Teaching Children's Church

This was before Liz and I took turns filming the service with a camera in the second row. Before college, family and children. Before the church struggled finding a new Pastor. It is in the hazy days before high school, days when I was taken with a girl, Melissa, but had no idea what that meant.

The two of us, Melissa and I, had worked the week before as assistance in Children's church. I don't remember who the teacher was, but I remember we had the combination to the lock of the supply cabinet and with that knowledge we were able to create, for all those supplies, a craft. Glue and popsicle sticks were glued on paper and the handful of kids took home a little something at the end of service. It went well.

This week, though, was different, they had sent the kids back for children's church, but the teacher was gone. Looking back, I don't think the Pastor knew, but in the moment, I thought it was up to us.

I thought about what we needed to do, what we had done the week before and how we could fill the gap. I started with a prayer, I like to say it was to pray to God for help, but that was only a small part of it. It seemed to me, I needed a little more time to scan the room and plan. Hold hands and let the kids take turn, Melissa opens and I close. It ate some of the time and gave me long enough to spot the children's Bible, a white one, with lots of cartoon pictures.

The prayer ended and I told Melissa we could read a story from the Bible and then make up a craft based on the story. This seemed good to her. She opened the grey, metal, supply cabinet and began pulling out the things we had used the week before, plus some colored pipe cleaners and brads. I smiled with the thought of how group we were and how well we were working together.

I gather the kids around me on the carpeted floor. The indoor/outdoor carpeting stretched over concrete was not the most comfortable space, but it was good enough and it felt like a story circle to the kids. I flipped though the pages of the Bible. I didn't know what I was going to read, but I was looking for something with Jesus, when in doubt talk about Jesus. I read from the pages the story of Jesus calling the disciples, brothers who were fishermen, how they left their nets where they were and began following him. It was an easy story for the kids to talk about, about how they would follow Jesus like that if he showed up. I wasn't knowledgable enough to take it much deeper.

At the end, we move to the craft table and had the kids make Jesus and new disciples with the supplies and had them act out the calling and the leaving of the net. It was fun and memorable. The kids loved having a little stick Jesus. Who wouldn't.

When it was done, we cleaned up the room, found our families and went home. There was to celebration or feeling we had done anything special. To us, it was just dong what we needed to do. It probably would have been something I would have forgotten, but a few days later, one of the parents came up to me and told me how well his son remembered the story and how they had reenacted it with the stick figures they took home. Then, they told me I did a good job and thank you. Such a simple compliment, but when you are a kid and an adult goes out of the way to let you know you have done something well, it has an impact.