The Heavens Open Right Here: Worship and Children

By Nicole Seiferth

Children in church, not just part of the parish community, but sitting in the pews, asking questions during the Eucharist, staring intently into the font at baptisms. Children are an important part of every aspect of parish life, but perhaps nowhere is it more challenging – and more important – to make them welcome than in worship.

‘ Faith is caught, not taught’ is a phrase Caren Miles, director of Children and Youth Ministries at Heavenly Rest, Manhattan, says she has heard often.

“ Children learn by osmosis, through watching other people,” she says, even if they don’t grasp the full meaning of what they’re doing.

Heavenly Rest offers a Children’s Chapel for preschoolers through 3rd graders. During the school year, the children are separated by age in two “chapels”; during the summer, the chapel leaders combine the groups.
Children’s Chapel, says Miles, “mirrors the Liturgy of the Word.” The children hear their own version of the Gospel story for the day – just as their parents are doing at the same time. Chapel leaders discuss the story with the children, encouraging them to ask and respond to questions – a time of explanation that serves the same purpose as a sermon. Then things get really fun.

During chapel, children participate in an activity that corresponds with the Bible story, such as a walk through CentralPark to observe and touch and see the wonders of creation.

“ Kids move around a lot. Instead of forcing them to sit and be still, they get to get up and move,” explains Miles. “After they’re done with their activity, they have a time of prayer, their own prayers of the people, and have a small feast where they all share bread and water.”

The children rejoin their families for the rest of the service during the passing of the peace.

When Heavenly Rest’s children reach third grade and begin participating in the regular worship service without leaving, they’re familiar with the structure and understand the basics of each element of the service.

Still, cautions Miles, parishioners have to be prepared that children will be children.

“ We put them in pretty dresses on Sunday and expect them to act pretty. But kids wiggle. They ask questions and they squirm. But sometimes the questions they ask are incredible. You get this air of the unexpected. And it’s a lot of times in that unexpected way that the Holy Spirit does show up.”

The Rev. Duncan Burns, rector of St. John’s, Kingston, would probably agree that children ask good questions, but one of his fondest memories of a child in church comes from an answer to a question.

As is the practice in many parishes, children are invited to watch baptisms up close at St. John’s. Burns is in the habit of asking those children some basic questions about baptism before beginning, partly because he says kids are very good at helping explain baptism to the rest of the congregation.

On this particular baptism Sunday, Burns asked the gathered children what the meaning of baptism was. A nine-year-old boy responded promptly, “Baptism is when the heavens open up right here.”

“ You don’t often hear that from an adult”, Burns observes.

Burns and the parishioners of St. John’s take care to particularly invite young children to participate in some special way in worship whenever they can. Baptisms are the most common occasion to do so. The parish also recently held a “Youth Sunday,” where the youngest children were invited to come up and lead the congregation in the Lord’s Prayer. Older children served as ushers and the youth preached and read the lessons. Burns also holds instructed Eucharists periodically throughout the year, which are for the children, but appreciated by everyone.

Children “really do bring an amazement and excitement about Christianity,” Burns says. “It’s important for the congregation to see. Anytime we get them in [worship], it’s a wondrous feeling.”

St. Andrew’s in the Bronx takes the idea that children should be part of worship very seriously. Although Sunday School is held during worship until the peace, every third or fifth Sunday of the month is designated “Youth Sunday.”

“ Our goal is to include kids in all facets of our church life,” says Youth Advisor and Sunday School Superintendent Kay Grant.

On Youth Sunday, children of all ages participate by reading the lessons, serving as ushers, giving the homily, and generally taking over any tasks that aren’t designated only for the clergy. There are, according to Grant, some excellent lesson readers who also happen to be first graders.

The Sunday School also hosts the parish coffee hour once a month, with each grade taking turns having responsibility for that coffee hour.

“ I think it’s very important to have children involved not only in our parish but beyond, to know that all of us are God’s children.”

If including children in worship seems a daunting task, consider Miles’s observation that “any parish that has two or three kids [in church] is already doing something to make kids part of their worship service.”

A parish’s next step, then, might be “to make it something that everyone acknowledges as important to the formation of young Christians.”

Making a congregation comfortable with the presence of children in worship really begins, she says, with the clergy. When children make noise or need a glass of water or ask those seemingly ill-timed questions, if whoever is on the altar doesn’t get flustered, then the congregation will know “those little outbursts really are okay.”

“ One of our goals, as Jesus said, is to come as a child to God. I think most of us forget how to be children,” muses Miles. “So to watch children come to God, come to the altar rail, we also remember that wide-eyed wonder.”