by David J Clarke

We have been fortunate to receive two articles this time which are complementary to each other.  They are printed together here and we are grateful to both Frank Beetham and Revd. Prof. David Pickwell for their contributions.  Responses to our Postbag would be welcome as always.

The children’s address – Frank Beetham
The children’s address often forms part of a morning service that is not an all-age service as such, because the children will either withdraw for Junior Church or Sunday School or join the service part way through.  In such cases, all that part of the service when the children are present is all-age worship in itself.  This may take various forms, but is likely to include:

• the opening hymn
• the prayer of adoration and absolution
• the children’s address
• the second hymn (or, conversely, the closing prayers, hymn and dismissal).

It is necessary to use only words and phraseology that the children themselves use and understand.
The children’s address itself will most often last between 4 and 7 minutes.  Very young children may find even this too long for their span of attention if words are used which do not appeal to their imagination or are not part of their vocabulary.

In this short time, usually only ONE point can be made securely.  This should be relevant to their daily lives and involve things they are familiar with (e.g. elephants in the context of a zoo visit or Noah’s Ark).  Children are often fascinated by stories about distant lands or times long ago, but such stories have to be related to something familiar, e.g. children in long ago times or distant lands.  Complex or sophisticated topics are best avoided even if they figure in the sermon later.
It is always better to consult those running the Junior Church or Sunday School before making a children’s address.  This means that, on the whole, a new children’s address may be needed for each occasion.

The point aimed at should suggest the form of the children’s address at the planning stage which should include a dry run to get the timing right.  If the preacher is a good story teller, an interesting story, suitably detailed, may be effective.  (It may help, to start with, to write the story out in full).  However, it is always better to enable the children themselves to participate in some way.  In any case, the following points should be noted.

• it is important to make an initial impact, perhaps by referring to a popular television show or film, or a familiar book, or by introducing an interesting gadget.  A visual impact is often greater.  On the other hand, if references to current popular entertainment, e.g. pop music, are made, they need to be made with care and need to be accurate.  Great care must be taken never to talk down to children or adolescents.
• what is seen is often more easily remembered than what is heard, and appropriate visual aids (pictures, slogans on boards, models, balloons etc) usually need to be planned into the address as a whole.
• before the service, the preacher needs to make sure that everything is in place just where it will be needed (not necessarily the pulpit).  If the preacher’s pocket is the right place, this must be kept clear so that the wanted item comes out easily and is not accompanied by unwanted handkerchiefs etc.  Sometimes a bag or a box may form one of the properties needed and the other items required may be kept inside; but it is generally distracting if at a crucial moment everything has to stop while the preacher gropes for something in a large receptacle.  If a flip chart is needed, it should be in an appropriate spot at the front of the church, but not where it will obstruct the rest of the service and the flip chart markers should be at hand.  If pictures are to be displayed on a screen, the apparatus should be set up and there should have been a brief rehearsal before the service.
• children are often keen to help the preacher but sometimes may be shy, partly because they are not confident of doing what the preacher wants.  If the children are asked to help (as often happens) they should be shown exactly what they are expected to do; even something as simple as holding up a slogan or banner.  The tasks should always be simple ones which do not need rehearsing.  They should be accident proof, but the preacher should always leave a way out and never have to say to a child “no, that’s not right” if things go wrong.

The preacher may want to enlist the help of children by asking them questions.  What each child says should be treated with respect.  The preacher should never laugh at their answers, and, where possible, congregations should be encouraged not to laugh at the responses of children either, unless the child intends their comment to be funny.  Many children are put off speaking in church if they think they will be subject to ridicule, however little that is intended.

If the preacher wants a certain kind of answer, children should not be put in a position of having to guess what is in the preacher’s mind.  The kind of answer for each question needs to be signalled clearly before it is asked.  Sometimes open questions are asked, e.g., “does anyone have a pet?”  The preacher should be prepared to work with any answers offered.  This could be difficult if the answer were “yes, we have a dinosaur”, but the preacher needs to think out how to get something out of whatever answers are forthcoming, even if it means going on an alternative track (though, of course, the address should still reach the end which has been planned)

Humour helps but should not be forced.  It will come with experience but, above all, be fluent.  There should be no awkward gaps where the preacher may lose the thread of what is going on. 
In many situations, the presence of children in worship is more rare than in previous generations, but, when they are present, one of the preacher’s main tasks is to try to demonstrate to them that they are loved and accepted by God and by the congregation.

