Dear Redeemer Family,
It’s almost that time of year again! We have learned from older and more established ministries that the summer months provide two unique opportunities for our parish. The first is to allow our hard-working Redeemer Kids volunteers a much-needed chance to slow down. The other is the chance to embrace more participation from children during the worship service for the summer season for the sake of both our children themselves and the adults around them! As our parish moves into the season of Ordinary Time and we find ways to practice our faith in, well, ordinary ways, this is a wonderful time to shift the way we teach our children as well.
When will this take place?
Redeemer Kids will only offer a Three’s Room, Pre-K Room, and the full nursery for both services starting Sunday, June 2nd through July 28th. In August, our full children’s spiritual formation classes will be offered again; we will spend three weeks getting back into the regular rhythms of meeting before we fully relaunch our curriculum in the Fall with the rest of the parish.
What does this mean for our kids?
We will offer a children’s liturgy specifically for our young children to help guide them through the service (and to doodle on, of course) as well as providing crayons to use. Our school-aged children will be welcomed into portions of the service that they have not been in before to learn alongside our older members during the sermon and to practice corporate prayer during Prayers of the People. This is not a break from children’s spiritual formation—rather, a new way to practice it together!
What does this mean for parents?
If your child is a rising kindergartener or older, they will be sitting with you for the whole service! We will offer some resources specifically for these children to engage with the service. I can speak from experience that it is no small task to help my squirmy 7-year-old boy sit through long stretches of the service and I don’t want to minimize that challenge for you parents. I urge you to see this not only as an opportunity for your child to form new habits around worship (like when to sit, listen, stand, sing, and kneel), but to find their place in the whole body of Christ by participating in new ways!
What does this mean for Redeemer Kids volunteers?
Our hope is to give our hard-working Redeemer Kids teachers, assistants, coordinators, and more a season to slow down. Many of you might not know that we ask our teachers and assistants to serve every three weeks and our coordinators and nursery volunteers to serve every four weeks. As the year has gone on, many of our team members have served more frequently than this in order to have the 30 volunteers needed every Sunday to run our children’s ministry. For those who are not currently serving in Redeemer Kids, take this season to thank our Redeemer Kids volunteers and to prayerfully consider how you could use your own gifts to volunteer as well—you’re needed!
What does this mean for everyone else?
This is a wonderful opportunity to engage in a new way with the children of our parish! There will be opportunities to stretch and grow as a congregation as we extend hospitality to the school-aged children of our church and by supporting families with young children in the pews around you. Here are a few practical guidelines to consider:
The first way you can help is to model attentive and fully engaged behavior for the kids around you. You disciple the kids nearby when you attentively observe the sermon, stay focused when listening, and use your body to kneel, stand, and extend your hands. After all, children learn the most by observing!
Get to know the names of the children who sit near you in particular and then ask after them by name each week. This small gesture can mean the world to children (or anybody for that matter) who can often feel overlooked in a crowd.
When a child near you is noisy (drops a pen, cries, giggles, talks out loud) during the silent portions of the service, don’t react. This could take practice for each of us, but stay engaged in the prayer/silence/liturgy and take this time as an opportunity to grow in focus and to model a still and calm posture for your neighbors. This is a spiritual “muscle” we can all exercise.
Be open to how you can grow from this experience. During this summer and beyond, be attentive to how children already naturally engage with the service on their own. Do they shout the creeds or dance when they sing? Do they find it hard to be attentive during the scripture reading or to withhold their enthusiasm when they are able to participate in a call and response? Children reflect our own emotions, desires, and sin patterns, but are often more obvious about it. Be open to what you can learn about yourself from watching these children and how you can grow in your own faith through this.
Pray with me now and each week to come: Almighty God, heavenly Father, you have blessed us with the joy and care of children; Give us calm strength and patient wisdom so to train them, that they may love all that is true, and pure, and lovely, and of good report, following the example of their Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
In Christ,
Casey Cisco
