A Children’s Worship Service to Train Our Children to Listen

by Pastor Victor Chen

Just about a year ago, I started a blog series, “What are my Children Supposed to Do During Sunday Service?” Children had grown accustomed to school, Sunday school and church on the screen. As a result, focus and attention became challenges as children began returning to services in-person.

Early on, we tried having pastors give a “keyword” for children to track in the message and keep them engaged. This served as a “teaser” for the sermon in hopes of building anticipation. (Remember how children tracked how many times the “keyword” was mentioned?)

We started developing our own “Children’s Bulletins” to match with the specific sermon that Sunday, including the passage, title and series theme. Activities like mazes, word searches and coloring sheets were provided to help children engage with the passage.

We also developed a “Church Notebook” with blank sermon notes for our older children 3rd-6th grade to note the key points of the sermon and the key idea or question.

All of that has led to the launch of a “Children’s Worship Service” every 4th Sunday of the month beginning in January for children 0-6th grade.

But I like having the children join us for worship service.

And they will, for the beginning portion of the service. Following the opening two songs and the scripture reading, children will be excused to the back of the sanctuary, where they will be escorted to the MPR for the “Children’s Worship Service”.

Why is the service for older children? They can stay quiet and sit still in service.

The aim of the “Children’s Worship Service” is not to keep our children quiet and sit still in service. The aim of the service and the aim of children in any worship service, is to get them to listen. We see in the Bible that “faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17). We have a great opportunity to train our older children to listen attentively, take notes and engage with the message and God’s Word as it relates to their life.

How do you expect to keep a toddler and a 6th grader engaged from the same message?

My message will have the same title, be from the same passage, have the same keyword and the same key points as the big Lord’s Day service. My expectation for the young children is for them to be able to identify the keyword. The older the children, the more they will be expected to track with the message. Following my message, there will be age-specific breakout groups with age-specific activities ranging from coloring sheets to small group discussion to help the children engage with the message from God’s Word in their particular context.

It’s only once a month? I need it every week!

Because a service like this requires a lot of volunteers, we will begin offering the service once a month. As more volunteers commit to helping, we can expand to twice a month, 3x a month to eventually every week. The hope is that we would have enough volunteers to form a rotation where everybody volunteers once a month.

For more information about our upcoming Children’s Worship Service or how you can help, please contact Pastor Victor at vchen@evergreensgv.org