How We Worship with our Kids – The dreaded sermon time

When Pete and I started keeping our kids with us during church, I knew it was not really realistic at 8 and 5 (now 9 and 6) to be able to sit nicely, listen and learn something from the sermon.  I wasn’t worried about the praise portion of the service.  They love to sing.  I was mostly just worried about the sermon.  They don’t love to sit. It is just not in Emily's nature.  I knew I needed to figure out something for the girls to actively “DO”.  Instead of making the focus of my amateur “worship training program” a long list of things not to do during the sermon, I wanted to give the girls something they were supposed to do. 

(Now that I read my thoughts on this, I think it is possible that this idea came from dog training tv show I watch.  Well please don’t tell my girls that.  But it works!)

So my solution was church journals.   I have long been a sermon note taker.  If I visit a church and they have one of those fill in the blank sermon inserts, I am ridiculously happy.  For many years my sermon notes have been scratched out on the corners of bulletins, but then later thrown away.  When the girls started joining us for service, we all got journals. 

The girls were given a few options to do in their journals:

1.       Draw a picture of what you hear (for Emily,6)

2.       Copy part or all of the scripture reading

3.       Write down things you don’t understand

4.       Write down what you do understand (mostly for Sarah, 9)

After church, we get out our books to discuss what we wrote on the way to lunch or at lunch.  The motivation of knowing that you lead our family discussion when we are talking about what you wrote, has been Emily’s big motivation.  Being the little one, she loves to lead the conversation, and somewhere along the line she figured out that if she only wrote one or two things, her turn went by fast. 

This is Emily’s entry from a few weeks ago.  The sermon was on the 23^rd psalm.  She is currently in a phase of writing down words she doesn’t know.  This has led us into great lunch conversations. According to Emily, this list includes: examine, grief, renew, restore, rod, staff, transform, dwell, pursued, gratitude. 

This is Sarah’s entry from the same sermon.

Sarah tends to either write out the scripture if it is one she doesn’t know it.  But if it is familiar like this one, it is easier for her to follow the sermon and write down sermon points. 

I love that we have a running record of what we are learning each week.  I know it will be a treasure to look back at at the end of the year, or in years to come.  I hope if you’re looking for something active for your kids to do during worship this idea is helpful.  I would love to hear other ways you may be engaging your kids in your Sunday worship service.