You really can worship with your young children. Here are some ways to draw them to God in corporate worship.

Asking questions with obvious answers trivializes God’s Word and can discourage our learners. Here’s a better way to end a Bible story.

Here are two excellent resources for preparing for Sunday worship with your young children.

Don’t miss the real reason you do the work of planning VBS. This is a great article to have your teachers read and discuss during training.

Some thoughts for 2024.

If you affirm that children should be part of the worshipping community but struggle with making that work for parents and congregants who want to participate with minimal distractions, hold on tight and watch this.

Published by Calla Press in May, 2023, my story reflects the grief and yet the good work of parting with my mother’s everyday items, while remembering the very real hope we have in Jesus Christ.

This is the story of my grief and hope as I cleaned out my mother’s things before she died in 2022. Lent is the season in which we look ahead to the saving death of the resurrected Christ for our broken lives.

January 30 of 2022 will be the 110th birthday of Francis Schaeffer. Birthdays remind us how fast time flies and when we go back far enough, our time as children.

I thought I’d repost this blog I wrote in the September 2019 issue of ByFaith online because so few people know that this renown evangelical theologian, philosopher, apologist, and the founder of L’Abris, began his ministry focusing on children. I was a recipient of their work as I attended a modified Bible school that used the Schaeffers’ curriculum. The Scripture I learned then still lives on in my heart and continues to uphold and influence my faith today. Read this fascinating story and reconsider the value of children in our churches.

An Advent Poem

c. 2021 by Cynthia S. Fischer

Artwork from the Vatican Museum

While the Mars Hill story is one for all of us who love God's church to consider, it offers additional truths we can teach our children. Our children will encounter broken and dysfunctional systems throughout their lives. Even while they are young can we train them to spot red flags?"

Using three areas of the church: Message, Messenger, and Members, I examined the Scriptural descriptions and standards for these, compared them with examples from Mars Hill, and concluded with open-ended questions to pose to our children.

These same questions can be used for discussing sports teams, music lessons, and other gatherings. Take a read.

I was prompted to write this at the intersection of attending my church’s child abuse prevention training led by a MinistrySafe, a national child abuse prevention ministry, and the ongoing news about sexual abuse, some of it, sadly, involving the church. We can do better and while everyone has a stake in the health of our children, it falls to the Children and Youth ministers to improve and reinforce our policies.

How are your nourishing your soul these days? This spiritual diet pyramid can encourage you to feed yourself wisely.

I don’t know any family that doesn’t struggle with family devotions or family worship. I’m hopeful a reminder from Bonhoeffer and a simple, classic resource will encourage you to pursue this foundational faith practice as you faith pass to your children.

Baby Believer Primers may be the best I’ve ever seen in simple toddler board books that carry deep theological truths. Ok, truth be told I had never thought to google”theology, children and board books.” All you Masters of Divinity folks out there…take a look and be impressed!

What happens when congregants worship side by side and pray for one another across age groups? They begin to know one another. What happens as people get to know one another and pray for one another? They begin to care for one another. The church flourishes as its people grow rich in love and care for one another.

Our pandemic stories swirl above and around our children. Whether it's job loss, working from home, pay cuts, home schooling, or the larger issues with which our divided nation is wrestling, our children are forming their own pandemic stories. The Church is called to step into their stories not only with gifts of love, but with the truths of God's acts in history as He preserves and protects his people.

The church has always been its people, not its buildings and thus we can and ought to creatively pivot and offer ways to allow our entire church to flourish.