6 Helpful Tips for Including Your Kids in Worship
“Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.” Proverbs 22:6
“But Jesus called them to him, saying, ‘Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God.’” Luke 18:16
“But as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.” Joshua 24:15
These are some of the most quoted and well-known Bible verses about children and the family. As Christian parents, we are called to train up our children, point them to Christ, and lead them in serving the Lord.
And while we are to do this when we walk by the way, when we lie down, and when we rise (Deuteronomy 6:7), one of the best, most important ways for parents to disciple their children and raise them up in the Lord is to include them in the corporate worship of God’s people.
Why is it important for children to be in worship with their parents?
Establishing rhythms and training them for a lifetime of worship
As parents, we’re training our children by establishing rhythms for them that they will – by God’s grace – continue throughout their entire lives. If we want them to be a part of the church and prioritize worship as an adult, we must establish that rhythm from the start and train them to worship the Lord.
Modeling a sincere faith
It’s important for children to see their parents worship God every week. As they sit next to us each Sunday, we demonstrate our own dependence on the Lord as we sing praises to Him, confess our sins, sit under the preaching of God’s Word, declare the truths of the faith, and pray with God’s people.
Demonstrating their value in the church
While children may not be able to serve in leadership roles, help with church finances, or teach a Sunday school class, they hold value in the church. Their joy and innocence is a blessing to the body of Christ and as parents, we demonstrate their value by including them in the most important function of the church – worship. It’s also important for our children to identify with the church and consider themselves an important part of it.
Trusting in the ordinary means of grace
The Lord is faithful and able to work in the hearts of both adults and children through his ordinary means of grace – his Word, sacraments, and prayer. We may think our children aren’t paying attention while they wiggle in their seats during worship, but they often take in and understand more than we give them credit for. We also underestimate the Lord if we think He cannot work in the hearts of our children during corporate worship.
Teaching them the foundations of the faith
By sitting in the worship service every Lord’s Day, children become more familiar with the elements of worship – hymns, creeds, confessions, the Lord’s Prayer, the Doxology – and more importantly, with God’s Word. These foundational elements of the faith are something that they can return to and rely on throughout their entire lives.
6 Helpful Tips for Including Your Kids in Worship
1. Prioritize family worship
Family worship can be one of the best preparations for corporate worship. While it’s often much shorter than a Sunday service, family worship contains some of the same elements: singing hymns, reading Scripture, and prayer.
To better prepare your children for Sundays:
Consider choosing hymns that you often sing in corporate worship so your children can become more familiar with them.
Regularly pray for other people in your congregation to help your children care for those worshiping next to them on Sunday mornings.
Read and discuss the sermon passage ahead of time so everyone can have a better understanding of it on Sunday morning.
You might even choose to incorporate the Lord’s Prayer and the Doxology into your family worship time to familiarize your children with them, if those are regular elements of your corporate worship service on Sunday mornings.
For toddlers, family worship can also be great practice for sitting still and being quiet in a lower-key setting.
For more encouragement and direction on beginning family worship, read this post: How to Begin and Prioritize Family Worship
2. Listen to the songs and read the sermon passage ahead of time
If your church makes the song selections and sermon passages available before Sunday worship, review them with your children ahead of time so that they can become more familiar with them.
In our family we like to choose one of the hymns that we’ll be singing on Sunday and sing it together throughout the week during family worship. We also listen to the hymns at the breakfast table on Sunday mornings. It’s amazing how quickly kids can catch on to the melodies and the verses, even after just a few listens. They often light up when they hear the music during the service and excitedly participate because they had been learning it during the week.
The same is true for the sermon passage. Read the verses and explain them ahead of time to help your children better understand as your pastor preaches on Sunday morning. Particularly for the youngest ones, highlight some of the things they can be listening for in the sermon: numbers, images, names, etc.
3. Gradually incorporate them in the service
Sitting through an hour or hour-and-a-half-long service on Sunday morning can be a big jump for a little one who is used to being in the nursery. Instead of making the jump all at once, consider gradually incorporating them into the worship service.
At Providence, moms and dads pick up their little ones after the sermon and bring them into the sanctuary so they can be prayed over by an elder during the Lord’s Supper and remain for the rest of the service. This acclimates them to being in the service from a young age but it’s for a shorter length of time.
A gradual progression could also be keeping your child with you through the first song or two, then keeping them with you until the sermon, and then keeping them with you throughout the entire service.
4. Bring some quiet activities
Prepare a bag with some activities for your child to make it easier on them during the service. Some of our kids’ favorites are:
I Spy, hidden picture, and seek and find books
Stickers and sticker books
Dry-erase activity books
LCD drawing pads
Imagine Ink coloring books
Story collection books
Children’s Bibles
Dot-to-dot and color-by-number coloring sheets
These are all activities that they can do quietly in their seat while listening to the sermon.
Our church also puts together children’s Worship Binders each week – 3-ring binders with worship note pages, Bible story coloring sheets, bookmarks, stickers, and crayons. Families can pick up one for each child in the lobby before the service, take out the activities and pages that their kids have colored to take home with them, and return the binder in the basket after worship.
5. Encourage their participation
The end goal isn’t to entertain your child during worship, although activity books and coloring pages are definitely helpful for keeping your child engaged, quiet, and still.
Parents have a great opportunity each and every Sunday to teach their children how to worship the God of our salvation.
So encourage their participation! Lean in with instructions, observations, and questions to think about. As your child learns how to whisper quietly, they can also ask questions, make observations, and reply to you during worship.
Here are some great ways to engage your child during the service:
Call attention to something that is coming.
“This is the prayer where we all tell God what we’re sorry about.”Encourage them to take part.
“We’re going to pray the Lord’s Prayer. You know it! You can pray with us.”
“Look at the last line of this song. It’s the same every time. Sing it with us!”Suggest things to listen for.
“They only have 5 loaves and 2 fishes. How will God feed all those people?”
“There are A LOT of alleluias in this song!”Share your love of worship.
“This is one of my favorite songs!”
6. Consider your attitude toward worship
Your child will naturally love what you love and dread what you dread. Your heart sets the tone for your family on Sundays.
If you look forward to worship and find joy being among God’s people on Sunday morning, you’ll see that attitude reflected in your children. They will view Sundays as a blessing.
But if you treat worship as a duty, get frustrated with your children for making noise or having trouble sitting still, and rush out the door when church is over, Sunday mornings won’t be something your children look forward to. Instead, Sunday will be a drudgery.
Consider your own heart and attitude toward Sunday worship. Is worshiping the Lord something you delight in?
What if you don’t have small children in the service?
You may not have small children in the worship service, but everyone can take notice of, pray for, and encourage those who do.
Consider how you might come alongside families with young children.
Sit next to a mom who could use some extra hands during the service.
Be understanding when a child inevitably makes noise or starts crying.
Pray for the Lord to work in the hearts of the children in your church and draw them to Himself.
This will not only bless the children and the parents but it will also be a blessing to you as you love and care for the body of Christ.
Training takes time, but the fruit of being in corporate worship will have a lifelong impact on your children as they learn to worship the Lord alongside you.
There will be mornings where your child has extra energy, is extra whiny, or makes extra noise. But there will also be mornings when they surprise you with something they learned, begin singing along with the doxology, or by God’s grace, profess faith in Christ and join you at the Lord’s Table.
Be steadfast and patient. Encourage your children. Praise them when they do a good job and give grace when they have a hard time. Ask others in your congregation for prayer and for help. Pray about your own attitude toward worship. And expectantly wait for the Lord to work in the hearts and lives of your children.
“And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.” Galatians 6:9
