One of the initial requests upon my hire as a children’s minister some thirteen years ago was to begin the process of starting a children’s church during our Sunday morning worship time. There is always discussion on the pros and cons of a segregated time of worship for children, however this is not the aim of these posts. I will say, we have regular times of combined worship for kids and their families including three months off during the summer which I believe is important.
In this week’s post I want to talk about the format I have adopted at my church. Our children’s church is for kids in Kindergarten through the Fourth grade. Over the last several years we have tried a variety of things bringing us to our current format. We begin right after Bible class, choosing not to dismiss kids from the “adult” worship time. A quick overview of our service includes a time of worship through song, communion, a lesson time, a time of review and sometimes a game.
We are an acapella church, and typically I lead the songs myself. I regularly bring a child to two up to help me lead the song, getting several kids up throughout the service to lead. We sing a variety of songs including large motion, actions songs to slower paced, praise songs, including some “adult” songs that the kids love. During our song time, we serve communion. We celebrate the Lord’s Supper each week, and so we have different kids serve the Christians in the room.
We have tried a variety of methods to present the lesson each week, and have settled on a combination of things these days. We utilize live drama and puppets for a large segment of our lesson presentation. Typically we have three skits that mix puppets and live actors on stage in a thematic presentation. In between the skits, I will help kids connect the skits to the Bible lesson with scripture, gospel illusions, object lesson, student involved skits and object lesson-puppets from Amaze Healing Wings. Repetition is critical in teaching children, so I strive to present the lesson in several simple, to the point methods.
Following the lesson time, typically we have a short time of review. Sometimes we divide the kids and play a game show-style review using a projected, digital scoreboard with team names, lives scores and sound effects. Other times, I may simple ask kids questions about the skits, the Bible stories and draw kids into conversations that will help them apply the lesson to their lives.
On the few times that our service runs shorter than the adult service, we may sing a few more songs, watch a video on the lesson topic or play a game. Now games are not my strong suit, but we’ve played a few games over the years that are fairly simple and the kids enjoy. Our most used game is called “Elimination.” I call out things that someone might do and anyone who has done it must sit down. The last person standing is the winner and we start over.
Over the years we have tried a variety of themes. Some years ago, we had four themes and each week of the month was a different theme. We had four teams, one for each week of the month and they did the same theme each month. We did that for two years. Last year we moved to one theme, with a story line that ran all year long. However, at the end of the year, we were all pretty tired of the theme, even as fun as it was. This year, we are changing themes about every six weeks. We did a superhero theme first and are currently doing a theme called “It’s a King Thing” using some great royal family puppets from Melissa and Doug as we focus on Godly leaders from the Kings of Israel, how to lead by example and ending with Jesus, the King of Kings.
That’s our children’s worship service in a nutshell. Next week’s topic will be on using volunteers in your children’s worship.
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