Preparing Children for Worship

With forethought and anticipation, we can prepare ourselves for corporate worship Sunday morning. And as parents, we can help prepare our children for the worship of God. This is a great privilege.

Having conversations with our children on the way to church which anticipate which hymns we'll sing and what we might learn does much to turn our mindset from our distractions.

I am thankful to attend a church that not only allows children to join in the corporate Sunday morning worship, but welcomes them. There are churches which actually stop people at the door who want to bring a young child in to that corporate gathering which Scripture commands us to not neglect (Hebrews 10:25).

More Than Just Sitting Quietly

Having our children in the service with the adults, we have had to teach them to sit quietly. But sitting quietly is not the end goal. We want them to be able to participate, and to know that what we do as a corporate body is not just for them when they are older, it is for them fully now, especially if they believe the same Word of truth.



Knowing the songs we sing and and the creed we recite helps them be a participant in the corporate worship. I just started teaching my two and a half year old the Nicene Creed, which our church recites together as a body every Sunday. I didn't choose to teach her the Nicene Creed because it is the single most valuable thing she can have memorized at her age, but because I think enabling her to participate Sunday morning is important.

Besides participation with the corporate body, one added benefit of teaching hymns and creeds at home to your children is, the truths they are learning leads to discussions such as, What is meant by the phrase His Word can't be broken, in Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken? Or what does it mean to say that Christ is the second Adam from above, in Hark the Herald Angels Sing? Elect from every nation, we learn in The Church's One Foundation.

Even little ones can be engaged during the sermon by keeping track of words and concepts they recognize. When my older children were three and four years old, we used a peg board with words written on it. They move the peg around and place it next to the familiar word they have heard.



Later we moved to tally marks.



At five and six years old, they started drawing a visual narration from the sermon.





After church, I would have them tell me what the sermon was about, and I would write their narration down.



All of these things could be a distraction for some children instead of a help. The important thing is that our children know that we come to church to worship Him. And children are included.