No doubt some smart-aleck will immediately reply to this on social media along the lines: by not having a Sunday School. Just keep the kids in and avoid the problem. Fair enough, by the way, if that is your conviction. But what we’re then discussing is whether it is legit and/or beneficial to have a Sunday School at all. If you’re convinced it’s better not to have one – just as John Piper argued for some while ago now – have it at. This one is not for you (though, perhaps, this one is and maybe this one).

For those of you who, for whatever reason, have concluded Sunday School is a helpful thing in your context, the question remains. If we’ve got one, how do we help our kids transition from Sunday School to main service? What I’m going to say here isn’t the way to do it, just a way that we have tended to find helpful.

Ordinary congregational engagement

One of the things we often overlook – but is not insignificant – is that the children sit through the entirety of our service every week. That is, with the exception of the sermon. They still go out and look at the same passage, they just go and think about it in more age-appropriate ways. But the rest of the service, the children are in throughout. It bears remembering, then, all we are actually asking them to do is stay in for 30-40 minutes they would otherwise miss. That is to say, the transition shouldn’t be that difficult when we think of it like that.

The other thing about our meeting is that the vast majority of it is interactive. We don’t go for a one-man-to-lead-them-all model – where the only voice at the front is the meeting leader who is the only person to announce anything, pray, read the Bible and preach. Instead, we have a section of open prayer. We have an open time of testimony. We have a bit where we say the Lord’s Prayer together. Everyone congregationally sings together. We even sometimes float questions in the sermon that we expect actual called out answers to come back. It means our congregation is more actively participating in the meeting throughout which I think probably makes it a bit easier for our children to engage. I’m not saying this is the right way to hold a meeting, but it bears thinking about and seeing if this sort of thing might help children engage with your service more (and, frankly, adults too).

Once per month sermons

One way we look to prepare children to sit in the service is to not run Sunday School every week. Once per month, all the children must sit in the main service. There are three reasons for doing this. First, we are a small church without many Sunday School teachers so we think it is helpful, once per month, to give them a break. Second, we think it is good for children to have a sense of what it is like to sit through a sermon regularly. Third, we don’t think it hurts children to learn, despite how we often set things up, the world (and therefore the church) doesn’t revolve around them. All these lessons can easily be learnt by ensuring there is at least one Sunday per month in which Sunday School doesn’t run and they must sit in throughout.

Notes

For some, notes are helpful. Others prefer a specific sheet with particular questions on them. We have often used Sophie Killingley’s extremely helpful sermon sheet (it is designed for older children, but we’ve found much younger children have found it helpful too). Others prefer the freedom of nothing more than a notepad and pen, making their own notes on what stood out to them from the sermon. Some simply prefer sitting and listening. All of these things are fine, there’s no right or wrong way. The same is true for adults. But making notes can help children to think about what they are hearing and reflect upon it. If your child is slow to write or struggles to keep up, this isn’t something worth forcing. Let them sit there and listen. Notes or no-notes, it is worth coupling these things to…

Ask the children questions

I think it is good, in general, to ask questions in our sermons. I don’t always. At least, I don’t always ask questions and expect (or welcome) answers. But sometimes I do. It is a good way to engage people who may have drifted off a little. Nothing wakes a person up than having to think specifically that somebody might want a response off them! It also gives a little gauge of whether people have been listening and whether they have grasped what you’ve been saying. Hopefully, if they haven’t yet, you can fill in the blank in the rest of your sermon! Having questions specifically for kids in the sermon is no bad thing at all.

But even after the sermon, I think it is always good for preachers to gauge how their sermon has landed by asking people what they made of it. There are few better places to go than to ask the children. I tend to ask them:

1. What did they understand was the main point of the sermon?
2. What stood out for them about the sermon?
3. Was there anything they had not heard before? Was there anything they had heard before?
4. Did anything particularly stand out for them?
5. Do they have any questions about anything that was said?

I have often enjoyed children in the church coming up to me after sermons to show me their notes. It is good for me to see what has landed (and what hasn’t!) But it is also interesting to see what they take in and what they don’t. If the children know I might well come and ask them questions afterwards, they are usually primed to listen more and their notes tend to be fuller. Nobody likes being caught out! Not that it’s what we’re trying to do, I have just found if they know they might get asked, they do tend to listen that little bit harder.

Don’t tell them off for saying it’s boring

Last, but by no means least, we’ve got to let the kids tell us if they found it boring. Not because we want to encourage moaning, but because if they found it boring, chances are there are at least some adults who did too. If the kids are bored, in all likelihood, some others will be just as bored. But even if we happen to have some children who are saying they’re bored but nobody else is, a few things are worth saying.

First, it gives us an opportunity to ask why. We may find out they’re bored for legitimate reasons or for illegitimate reasons. We will have opportunity to work out whether we are the problem or they are the problem but, better yet, just what the problem is and how we might resolve it.

Second, it might give us opportunity to acknowledge that not every sermon is a ripper. Whilst we don’t want to encourage moaning and grumbling, it doesn’t help our children to be told ‘no, everything is good and this was excellent’ when, in all honesty, we thought it was rubbish too. Pretending bad things are good will just lead our children to think the church is inherently bad rather than this particular sermon being less than excellent. We have problems if we’re whinging about every sermon, but we’re also liars if we claim every sermon is good. That only teaches our children to lie, pretend that bad things are actually good or, worse, that the church is inherently terrible because people keep saying bad stuff is good and, therefore, the whole thing is not worth bothering with at all.

Third, it give us a chance to talk about why we actually come to church at all. Is it just to be fed? If so, what are we supposed to do if the sermon was particularly paltry that week – have we wasted our time? If there’s a church that will feed you better down the road, why don’t we just go to that one? Even hearing an ultimately bad sermon gives us the opportunity to walk our kids through why we are here at all and what it is that causes us to commit to this body rather than trek hundreds of miles to the church with the best of all possible teaching (wherever we deem that to be).