In many areas of church life, we’re good at stepping back and auditing what we’re doing. Children’s worship is not one of these areas. Here, we’re simply grateful for what we’ve got going and the volunteers we have. If we are blessed to have musicians or a worship band who don’t mind children being present in the services, we are even more grateful. But let’s not allow the good to get in the way of the great: let’s aim for God’s best in our worshipping communities. We want children to learn from us, but we need to learn from children too.
As seems to be a recurring theme for us as contributors in the children’s work community, we need to go back to the start and ask some key questions in regard to children and worship: where are you at? What are you currently doing? Where would you like to be? What’s your dream? What would you like to see?
When I think about children and worship, my primary motivation is to make space for children to encounter God in whatever way that looks like (because it might not be the same as mine), and for God to encounter the child who looks for him, to him, or to know more about him. Rebecca Nye’s simple definition of ‘spirituality’ is, ‘God’s ways of being with children and children’s ways of being with God,’ adding: ‘This definition helps us to remember that children’s spirituality starts with God – it is not something adults have to initiate. God and children have ways of being together because this is how God created them.’
Could this be our starting point? ‘God and children have ways of being together.’ What does that look like?
Ask some of the children and some of their parents: how do they like worshipping God (remembering that this might not just be about singing songs)? What experience do they have of this outside of our Sunday gatherings?
OUR SEPARATE WAYS – THE ROOT OF THE PROBLEM
My observation is that we sometimes model the sung worship with children in our services and primary school assemblies: catchy tunes, the occasional silly word, maybe some foot stamping and lots of opportunity for percussion, but surely there is more than this? Could we reflect on what we do in light of that definition of spirituality, ‘God and children have ways of being together?’
We often see these three categories of children in our churches:
- Toddlers dancing and jumping along to the music without a care in the world.
- Unhappy looking young children just above crèche age clinging onto their parents.
- Older, primary-aged children nudging each other with slight disdain on their faces as they watch an exuberant worshipper of the uncool variety. Either that or they are checking an electronic device of some kind.
The keen non-toddler children who jump up to help with actions are nearly always the minority. So our services often try to cope with these three kinds of children by:
- Making sure a fast-paced, happy song is included.
- Making the altogether time short - even VERY short.
- Encouraging the unhappy faces to exit as soon as possible with a cheery exhortation for a great time ‘in their own groups’.
We assume that children will naturally become worshippers (whatever that looks like for us). When they are very small, that’s easy; they find it easy to unashamedly sing and dance and, dare I say it, look cute ‘down the front’. But we need to do more because we know that this willingness to dance and sing with abandon does not continue as the child grows older. There’s a place for learning more about experiencing God in and through worship: it’s that journey called discipleship. We take new Christians who are adults on it, so why do we assume children innately know how to grow as worshippers? Frighteningly, a 2006 study carried out by the Barna Group in the USA revealed that 69 per cent of 13-yearolds who profess to be Christians say they have never experienced a sense of God’s presence.
THE WHOLE COMMUNITY
A child’s immediate setting – the home, the classroom, the church – is called a microsystem. It is proposed by secular developmental psychologists that children grow and develop in all their microsystems under the influence of all of the people within it. Cynthia Neal, a Christian educationalist, states that the microsystems contain the building blocks of faith development. Ongoing, lifelong commitment to Christ is made or broken in these microsystems, so a negative experience in one affects the others. This means that every single one of us in a church, whatever our attitudes and actions towards children, is part of the church family microsystem. The way we react towards children’s presence has an influence on them. While this could have negative connotations, let’s have a quick look at how awesome this could be by considering two biblical testimonies - stories of how the faith community’s attitudes to worship greatly influenced young worshippers.
In the Old Testament, children were not to be taught and instructed in a purposeless way, but to play their part in maintaining faithfulness to the covenant. They were members of the team. In 2 Chronicles 20, during King Jehoshaphat’s reign, an enemy advanced towards the city, causing fear among the people. A fast was proclaimed and all the people of Judah came together to seek the Lord. King Jehoshaphat cried out to the Lord on behalf of the people and ‘all the men of Judah, with their wives and children and little ones, stood there before the Lord’. Then the Spirit came on Jahaziel. He brought a message from the Lord to say not to fear, and not to be dismayed or discouraged. All the people (including the little ones) fell down in worship before the Lord. This was a dynamic, powerful act of worship and I think there would be little doubt that those 13-year-olds sensed the presence of God as they sought the Lord alongside the adults. This was a life and death situation; they saw the Lord’s great deliverance in winning the battle for their kingdom. What a story! They would carry forward their experience, in song and words, to their own children and grandchildren.
