Children’s Sermons — Not Just for Children
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.