A searchable, downloadable PDF of the original article, with a picture of the children’s program, appears below. Trudy Schalk is a Children and Worship leader at Knox Presbyterian Church, Cranbrook, British Columbia. She is the mother of four young children.

The article that follows, written by Trudy Schalk, Children Worship Leader at Knox Presbyterian Church, Cranbrook, BC, is a summary of what she shared at a Sunday School Teachers’ training event at First Church in Nelson. Trudy’s enthusiasm for the program led me to ask her to share what has been happening at Knox with Young Children in Worship. Since then I have heard numerous other reports from other churches using the program about what an exciting and beneficial worship experience this provides. As Trudy explains in the article this is neither a substitute for Sunday School, the main purpose of which is educational, not simply baby-sitting, but is a true worship experience for children. At the workshop, Trudy demonstrated the technique by sharing a lesson with us. Its potential to be used intergenerationally was also evident as the teachers were drawn into this quiet worshipful sharing experience. What the program attempts to do is to draw and train the children in the actual personal entering into worship. Because the approach is inductive more than deductive it may, however, make it somewhat difficult for children to identify with the adult worship service and make the necessary transition. As we begin the program in Nelson this fall we hope to be able to integrate some of the inductive method into the adult worship service several times during the year as the Junior and Senior Congregations join for common worship experience. Our assessment is that it is more important that the children enter into true worship rather than simply imitate adult worship forms and it is our conviction that this program will help us reach this goal. Although the program was initially drafted by a Roman Catholic Sister, revised by an Episcopalian, and further revised by the Christian Reformed Church, the most compatible and easily adaptable format will be that found with the Christian Reformed Church. Both resources and training can be found through that connection. – Calvin Brown, Worship Editor

Are children and worship compatible?

Sarah sits on a long wooden pew, her legs dangling. She is diligently blacking in all the o’s on the bulletin as the pastor speaks into a microphone. He is using words she doesn’t understand. After a long time she loudly whispers “Is it over yet?” Her father gives her another peppermint as a silent bribe.

Are children and worship compatible?

When the pastor announces that the children may be dismissed to their Sunday School classes, Patrick joins the thunderous stampede of kids running out of the sanctuary. He is excited about the hockey game on TV last night and spends most of the time talking about it with his friends. Sunday School reminds him of school and he tunes out.

Are children and worship compatible?

Alexander walks slowly and quietly into the worship centre. This is a special place where he can come to be with God, to talk with God, listen to God, and hear one of God’s stories. He sits quietly in a circle and exchanges a liturgical greeting with the worship leader. After singing a few praise songs he listens and watches as the worship leader unfolds one of God’s stories on the mat in front of her. During his personal response time Alexander quietly draws a picture of how he feels about the story as he sits in his own private work area. When he finishes he puts his work in his file folder and returns to the circle. Now the worship leader lights the Christ candle and reads God’s story again – straight from the Bible. After the offering and time of prayer he sings a benediction and leaves the worship centre with the blessing “Go in peace.”

Are children and worship compatible?

Dr. Sofia Cavelletti thinks so. For more than 30 years she has been working with three to twelve year-old children for two-hour periods during the week at her centre in Rome. She believes that all children love and experience God. Her approach offers quiet worship, not activities and entertainment. She seeks to create an atmosphere of awe and reverence, of quiet and listening. The children learn that the worship centre is a place where they will meet God. They encounter God by participating in his stories and allowing the Holy Spirit to interpret his Word.

Dr. Jerome Berryman studied with Cavelletti and used this approach in his pastoral care of terminally ill children. And Dr. Sonja Stewart, in conjunction with Dr. Berryman, redesigned this method with a Reformed perspective and published a complete program in a book entitled Young Children and Worship.

The aim of Young Children and Worship is to provide a worship perspective rather than a schooling or educational perspective. Whereas an educational setting seeks to explain or describe God, the worship setting offers children an environment to enter into the stories and experience God’s revelations through the Holy Spirit.

The time in the worship centre follows the fourfold order of worship:

(1) The Approach to God. In corporate or public worship the call to worship and liturgy helps us shift our focus to God. Young children need to learn how to use their imaginations to find a quiet place within themselves to focus on God. They are taught at the worship centre how to find their own way to be silent, a silence that comes from within, not a silence imposed by an adult. Just as worship comes from within, silence comes from within. The appropriate external behaviour may be exhibited, but only God knows if we are truly worshipping. In this space-time for God we are ready to listen to God’s word.

(2) The Proclamation of the Word: Listening and Responding to God. The worship leader unfolds the story in front of her using simple paper or wooden figures and felt underlays. She talks slowly and softly, focussing her attention on the objects and not on the children. Her purpose is not to entertain but to encourage the children to enter the story and experience God. The presentation of the story is followed by a time of wondering about it together. The children then can choose their own response by using art materials to express their feelings about the story or they can work with the story materials themselves. They have appropriate freedom to use the scriptural and liturgical materials in the worship centre.

After the response time the children return to the circle. The Christ candle is lit to remind them that Christ is here with them when they read from his Word – the Bible. The story is read from the Bible giving the children the opportunity to image the story on their minds and giving them a way to listen to Scripture in public worship.

(3) Eucharist: Giving Thanks to God. The children give thanks to God by giving a monetary offering to further God’s work in the church. They also offer verbal thanks in prayers of thanksgiving. At this time a snack may be given as a reminder that every Sunday is a feast day to celebrate Jesus’ resurrection.

(4) Go in God’s Name. The light of Christ can be in all places in all times. As the children go into the world as Christ’s ministers they receive a benediction, a good word, a sign of the presence of the Holy Spirit empowering them for ministry and mission. “May the love of God go with you. Go in peace.”

The flow of the order of worship enables children to experience meeting God, not just to listen to a worship leader trying to nurture and socialize them into public worship and Christian living. They experience God in a way that they themselves experience, any time, any place, in corporate or personal worship, living by their own faith.

At Knox Church, Cranbrook, we use this program for grades 1-6. We have a small number of children in each age category and too few adult volunteers to operate a traditional Sunday School program successfully. Young Children and Worship works well for a multi-graded situation because the emphasis is on worship which touches everyone on a personal level. Traditional Sunday School relies heavily on reading and writing skills and if a child does not excel in those areas in school then he or she will not be confident in Sunday School either.

Young Children and Worship works because it meets the needs of the child. Young children need God. They need love, security, appropriate freedom, continuity, order and meaning. In worship, God is central. They find meaning and order in relation to God. When all is said and done, life and death have meaning only in that we belong to God. The worship context described here allows children to bring their own experience into dialogue with the biblical stories so they themselves have a way of making meaning and order in their lives.

It is difficult to describe the Young Children and Worship program in words. It needs to be experienced. Throughout North America trainers lead workshop seminars to demonstrate the visual and oral properties. Worship leaders from various denominations have adapted this program to suit their own church and worship tradition.

Young Children and Worship is published by Westminster/John Knox Press, Louisville, Kentucky, 1990. It is also available from CRC Publications, 1-800-263-4252. The cost is approximately $20.