Surviving Church with Young Children- Tips for Keeping Children in Worship
The moment you get a positive pregnancy test, the life of you and your spouse is changed forever. From this point on every decision you make affects more than just you, but another person. When becoming a parent, you will make many decisions. Some of those decisions will revolve around feeding, sleeping, and clothing. Each of these decisions impacts how you raise your child. Throughout your time as a parent, you will regret the decisions you have made, and change them for future children. There have been some decisions we made when our oldest was a baby, that we no longer do. We have traditions we have stopped and started over the past years of being parents. Being a parent involves many decisions.
One of those decisions is what we will do with your child during worship service. Will your child stay with you, attend nursery, stay with a babysitter, attend children’s church, or attend separate kids’ worship service? The decision we have made with our children since becoming parents is that they will sit through the worship service. This is one decision that has not changed in our (so far) 11.5 years of parenting. Today we are going to take a look at one tool that we use to help our children be able to focus and sit through the entire worship service, our church bag.
Our church bag has changed greatly over the past 11 years as our children have grown and as we have grown as parents. Every stage of life has different requirements for a church bag. When we had no children, our church bag just consisted of our Bibles, notebook, and pen. As our family has grown, our church bag has grown. Read on to find out what our church bag looks like for different ages and some of our favorite church bag supplies.
The Church Bag
Our first church bag looked much like the one below. It had ALL the things! I had toys, coloring books, snacks, you name it and it was in that bag For years this was what our church bag looked like.
I felt like a pack mule coming into church every Sunday! I had my purse, our normal diaper bag, church bag and not to mention 2 children.
It wasn’t until we had our 3rd child that I started realizing how silly it was to bring all this stuff to church every Sunday. Our 3rd child was diagnosed with a severe egg allergy when she was 6 months old. Since then, she has always carried her own backpack with an EpiPen and safe snacks. Once I had to add another bag to the pile I was done. I felt like we were moving into church every Sunday, so we downsized! I cut out carrying a full-sized diaper bag. I figured if the potty-training child had an accident and needed new clothes it was easy to run out to the car and get them. I did carry 1 diaper and a few wipes. Our youngest with the allergy began having her own bag with her medicine and some toys/snacks/ coloring stuff for herself and the older two’s items got combined into our church bag. So with 3 kids, I was still carrying my purse, our daughter’s allergy bag, and a church bag. We got rid of 1 huge bag and exchanged it for a small backpack… still too many in my opinion!!
Fast forward to kid number 4 and everything changed. I now had 4 kids and was solo parenting in the pew. I should mention this was due to my husband being a Pastor, and preaching weekly. Four kids ages baby, 3, 5, and 8 were what started me to minimize our church bag. I had to. I was getting so overwhelmed with all the stuff and kids on Sunday morning. So we downsized again. The allergy backpack stayed the same, but the older kid’s church bag looked drastically different! For one thing, we dropped the toys and books. No more toys or books were brought into the church service. We also dropped snacks. I figured by this age all 3 older kids were more than capable of sitting through a 1-1.5 hour church service without eating. We minimized down to a notebook or coloring book and crayons. Not too bad! I should add I did carry 1 toy for the baby to teeth on.
Throughout the years we made progress to decrease the amount of stuff that we brought into the church. Our church bag even now looks different than just 1.5 years ago Today, I want to give you some examples of items we have kept in our church bags over the years as we have gone from a family with 1 child, to a family with 4 children who do not attend nursery, or children’s church.
Ages 0-2
This is by far one of the hardest ages to have children sitting in church service. The younger the baby, the easier it is as they will typically just sleep through church. Once you get to a year, having your child in the church service can be more difficult. This is when the training at home and training during service is very important. You may need to spend part of the service walking the hall, or trading off with your spouse, but it is worth it in the end. Our family rule for this age is that we always start and end the service in the sanctuary, no matter what. Here are a few of the toys we have kept in our church bags for this age.
Ages 3-5
Once you hit these preschool years, sitting in worship might be a bit louder and wiggly but it should be more manageable. By 3 years old most kids should be able to sit through half the service, if not more, without the need for additional things. Around 3 years old, we stop handing out toys and snacks until the sermon. This is when we spend more time hands-on teaching our children to participate in church. We have our 3-5-year-olds stand up, follow along in the bulletin (even though they can’t read), sing songs, and pray. They are learning that they are a part of the church body and even if they can’t read there are many other ways that they participate in the service.
Pop it
Water Wow
Finger Puppets
Notebook
Ages 6-8
When you get to age 6, a lot of the noise should be minimal. Your child should be able to sit quietly throughout the entire service. Now, they will probably still need some things to do to keep their hands busy. Although I expect our kids to sit through the entire service by 6, I still provide them with the tools to succeed. Having boys means that there is just more movement. I am one of those people who need to be taking notes, drawing, or fidgeting with something in order to pay attention. When we hit age 6, we spend more time learning the order of worship and participation. Our children read along with scripture readings, do their best to sing and read hymns, and participate in responsive readings. By this age, most of our children have given their profession of faith and are partaking in the Lord’s Supper. This means that they are required (by our standards) to sit in the entire service, and take notes. At this age, these notes look more like drawing something they heard during the sermon.
Squishy Fidgets
Notebook
Colored Pencils
ESV Large Print Bible
Ages 9 and Older
In our family, by the time you are 9 years old, you are treated similarly to an adult during worship services. You are expected to follow along in your own bulletin with corporate readings, singing, and prayer. At this age, our children may bring their Bible, notebook, and pen. They can only use their notebook during the sermon and are taught how to take sermon notes.
Teaching our children how to behave, and worship God during corporate, worship is not an easy task, but is worth it. The best thing we can do for our children is to include family them in the family of God. Teach them that corporate worship is not about them but about God. As Christians they belong to the family as much as my husband and I do. As part of the church family, they have responsibilities, one of which is attending and participating in corporate worship. If your child has never sat in worship with your family, it might seem like an insormontable task. Teaching your child to sit reverently in church will not be fixed overnight. It takes years of practice, but is worth your time and energy.
Check out the links below to read more about worship and training our children for corporate worship.
Worship Series
Family Worship- Training our children for Corporate Worship
Worship as a Journey Psalms of Ascent
Family Worship Q and A
What is Reformed Theology
A Guide to the Book of Proverbs
8 Tips for Starting Family Worship
