children — Clayfire Curator

Inviting Children to Worship

by Guest Blogger | November 18, 2011

This post was written by Connie Lannom.

Recently our church has gone through a series focused on spiritual disciplines. One of the weeks we focused on worship and the different forms of worship. This is a familiar conversation to our students (elementary aged children) as we often encourage them to worship not just by singing. We want them to learn that there are so many ways they can engage praising God.

One of our favorites is to roll out a huge piece of butcher paper or a canvas, art supplies, and pose to students a question or statement. This particular week they were asked to finish the statement “Thank You, God, for…” If you want to get a clearer picture of how much children know or understand about God, this is a great activity.

Each time we do this I’m humbled and in awe of how God speaks to children. Their statements included: Thank you God… that you are perfect, that you still perform miracles, that my parents don’t make me eat peas, that you sent your son to die because I sin a lot sometimes, because you helped my parents love each other again…

Freedom in worship is truly portrayed by children when they are worshiping as a community. Some of the best examples of this that I’ve experienced have been at camps or Vacation Bible School. In these settings you see a mass of kids, doing hand motions, singing, dancing, and worshiping with nothing hindering them.

Hmmm, this sounds familiar. Mark 10:13-15 (NIV) says: When Jesus saw this, He was indignant. He said to them, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.”

I love the week of Vacation Bible School for the unhindered worship alone. It’s kind of funny because the Sunday after VBS when the kids are in “Big Church” with the adults, they become more reserved. We’ve noticed that if you add adults who won’t engage in a childlike manner or at minimum embrace the atmosphere, you see kids pull back from the freedom they have felt all week long.

Often times, I’ve seen congregations invite the children into “Big Church” to worship with the adults. They are invited to participate and worship the way adults do. Meaning, come children, conform to our stuffy, serious, face-forward form of standing and maybe clapping. Hear me that I find high value in children being included in the “Big Church” gathering, but, I think our mentality needs to shift a bit.

It’s not about inviting them to come and worship the way we do, but actually about truly inviting children to come and be children. Invite them to dance, sing, worship without the inhibitions that we adults sometimes walk into service with. I love that children don’t often care about how the person next to them is worshiping. They are just excited to be next to their buddy and getting the freedom to celebrate what God is doing in their lives and who He is.

We also need to hold with this the tension that examples of worship are caught not taught. Children watch us in everything we do. We may not feel like our participation (or lack of) affects those around us, but I’d say our examples of how we passionately pursue God are so contagious.

Children watch us express our deep gratitude, joy, pain, peace, love, struggles, and excitement, really, all of life. I can clearly recall as a child watching my parents struggle with the passing of my brother. It was by watching them process this that I learned to deal with grief. I believe we have a responsibility to be authentic followers of Christ that appropriately invite children into the journey of learning to worship God with our whole selves.

The opportunity to worship in the midst of children is what I think heaven will be like. I don’t think we will be so focused on caring what others around us think. So for now, I pray we will give ourselves permission to worship our Heavenly Father with all of our heart, strength, and mind… like children do!

Text and Images © Connie Lannom

Connie Lannom is the Elementary Ministries pastor at NewSong Church in San Dimas, California. Whenever Connie is around children, she possesses a contagious energy. Every day, she boasts her appreciation to work alongside such an incredible volunteer team. Connie has worked in children’s and youth ministry since 1993. Her passion is to see families pursue Christ together and be transformed. She recently launched a new ministry called “the Attic,” which reaches out to children who have experienced extreme loss. It’s a place for children and students to come to receive care and support through their season of grief. She also helps people to find healing and comfort in Christ through her additional role as overseer of Community Care. Connie has her B.A. in Human Development from Azusa Pacific University.

Categories: Formation

Someone Said

by Linda Parriott | November 18, 2011

[One] practice for effective confirmation includes opportunities for youth to develop competencies through service and leadership. The main place that happens is in worship. Confirmands can help change the liturgical colors on the altar (while learning and reflecting on the Christian liturgical calendar), or teach children about the symbols in the sanctuary, or serve bread during Communion, or play the djembe in the praise band, or even memorize a brief parable to present as part of the Gospel readings. Eventually they can help plan worship itself. Although I don’t recommend having them plan their own confirmation service (a true rite of passage concludes with the community welcoming you into the circle, not you welcoming yourself), they can help plan next year’s service in addition to other Sundays or services throughout the year. Needless to say, the more opportunities they are given to serve and lead, the more likely they will fulfill their commitment to being in worship every week!

