Dear Christian parents, we have the wonderful privilege of bringing our children to the church every Lord’s Day. While many churches have separate “Kids church” or “children church” during the Sunday service, in our church, we let our children stay with us and engage in the whole worship service.
Why? Because they are our covenant children.
As Peter said, “the promise is for you and for your children” (Acts 2:39). The promised gift of eternal life by grace alone through faith alone in the Lord Jesus Christ alone is not only for us parents, but also for our children. And as the children of the Old Testament saints also witnessed the words and works of God together with the adults, our children also can and must witness God’s work among his people (1 Corinthians 10:1-4; Exodus 10:8-9).
Because of that, our children join us in public worship—witnessing and receiving God’s ordinary means of grace. They join us in hearing God’s call to worship, singing songs of praise, praying, giving tithes and offerings, and listening to the sermon. Our children are not insignificant attendees; they are part of the congregation.
Given this, we Christian parents have hope and comfort that since God has sovereignly put our children in His presence—being exposed to God’s means of grace—they too shall be converted to faith and grow in the grace and knowledge of Christ. Until they demonstrate clear signs of unbelief and apostasy when they grow up, we can assume that they are indeed part of God’s chosen people whom He will call to faith, save, and grant eternal life.
Such hope gives us encouragement and motivation to bring up our children in the Lord. Because God gives them the same promise He gave to us parents, we seize every opportunity to teach them the ways of God and His saving work in Christ. Deuteronomy 6:5-7 makes the instruction clear, “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise…”
Pointing our children to God and His Word takes long years of patience and perseverance. It’s never an easy task. But it’s a necessary one. And this also applies to training them for public worship service every Sunday, for growing in God’s means of grace.
Why “train” them? Because they are also sinners like us. It’s not natural for them to know how to truly and rightly worship God. They need the Spirit’s transforming work through the ministry of the church. Hence, we intentionally bring them up in worshipping God even inside the church.
So how do you train and engage your child in the worship service? Let’s first look at two general principles.
General Principles for Training Your Child for the Worship Service
First, children should learn to worship God inside the church. What I mean is that our children must have a sense of reverence for God inside the church. When they’re inside the church, and especially during the service—they must realize that they’re not in the park, not in a playground, not in a mall, not even in your house. They are inside God’s appointed place for worship. In church, we are all in the holy presence of the almighty God our Father and of Christ our Lord through His Spirit.
That’s the primary and ultimate objective of training and engaging them in the worship service. To have them get a true sense of God.
Second, every worshipper in the church must observe proper order. As Paul said, “God is not a God of confusion but of peace… [so] all things should be done decently and in order” (1 Corinthians 14:33, 44). This is true for every aspect of the church service, including how we and our children behave. While we teach everyone that children are part of the congregation, and should never be treated as distractions—we also do not want to disturb other worshippers intentionally.
We also train our children for the worship service as a form of serving and encouraging one another in our worship to God.
So given these two general principles, here are some practical ways you can train children in public worship (especially toddlers and growing kids).
4 Practical Ways to Engage Your Child in Church Service
1. Engage and talk to them throughout the worship
Help your children understand that they are part of the congregation.
Instead of leaving them sitting in a corner watching YouTube, have your children sit beside you or on your lap. When it’s time to stand and sing, make them stand and sing. When it’s time for reading, read with them. When it’s time for congregational confession of sin, let them speak the same words adults say. When it’s time to bring tithes and offerings, let them give their contributions as well.
They may not be able to read and sing yet. Or even understand what they’re reading and singing. But what’s important is you give them the sense of reading and singing for God. Don’t underestimate even the least thing that God can work in the mind and heart of your small child.
How about during the sermon? Should you expect your toddler to sit still and quiet for 40 minutes to hour?
That’s quite impossible. Find creative ways to keep them engaged and have a sense of God and his Word. Instead of watching or playing on your phone, or reading a fairy tale or Marvel Stories, give them a kids’ version of a Bible story. Have them color an artwork of any Bible character.
At Grace Immeasurable Christian Church, our Children’s Sunday School teachers prepare puzzles and coloring activities related to the sermon which kids can also work on during the preaching. That helps them retain even a single truth or concept from the sermon.
If your child can already comprehend ideas, talk to them during the sermon. When the preacher says something relevant to your child, perhaps related to his experience at home or school, talk to your child about it. Whispering to your child like, “Oh, you heard that? God says we must trust in Christ”—it can be a good way to train your child to receive truths from God.
