Children in Charge!

Last week in Early Church (our half hour service for family and folks on the go) Fr. John delivered the message and told our congregation about princesses. He told us that he had heard something on the radio about a woman known as Princess Marty. She explained that when she asks little girls why want to be princesses the most common answer is that they want to be princesses because they want to be in charge. This didn’t surprise me. I do find it slightly depressing that princesses are perhaps one of the few models we have for women who are in charge—but I don’t want to fall into a diatribe about the limitations we place on little girl’s imaginations. Instead I wanted to think about how a church like ours can help create some more spaces where kids can be in charge. We rely so often on our parishioners to be in charge of many aspects of our life together. But this line about princesses got me thinking about kids being a leadership resource for us that we have not tapped into yet!

You might be wondering what value there is in kids being in charge—and that is a good question. Of course, I don’t mean that children should be in charge of things that are really in the domain of adults—but what are the parts of our life in community that kids can be in charge of? So a child should probably not be on the budget committee, but where can their voices be heard? How can we give them ministry and leadership opportunities?

In our Early Church service we have kids lead our Affirmation of Faith. In doing so I hope they are seeing the way that their faith guides the faith of the congregation. Their consistent leadership during this part of our liturgy hopefully shows the kids (and the adults) that we need them!

And like most churches, we have a Sunday School program. The hope this year is to share some Bible stories that capture the imagination of our kids. We have been using a curriculum called Holy Moly! which uses a combination of 3 minute videos, reading from the Bible, and then doing a related activity. As we move into Advent, I realized that this was an opportunity for us to do something a little different. Instead of watching videos, what if the kids made a video!? We started it on Sunday (they drew characters and backgrounds) and it already looks great. They talked so smartly about how the Angel Gabriel can communicate with Mary that she is going to have a baby. The kids settled on the Angel showing Mary baby things, like rattles, booties, and a bottle and then finally a picture of a baby (brilliant!).  And we talked about why this information might have been puzzling for Mary (most people don’t find out they are pregnant from an angel—so true!). My hope as Sunday School teacher is that they are creatively engaged in learning and telling the Bible stories, and I have been really pleased with what they have experienced as a group so far.

And last Sunday the kids of our congregation sang at both our Early Church and our 11:00 am services. They also served as readers, as a crucifer, as an intercessor and announcement giver. They also sat through my entire (slightly too long) sermon. This was an opportunity to showcase the voices and the talent of our children. I am glad that members of our later church will got to see the kids in the liturgy since so many of them go to our Early Church service.

Though I am very proud of our kids in Early Church, Sunday School and in the Children’s Choir- I also want more. As a newly ordained clergy person I think that is part of my job here. I want more and I want it now. And from this energy and (slight) impatience I am hoping this blog post can be an opportunity to talk with some of you about creative ways we can understand the power the children of our congregation, and how we can tap into their creative leadership.