Children’s sermons

I do not like children’s sermons. I find them distracting, annoying, meaningless, and insulting to children and to the congregation in general.

The service is flowing in its usual way until the preacher interrupts the flow to invite all the children to come to the front of the church for a children’s sermon. Children leave their families, walk down the aisles of the church, and gather around the speaker. Sometimes the preacher speaks to the children; sometimes another member of the congregation gives the talk. Often the lesson ends with a prayer. Sometimes the children are invited to put their money into a special offering plate. Then they are dismissed to return to their families—or, worse, they are ushered out of the church to a special play space where they will stay for the rest of the service, or at least during the preacher’s regular sermon.

My first objection to this practice is that it informs the children that the rest of the service is not for them. Rather than learning the hymns and traditional prayers of the church as they mature, children are encouraged to think of the service as an hour of pointless noise with just five or ten minutes focused on them. No wonder that a lot of children stop going to church as soon as they are college students or have a place of their own. They never felt invited to take part in the entire service.

Along with this, I am troubled by the interruption for all the worshipers who are not children. Some adults enjoy children’s sermons. I’ve even heard some say that they get more out of the children’s sermon than they get out of the rest of the service. They should be embarrassed even to say such things out loud. The entire service with its hymns and prayers, its Bible readings and sermon, communicates to the minds and also to the hearts of everyone who is present. Even when the preacher has had a bad week and the sermon is below par, the rest of the service still conveys the chief message of the Church: God’s love and mercy and forgiveness for sinners. A good children’s sermon (if there is such a thing) will reinforce the same message, but as such it is unnecessary, since the message is already present throughout the service.

Imagine this trend carried to its logical conclusion. After the children, up to age twelve, have come forward for a five-minute message targeted at them, the teens are then invited to come forward for a teen sermon. Then, decade by decade, the congregation travels to the front of the church to hear a message meant especially for them. By the time the worshipers aged seventy and above have held their golden-age sermon, every member of the congregation has endured seven five-minute messages that they knew were not meant for their ears to hear.

Children’s sermons are cute, which is part of their problem. Entering the presence of God should be awe-inspiring, not cute. Moreover, the typical children’s sermon is an analogy based on one of the Bible readings for the day. In human development, the mind does not understand or accept such analogies readily until approximately the age of ten to twelve—the very age at which children stop coming forward to hear the children’s sermon.

Many adults will disagree with me on this topic, which does not bother me at all. I would like to survey the children of the congregation to learn how many of them really like coming forward in the middle of the service for a talk directed only at them. I would also like to ask some leaders of the congregation: how many children were members of the congregation when we started this practice of children’s sermons? How many children are members of the congregation today? How many of the children who were in church every week when we started the practice of children’s sermons are faithful members today? I think we will find that children’s sermons have failed in their goal to make children feel that they are part of the Church, the body of Christ. The time has come to reverse direction and to teach children that they are part of the Church from the beginning of the service to its conclusion. J.