The concept of a children’s sermon can help fill the educational void in the Church. Try enlisting everyone in the congregation to take part in the message.

Here are some suggestions for how this can take place:

• Teach the chorus of a new hymn to the children. Ask the adults to join in. Then sing the hymn together before the service ends.
• Have some hands on activities that involves adults. In one such sermon, the children were asked to look around the sanctuary to identify someone they trusted. That person then took part in a trust exercise that illustrated the gospel message of the day.
• Pose a question to the children and ask them to find the answer from someone in the congregation. You might even suggest someone they can ask. This helps children expand their knowledge of other people in their worshiping community.
• Have an older child accompany a simple song on guitar. The children will see themselves in that role in a few years.
• Have an older child tell a story or lead a prayer.

Working together on a children’s focus in worship can become a project for your teens. Learning about faith will quickly become part of the fabric of your congregation, regardless of age.

This approach takes a little more time — not much. But it is time well spent. It will help create learning as a life-long Christian habit.

The answer to this question is whoever can do the best job. Sometimes it is the pastor. Often pastors have a difficult time relating to children. Here is a video that illustrates that a congregation can find the best person to deliver a children’s message in the most unsuspected places. Enjoy! It’s a gem!

The story of Jonah from Corinth Baptist Church on Vimeo.

Redeemer has a passion for children’s ministry and had developed a lively interactive forum within our worship service geared to the young as well as the captive adult audience.

We tried the old object lesson format, the foundation of many messages for children. We discovered that they do not hit home with children. Children think concretely and object lessons rely on the ability to think abstractly. We abandoned them in favor of a more hands-on, interactive approach.

Our Ambassador visits have taught us other approaches. Here are some observations.

1. Overall there are very few children in church and fewer tweens and teens. Fewer than a third of the churches have a children’s sermon.

2. When there is a small group of children, almost every congregation dismisses children after the opening of the service.

3. Pastors at times seem awkward talking to the children and then the children take over. They have a good time and the adults enjoy the break, but the value as “sermon” is weak.

4. A couple of the pastors did more formal presentations for the children, using puppets and scripts. The messages were, in each case, very well prepared. Children and adults were attentive observers. There was no interaction.

5. The object lesson is still the fallback position for children’s sermons and is usually the focus of published materials for children’s sermons.

Our visit to Trinity, Fort Washington, was different. Pastor Jim Goodyear used the object lesson even though no little children were present. A Little Brown Bag object lesson came at the end of the service before dismissal. A member had placed an object in the bag and waited for Pastor Jim to find religious meaning in the random surprise. We’ve seen the same technique used with children who found delight in trying to stump the pastor, but the message fashioned for them probably went right over their heads. In this case, the pastor got it right — object lessons are for adults! The congregation loved the Little Brown Bag and Pastor Jim drew several poignant observations from the little knit cap he found hidden that morning. (Each stitch was made with love.) His point hit home as the congregation was embarking on a project to knit watchcaps for the Seaman Center! Good job, Fort Washington!