In addition to developing competencies in worship, confirmands can be invited to pick an area of service to which they will commit for the year after they are confirmed. Such service could include volunteering in the nursery, helping in the local soup kitchen, visiting shut-ins with their mentor, or participating in all that goes into a mission trip. By committing to continued involvement in ministry, newly confirmed youth are held accountable for the significant step they have taken in their Christian journey. And their full place in the life of the congregation is solidified. Involving youth in the life of the church in this way requires delegating oversight of their participation to other leaders, who may themselves need to be trained in how to nurture youth into those roles. But the payoff can be fantastic: the church shows it is not just performing lip service when it tells youth that they are full members of the body. And youth are less likely to drift away when they feel competent and needed.

Sarah Arthur, “Youth Ministry, Reclaiming the Art of Confirmation,” Generation Rising: A Future with Hope for The United Methodist Church, Andrew C. Thompson, ed. (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2011), pp. 108.

Categories: Someone Said

Spiritual Community: 18 and Over Only Please

by Jodi-Renee Adams | November 17, 2011

It’s funny the things we take for granted.

I had a consulting contract with a local Big Church and set a Sunday to attend their morning worship services so I could get an overview on things. A good friend, not estranged from GOD though vocally distant from “organized religion,” decided to attend with me—probably in the hopes of a free lunch afterwards. Of course, I didn’t expect him to participate and I was prepared for the cynical facial expressions he could compose like so much well-placed furniture. What I wasn’t prepared for was his increasingly nervous scanning of the room over the course of the first ten minutes of songs. As the energy (and the volume) in the room continued to escalate, he turned to me and grabbed my arm, seeming a little freaked out. “Where have all the children gone?”

I almost laughed out loud. Of course the childless sanctuary seemed bizzare to my never-been-to-Big-Church friend. When we entered the large building, there were children appearing magically around corners and from practically underneath the doughnut table. There were gaggles of pre-adolescents entrenched beneath alcoves and under the decorative silk trees. Baby cries and baby-babble bounced around the high ceilings. Then we entered the dark, high-tech space of the auditorium and voila. Vanished. Not a little person in sight.

Somewhere along the way, we decided that Big Community worship had no place in Big Church. We have programs for kids, for tweens, for pre-teens, for adolescents, for college “kids.” And once the family shows up at church, they wave goodbye to each other and the under-18s disappear into brightly colored and “age-friendly” rooms while the parents are absorbed into the throng of adults in the sanctuary until the service is done when everyone is reunited, rejuvenated, and needs-met-happy. What does this teach our children about the community of faith? Ah, log in my own eye—what does it reinforce in my own experience and expectations of the Body of Christ?

My friend, with his refreshing lack of cultural associations, put his finger on something poignant. There is something bizzare, alien, and almost life-draining about a “community gathering” that is devoid of its children and young people. All his “BBCA sci-fi” jokes aside, I think that he saw into a schism that we might have inadvertently, and with the best of intentions, reinforced.

Our attempts to “train our children up in the way they should go” means we have linked arms with a Western culture that tailors everything to our needs–whether they be perceived or actual. One of those needs was to make Christianity fun and relevant to kids; and one (maybe unintentional though it’s a complaint the nursery-free church hears a bit) was to remove the distractions a.k.a. children from worship. So it got me wondering: What are the actual needs of children and even the whole community when it comes to the worship gathering?

Programming cannot replace relationship and experience in the formation that takes place in a child (and in the community represented in the metaphor). Somewhere along the line, we decided that children can’t worship in the same way or through the same means as adults. And yet these kids become young people in the church who don’t understand why the faith community matters, why Eucharist nurtures, or even how to pray. When Church fails to meet their perceived needs, it ceases to become relevant. And so the cycle continues on and on.

When the children disappear from community worship–scuttled off like so many miniature Quasimodos–it implies something about our understanding of community. Of worship. Of GOD.

The plates are shifting underground. Conversations need to be had. The next generation of the Church may depend on it. But no pressure…

Image: Communion at Ecclesia, Denver, © Stephen Proctor

Categories: Formation

Curiouser and Curiouser

by Mandy Smith | November 16, 2011

Have you heard about “Unschooling”? This new approach (or perhaps a reversion to a very old approach) to education allows the child’s interests to lead the learning process. The idea is that if a child is fascinated with, for example, horses, they can pursue their curiosity in any way they like and they will eventually be motivated to learn the fundamentals and other subjects out of their desire to explore their own curiosity about horses.

