On most Sundays, the kids at our church have their own class during the sermon time. Starting last month, on the second Sunday of each month, they stay with their families. I regularly preach for the bilingual group that meets in the chapel. We found out about the change the hard way last month. I sent the kids out, then they had to come back… and never settled down again.
This time I was ready. I was preaching the story of Naaman from 2 Kings 5. When I told the kids they weren’t going to class (along with appropriate groans and signs of dismay from them), I told them that I needed their help. Since adults don’t have enough imagination to picture things, I explained, I needed them to draw some pictures for us. At first I explained who Naaman was, how he got sick with leprosy, and how that would have ruined his life. I then asked them to draw a man who was sad because he was sick. I told them that I would want to see their drawings.
I then spoke to the adults a while, but the smaller ones finished their drawings quickly and were anxious to show them. I hadn’t calculated that well, and had to stop more than once to allow them to show their drawings.
When we came to the part of the text where Naaman is cured, I asked them to make a new drawing, one with a man who is happy because he wasn’t sick anymore. When I got close to the end of the sermon, I had them show their drawings. I encouraged the adults to be sure they could see at least one of the drawings. I closed the sermon by telling the adults that if the smiley face on that paper didn’t correspond to how they felt on the inside, they needed to look at getting right with God. [It was more complicated than that, but that was my way of trying to hit a broad range of needs]
What do you think of involving the kids in that way? Obviously, it’s easier in a group of 50 in a chapel than a group of 700 in a large auditorium. Does it sound like too much of a distraction for everyone else? Does it fall outside the bounds of “decently and in order”? Do you have suggestions of other ways to engage the younger ones in the sermon?