2. Be attentive yourself
Nothing can mold and train your children more than your example. And it’s true with corporate worship.
If you are engaged and attentive, your children will more likely be the same. So, stop leaving your seat and walking around so often. Stop using your phone to browse on Facebook or respond to your client.
And if your children want to play with you—don’t play with them. That baby or toddler may be too cute to be resisted, but there’s a time for play afterward. Instead, just smile and tell them to be quiet and listen.
Worship God reverently and sincerely yourself, and by the grace of God—your children will follow.
3. Bear with their limited attention
Of course, our children can’t be engaged in worship like we could. At least, not yet. Especially for toddlers, their attention span is short and it’s difficult for them to stay focused and behave throughout the service.
So when your toddler gets sleepy, let him/her sleep. It would be better to sleep while inside the church on a Sunday morning than elsewhere.
When your toddler gets bored and wants to play or gets cranky, tell him/her to be quiet. If the behavior persists, and it becomes distracting to others, bring your child outside for a while. Again, we don’t want to keep other worshippers from focusing during worship.
Go outside or to another room where the child can see different things. Just let him/her get past the boredom or finish crying.
But be careful also that you don’t turn this into a license for your child to get used to skipping the things of God in order to satisfy him with what he wants. After maybe five minutes or so, tell your child that you need to go back to the service. Tell your child to behave.
If you go back and the distracting behavior persists, bring the child outside again—not necessarily to let him divert the attention away from the service, but to make him calm and attentive so you can go back inside again. Sometimes, warning the child that you will spank him when you get home if he doesn’t listen may be necessary.
Just keep doing it.
A young child may not yet understand your verbal instruction to behave inside. But even by your repeated actions, let him understand that what’s right and important for you and your children is the service inside rather than outside.
4. Bring home God’s Word
The goal of listening to God’s Word in the worship service is life transformation. Not only to feed the mind but also to nourish the heart. One way to impress God’s Word into the hearts of our children is to talk about it even after the service.
Remember Christ’s parable about the sower in Mark 4:3-20? Some heard God’s Word but immediately Satan comes and takes it away from them (Mark 4:15). Don’t let it happen to your kids.
Talk to them about what they learned from the sermon that day. You can do it at the dinner table. If you have multiple kids, you can make it fun by giving a prize. Perhaps, the first to answer is the first to get food on the table. Who knows, that can make them more attentive the next Sunday.
What’s important is you train them to listen and retain at least one truth from God’s Word. And soon they’ll ponder and meditate on it day and night (Psalm 1:1-2; Joshua 1:8).
Training Your Child for Sunday Worship is a Marathon
Training and engaging your child in the worship service is very challenging. That’s why spouses need to encourage and help one another. Other members of the church should also encourage parents with kids rather than judging them or almost telling them to stop being in church until the kids are perfectly behaved.
Let’s bear one another’s burdens.
As for the parents, training our children starts at home. How children behave in church is also a reflection of how they behave at home. Train them to behave and be quiet whenever you tell them to do so. Train them to realize that there’s a proper place and time for everything—time to play, time to eat, time to read, time to sleep, and so on. And set the tone for your family even before the Lord’s Day. Sleeping earlier on Saturday night and coming early for church on Sunday are a few ways you can train your children to treat the Lord’s Day worship as more than an ordinary day and activity.
And lastly, recognize that all of this is a marathon. There’ll be a lot of adjustments, and you can’t expect your child to behave in church in a matter of 1-2 weeks. But take heart, even the small disciplines that you consistenly and increasingly lay upon your children will go a long way in the long run.
You won’t regret it. Your children will thank you for it (Proverbs 29:17).
In the end, training our children for corporate worship is hard. You will be distracted and wish you could focus more during the service without being “burdened” with your child.
But remember, they’re not a burden and shouldn’t be considered as such. They are God’s gifts, “a heritage from the LORD… and a reward” (Psalm 127:3). The reason we train them is not only that they’re sinful, but they also need our help and guidance toward God. Our family is our primary ministry; training our children is also an act of worship.
And as God has given us this wonderful responsibility and privilege to see our children grow in knowing and following Christ, He’ll also give us more grace and strength each day… more than we think we’ll need.
Dear Christian parents, do your best to train and engage your child in the worship service. And “in the Lord your labor is not in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:58).
Author’s Note: This article was originally published on our church’s website, and was updated, expanded, and re-published here on the author’s website.