I have some very strong opinions/beliefs about children and church. But sometimes my opinions and reality don’t quite go together. Matt and I have talked at length over the years regarding church and at what age a child should be expected to not only sit in church but actually listen and gain something from a message. One of the things that we both agree on is that unless you expect a behavior and facilitate the behavior then it is not going to happen.

Our current church offers Sunday school classes for all ages  and Children’s Church (which occurs during the regular services) up to middle school age.  there is also a separate program for kids on Wednesday night that all three of the little kids love. Matt and I agreed long ago that middle school  was not the right time to begin training a child to listen and learn during a sermon so we had discussed with Lily that starting in September, since she is in the fourth grade, she would no longer be allowed to go to Children’s Church. Lily is very smart and she didn’t complain about the idea. As I watched her last Sunday, she was doing nothing wrong in fact she had me help her find the passage that the message was from; however I quickly realized that shortly after this she was no longer listening to what was being said.  This lead to a discussion between us and a post of Facebook for questions that we could expect her to answer about the sermon. A friend, who is both a teacher and principal, shared an awesome idea about allowing Lily to choose questions to answer.  I am excited to say that for a first attempt, it worked and worked well. Lily was given a composition book this morning before church and on the first page was this…

It is a tic tac toe board, with a different question in each square. The question from left to right are : Who are the main characters?  Reference? Who preached?  (2nd row) What emotion did the sermon make you feel?  Name three things you learned today from the sermon? How can you apply to your life? (3rd row) What was the topic? Did another Bible reference get used? what was it? and Does this connect to last week’s sermon? How?

Lily is allowed to pick which three question she is going to answer as long as she gets 3 in a row.  This morning she paid much closer attention to the sermon.  I did realize that she does not know what the word Reference means so I will help her learn that this week.  Overall I am very pleased with this and hope it will lead us into some good discussions as well as teach her to listen and apply not only sermons but information from lectures in the future.

Can you think of any better or different question for us to use?