There is another example of this in 2 Kings 5. The little Israelite servant girl has been forcibly removed from her own family and is now in a foreign land, serving the wife of the powerful army commander, Naaman. He contracts the deadly disease leprosy and she is filled with pity for him: ‘She said to her mistress, “If only my master would see the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy.”’
This young girl knows about the prophet. She knows that God has power to heal. She knows that God can work miracles, because she has seen them and sung of them, been told of them. And she carries that into her situation, into her everyday life. Let’s allow time for telling the stories of what God has done in our worship gatherings, through ‘open mic’ or ‘share from the chair’ testimony times.
A NEW WAY – TOWARDS SOME SOLUTIONS
In his book, Worshipping Trinity, Robin Parry lays out some challenging thoughts for adults. He asserts that our experience of sung worship teaches us more knowledge about God than listening to a sermon. This is especially true for wide-eyed children observing the furrowed brows and crossed arms of some present in the community of faith. They are little sponges, soaking up the theology in our songs and the atmosphere of the room, and they can usually do pretty good impressions of us. Ask a ten-year-old boy to show you what Mrs Smith sitting in the second row does during worship and I’m pretty sure he will be able to!
TEACHING IT!
In my experience, here is something that really works:
- Teaching children about the meaning of worship.
- Teaching adults about the meaning of worship.
- Teaching and lead both to experience this together.
- Teaching children that they are part of something bigger than themselves; they are part of the ‘team’.
- Teaching adults about our communal responsibility to model something seen in the Bible.
How do we do this? Use gifted teachers who can plumb the deep truths in scripture yet present it simply. Provide take-home information for families. Get people who relate to children to spend time applying these truths in some of the children-only times. For example, we often teach about the cross and what Jesus’ death achieved, but the most remarkable transformation I have seen in children’s worshipping lives was when they began to understand what it means for us that the curtain was torn in two at Jesus’ death.
They had heard worship leaders talk about ‘entering into God’s presence’ but didn’t really know what it was until we taught about this, made space for questions about the ‘whys’ of this, and worshipped together in the light of Jesus’ sacrifice. Some children simply bowed down on the floor, others went to dance at the back, some sang with their eyes closed for the first time, drinking the scene in: Jesus on the cross, paying the price for our sin so that we could draw close to God.
Where are we at in worshipping altogether? I think some of us might prefer not to answer that because – to focus on the positive – we’re not bad at doing worship separately. Don’t let what you are good at prevent you from trying new things.
PLAYING IT (LIVE!)
One of the great things about working on our corporate worship in church is that live musicians can really help capture something of spontaneity and flexibility when the targeted worshippers (children) start losing attention. We have experienced times where we have stopped playing and singing, all sat down quietly on the floor and had (almost) silence with some children praying, drawing or listening to what the Spirit might be saying to them. This was in the context of a planned ‘worship time’ where the aim had been to do 15 minutes of singing, while being sensitive to where God was leading us. What an experience to model and pass on to those younger than us.
Worship leaders don’t even need to use (sharp intake of breath) …children’s songs! Choose and use hymns and songs that embody a sense of the presence and majesty of God. If you are not sure what those might be, ask a worship leader to help you. I’ve seen what can happen when children ‘get’ what it is to worship. I’ll never forget the times when children’s singing has become louder and louder before turning into applause and shouting out praises to God. Or times when it’s quiet but one or two children start a song or a refrain and the room swells with praise as we all join in. It’s beautiful, wonderful, inspiring, breathtaking, joyful and challenging to be in the room.
RISKING IT!
Whether you favour making changes to corporate worship as an all-age community, or focus on children-only worship times with targeted teaching and a thoughtful approach to songs used, any change embodies risk. No matter what the cost, above all else, make space for children not to be part of the 69 per cent but to have dynamic encounters with God. These are the things that mark our walk with God. Only you can work out what that looks like by trying new things and taking risks with a heart that’s malleable. We owe it to those younger than us to be left in no doubt that they have engaged with a powerful God.