Frank Beetham is a Preacher in the Leamington Circuit

Watch your language – Revd. Prof. David Pickwell

Several years ago, I was in the church hall sitting on the floor with my group of six little boys at a Summer Holiday Club event.  We were listening to a presentation calling us to praise God for His creation of the world.  An enthusiastic leader was going through the Genesis story day by day as it unfolded the way in which God made the world.  One bright little boy, who was not quite seven years old, confided in me that, “it wasn’t like that.  It started with the big bang”.  Even when I asked who started the big bang, he seemed to feel that there was something not right in what they were being told.  It was not what dad and his teachers had told him.  It was not what the children at school believed.

In this country most people could be described as ‘evolutionists’ as opposed to ‘creationists’  we believe that the world came to be what it is through millions of years of evolution.  Evolution is taught in our schools, not ‘creation science’.  We believe that the Genesis story has important truths to impart about the nature of God and His relationship to us and the universe.  It must not be taken as a literal description of making things in six days.  There is a wonderful repetition which is almost liturgical in the first chapter of Genesis.  It seems to come from a time when people had an oral tradition of learning religious truths.  The repetition reminds one of many folk songs or spirituals like ‘He’s got the whole world in His hands’ which repeats with ‘you and me brother/sister’ and ‘He’s got everybody here in His hands’.  ‘Solomon Grundy’, ‘Charlie is my darling’, both go through the week.  ‘Green grow the rushes Oh!’, with all it’s Biblical references, is another children’s song which must have had a teaching purpose.  The first chapter of our Bible is the same genre but has more serious lessons which are fundamental to Christian belief.

Most adults brought up in our churches understand that this is the nature of much of the Bible.  It speaks religious truths and often does so in the form of very powerful parable stories.  When we hear the story of the Good Samaritan, we do not ask ourselves if there really was a man who was mugged on the Jericho road and rescued as a foreigner.  We understand the vital truths of the story nonetheless.  If we were asked if there was any truth in the Good Samaritan story, we would say there were some important truths.  Outsiders do not necessarily take for granted the difference between religious truth contained in scripture and literal truth.  I find this very true of teenagers in our youth clubs.  Some of them seem to equate what Christians teach as being close to what the ‘Flat Earth Society’ may believe.

Young children have always been told fairy stories.  Their lives would be much the poorer if they were not, and their ability to understand more adult material is limited.  Today children spend a lot of time watching children’s television and videos.  Much of this is fantasy material, and it is part of the delight of children’s entertainment.  Fantasy has also a part in adult entertainment.  One fantasy film has just won a number of Oscars, but no one takes it literally.  As children get older, we fully expect that they will grow out of this make believe world, and mature to an adult understanding.  But what about presenting religious truth as it is part of the fantasy world?  How does a growing child distinguish between magic carpets and woman made out of Adam’s rib.  Nativity plays can be very pretty.  They can even have all the magic of a well told fairy story.  But how can we ensure that a six or seven year old child will tell the difference between the nativity story and Father Christmas?  Why should they abandon one and not the other?  How does he or she know that the Genesis story has the same veracity as the big bang theory, and that the former speaks religious truth whilst the latter is a mathematical attempt to understand the origin of the universe in the light of the laws of science.
Preachers and teachers need to use language which appropriate to the ability of children to understand.  Many of the stories we tell have a delight and charm which is very appropriate for children, but we have to bear in mind that they will need to make the transfer of their religious teaching to the world of adult understanding.  Genesis does not say ‘God made the animals on the sixth day’ as if we are speaking of mother making a cake or a factory making a car.  It says that God commanded the earth to produce {bring forth} the animals and it was done.  What a pity that the Bible account does not say that God developed human beings rather than that he made them out of clay!  In talking to children we could explain that with a mighty burst of His energy God started the process of the universe and developed it stage by stage.  It was a wonderful plan for everything we know to follow in turn and God was delighted when he saw how good it was.  We can say that He was the beginning and continues to care about everything and everyone and that His great plan continues as the world moves towards the great end that God has in mind for it and for us.  The whole process is part of His love and care for us and everything that he brought into being.  It is a question of using words like develop, unfold, grow, instead of made or create which carry the wrong connotations.  A famous actor once said he could make fiction sound like the truth, but preachers can make truth sound like fiction.