Anyone who has a child knows that each one comes into the world with a question (or two) they have to answer or a problem that cannot go unsolved. For my son, it’s a practical problem like “Is it better for something to be strong or flexible? Where is the point at which something I build can be both?” and for my daughter it’s more grand and esoteric, along the lines of “If I look long enough, could I find the answers to all of life’s questions? Could there be one truth which covers everything I could know?” On some level, even as toddlers, they explored these questions through stories and play and I expect that, as they mature, they’ll continue to explore them through their fields of reading, study and work.

Every adult who has the opportunity to grow close to a small child will, at some point, be astonished by what they’re capable of. Not that all children are amazing at all things, but that all children are born with some spark of creativity or ingenuity which allows them to make observations with amazing clarity or ask questions which reveal unexpected depth. After several years of living with small people and being surprised by their capabilities, I decided to change my expectations and to see that, while they may not yet be able to harness or express their insights, children have innate curiosity, playfulness, creativity and purity which cut through all that clouds our adult minds.

In many ways this is how Jesus saw and communicated—with unclouded eyes, not childish but childlike in his quest for purity and truth. We often think we have to add all kinds of colorful, noisy stuff to get kids to think about Jesus and his teachings but there’s a plane on which Jesus and children both naturally exist. Which we, as adults, would do well to find more often.

So worshipping with children doesn’t have to be condescending to children. Or to adults. It can begin by finding that place where we’re all longing for the same thing.

Some resources and ideas:

Connect through Emotions and Senses.
In a recent creative worship workshop I passed around a few objects to help the group think about how an object in itself can express something. As they took turns holding a large, fossilized clamshell they shared how it affected them. I was touched by the love I saw in the eyes of these grownups as the textures of this stone returned them to childhood beach-combing adventures. They cradled it in their hands and said “It wants to be held” or “It’s the shape created inside two praying hands.” Prepare items (especially hand-made or natural things) for your worshipers to pass and share what it makes them remember or feel.

Incorporate some of these adult-friendly kid’s books into a story time:
Hey! That’s Not What the Bible Says! and Hey! That’s Not What the Bible Says Too! by Bill Ross tell bible stories but add a silly ending (one of the favorites in our house was the lions putting ketchup on Daniel before they ate him) so that kids can say “Hey! That’s not what the bible says!” and tell the way the story really ended.

Jonah’s Trash . . . God’s Treasure and David and the Trash-Talkin’ Giant by Joel Anderson are like “I-Spy” or “Look-Alikes” books. The illustrations, which are made of trash, make for fun treasure hunts.

Sing Together.
Market segmentation has meant that within a family the kids and parents rarely listen to music together. Here are some Christian artists who create music kids and adults can (genuinely) enjoy together:
Yancy
Royal Tailor
The Lads

Make Contemplation Fun.
Contemplation looks boring to kids but it’s really about asking big questions or solving puzzles, two things kids can do. So create a spiritual version of Apples to Apples. Create a stack of cards with nouns on them and a stack of cards with spiritual adjectives eg. eternal, holy, faithful, peaceful, loving, scriptural, etc. Give each worshiper (or family group) a stack of noun cards then choose an adjective card and ask each one to choose a noun from their hand that best fits the adjective. Let them explain why they chose it. May create some funny juxtapositions and start some interesting conversations (“I chose ‘door’ to go with ‘holy’ because when I close the door to my room, I feel separate but in a good way.”)

Know Yourself.
Get to know yourself a little before entering into worship with kids. What are the burning curiosities that have driven you since childhood? If you were going to be “unschooled,” what passion would you pursue? How can you use that to connect with children and whatever drives their curiosities?

Categories: Curation

Someone Said I

by Linda Parriott | November 16, 2011

All the towering materialism which dominates the modern mind rests ultimately upon one assumption; a false assumption. It is supposed that if a thing goes on repeating itself it is probably dead; a piece of clockwork. People feel that if the universe was personal it would vary; if the sun were alive it would dance. This is a fallacy even in relation to known fact. For the variation in human affairs is generally brought into them, not by life, but by death; by the dying down or breaking off of their strength or desire.

A man varies his movements because of some slight element of failure or fatigue. He gets into an omnibus because he is tired of walking; or he walks because he is tired of sitting still. But if his life and joy were so gigantic that he never tired of going to Islington, he might go to Islington as regularly as the Thames goes to Sheerness. The very speed and ecstasy of his life would have the stillness of death.

The sun rises every morning. I do not rise every morning; but the variation is due not to my activity, but to my inaction. Now, to put the matter in a popular phrase, it might be true that the sun rises regularly because he never gets tired of rising. His routine might be due, not to a lifelessness, but to a rush of life.

The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony.

But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.

G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (New York: Jay Lane Co., 1908), pp. 108-109.

Categories: Someone Said