It has become an artform in of itself: the children’s sermon (or if you want to call it children’s time, children’s moment, or whatever we attempting-to-be cool churches wish to call it now to make it more inviting, I suppose). Entire books have been written about it. Seminary preaching classes will spend multiple sessions on it. We try to make it interesting enough for the children that they actually get something out of it, while also attempting to ensure a care-free laid-back nature to it, so that they may actually believe church isn’t supposed to be intimidating with the other high-and-mighty adults in a big room worshiping a high-and-mighty God. Safe to say, we’re still trying to figure this artform out, and not make it about satisfying the other…more life-experienced children-in-the-eyes-of-God in the big room.
After all, some experts in the field would insist on the children’s sermon leader sitting down with the young people. Some would say you need to be able to face the entire group to make better eye contact. Some maintain you need to make it almost a mini-Bible lesson, because they’re not getting enough of that elsewhere like they were in the “good ‘ole days.” Others prefer a more spiritual life lesson of sorts. Some think you need to end with a homework assignment, in a sense: for them to hopefully better carry what they just heard back to the pews and beyond as they consider what they’re going to do to fulfill the request. But then others would promote a more big-kid sermon approach; to always conclude with the Gospel: that God loves or does a holy this for you without any earthly strings attached. Then there’s the debate about candy rewards or not (being more mindful of dietary restrictions or each family attempting to monitor sugar consumption and even the lovely background noise of wrappers unwrapping), not to mention how many personal questions to ask, because you don’t know what each child has gone through, let alone, well…”kids say the darndest things,” even in a church building. Safe to say, we’re still trying to figure this artform out.
Of course, one of the usual refrains is hearing from the other…more life-experienced children-in-the-eyes-of-God in the big room: that they may actually get more out of the children’s sermon than the one spoken from the pulpit. Of course, that could mean we might still need more attention to that latter artform in spite of us clergy’s respective egos, but we also need the reminder that the children’s sermon/time/moment cannot be about the adults in the room. It cannot be about giving the rest of us nice and warm fuzzy feelings as we watch young people walk or skip up to the altar steps. Granted, that reaction is more than welcomed and appreciated and all, but it cannot be about that.
Far too often, whether we do so intentionally or not, children in the church are reduced to a future hopeful outcome for organized religion survival. Far too often, they are reduced to reaching our idealized quota, so that we may appear to be a family or youth-presence church. Far too often, the ones who are somehow, someway still a part of congregational life, are overlooked and forgotten, because we are obsessed with the ones who are not consistently part of the congregational life, and supposedly driving us further and further away from the high-and-mighty glory days.
And so, this Sunday, we’ll try again with this interesting, but still vitally important, artform we call…whatever we call it for the churches that still include it in their worship life. But this Sunday, we add in a blessing of the backpacks, as children enter another year of academic life: another year of their own pressures of navigating various artforms of social and extracurricular and home and homework life. We do the blessing not because we believe it will add some extra spiritual/magical something to the backpack. And we also don’t believe the blessing will convince God to go into action with them for the upcoming school year, if it’s worded just right, and that those children actually show up for it on Sunday to receive it. We don’t believe blessings work like that.
We do believe God is going to be just as much with the youth who aren’t there Sunday as the ones who are there on the altar steps. But we do believe there’s a little extra holy something for those who can be there to hear the words are meant special for them; for them to have a little extra holy re-assurance that the words of God’s love and grace and mercy and hope and joy are not just for the big kids in the pews, but for them, too. Sometimes it’s part of our calling to navigate whatever artform is needed, and no matter how many times we need to re-learn it, and no matter our own personal frustrations and desires for better…whatever; to still find a way to ensure that they youngest children of God know with absolute certainty that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is just as much for them as anyone else.
So, yes, we’ll keep trying to figure out the artform, knowing full well we’ll never have it entirely figured out…as with pretty much everything else in this journey of faith. We owe it to the God cherishes them to try, and we owe it to them, too: the children who are not the future of the church alone, but very much the present, too. Thanks be to God for them, indeed!
In Christ,
Pastor Brad