Animating Children’s Participation in a Small Congregation

In my years as a musician and educator serving a relatively small mainline church in downtown Toronto, I have always struggled with a prevalent sentiment: “Children are the future of the church!” Serving and connecting with the youngest members of a church is vital work, which I think is why many churchgoers rely on this phrase. At the same time, however, this notion can quickly become a trap. Sometimes lofty thinking about “the future” can stop those of us who attend and work in churches from meeting people – of any age – exactly where they are now and serving the needs of our present congregation. Equally, thinking of children as “the future” of the church can cause us to miss the moment – when is it, exactly? – when these future children “earn” their voice in the present community. At what point does the future arrive? In my own congregational context, our efforts to engage and include children comes from a commitment to the idea that children are not the future of the church, but rather, a vital part of its present.

My instinct to approach engaging children in this way stretches back to my inclusion in the church Christmas pageant at the Presbyterian church where I grew up, also a very small congregation. For several years I played a recurring role as a ukelele-playing shepherd.  Somewhere I have a photo: Mushroom cut, bathrobe, red Keds, ukelele in hand. As amusing as this image is, I now realize that that experience was a deeply important part of my childhood expression as a Christian, and my participation in the life of the church.  There was room for my quirky gifts in the Christmas play, and in this way, there was room for me at the Table.  I grew up with a sense that I was a vital contributor to our church community, and so as both my abilities and my understanding of my gifts grew, I was eager to give them back to the congregation that helped to raise me.  With this in mind, let me share some of the approaches we are using and learning from in my own context.

Our congregation is small by North American mainline standards, seeing around 85 attendees for a single service on Sunday mornings. We are a United Church of Canada congregation, a denomination in full communion with (and with many similarities to) the United Church of Christ. Denominationally, the United Church of Canada has its origins in the Methodist Church, Canada, the Presbyterian Church of Canada, and the Congregational Union of Canada; it is a denomination with strong commitments to social justice in action and marked its 100th anniversary last summer. We are situated in downtown Toronto, where our demographics lean towards retired single people and couples, early-career adults, and a small number of families with young children. Like many churches, the size and profile of the congregation shifted during the first stage of the COVID-19 pandemic; there had been more young families prior, and as lockdowns and circumstantial pressures endured for months, folks’ priorities and locations changed, and so did the makeup of Sunday morning. Currently, three years into being able to gather in person again, we have a core of 5-7 children on a given Sunday, and we have created a children’s area of tables and quiet toys in one section of the sanctuary itself. It’s a little noisy, and a little unpredictable, but it works well.

Something I admire in my ministry colleague is his commitment to talking to the children. Like many congregations, we incorporate a children’s time into each service; it’s marked with a simple song that the children know is theirs to bring them forward to the circle (right now, the anonymous song “Dios esta aquí / God is Here Today;” we have also used the South African traditional praise chorus “Hamba nathi mkululu wethu / Come Walk with Us, the Journey is Long”). I appreciate how the minister always gets right down on the floor, doctoral robes and all, to speak directly to the children, invite them to think about the scripture themes for the day or share their experience, and to pray with them in accessible terms they can understand. The children are also so capable at learning songs in languages other than English; and, as they learn, they have a great way of inciting the grownups of the congregation to learn alongside them.

Extending this idea, I have tried to carry an inclusive spirit into musical programming for the kids. We are a small enough community that a weekly programme like a choir with rehearsals and performances doesn’t make sense for us at this point. However, we’ve enjoyed having the kids learn a particular song for an occasion - my favourite was incorporating them into singing Mark Hayes’ “Our Journey of Faith” for the installation service of the minister. We had two singing practices together, and I prepared sing-along tracks for the kids and families to listen to on their own time. When it came to performing the song, we added the kids in to singing with the adult choir, and they sang some lines on their own supported by an adult treble singer. My goal with kids’ singing in worship is to incorporate their voices as members of the leadership, rather than setting them off on their own. While they’re certainly adorable, I try not to make their cuteness the main focus; my hope is to show them they have a voice in the song of the community, rather than to put them on display to delight the grownups (though if the grownups are delighted, that’s a bonus!). I have also found opportunities to draw the youngest players into the sound of our musical accompaniments; for example a young cello player joining the group, adding the three notes she could play to the carols for Christmas Eve. We’re looking forward to exploring percussion together, and I intend to get them telling stories with drums using All Hands In: Drumming the Biblical Narrative (Brian Hehn and Mark Burrows, 2017).

Children’s musicals are another wonderful resource for engaging children in community; in our case, mounting a kids’ musical is not in reach, but we invited the young families to stay after church, and a small group of performers sang and played through a musical as a fun activity. (My own daughter loves audiobooks, and especially the iconic Canadian programmes called Classical Kids by Susan Hammond that combine music and storytelling; this event was like a live audiobook with audience participation!) I planned ways for the kids to participate in the story as it unfolded; we told It’s Cool in the Furnace, but there are many more recent examples to choose from. (Our King Nebuchadnezzar did scare the littlest kid a bit at one point, but he promptly apologized.) The most unexpected learning from this afternoon was how many adults from the congregation wanted to stay and listen along as well - and sing! I loved seeing the adults enjoy the story and discover the music alongside the kids.

None of these approaches are groundbreaking, but they are working well in our context, and I’m continually learning new lessons. A year ago, an idea from our minister taught me something I wasn’t expecting. My daughter was in Grade 1 and learning to read, and he asked if she would read a short passage of scripture for our Lessons and Carols service the Sunday after Christmas. I had assumed he would select something like the angels visiting the shepherds, imagining that that’s an exciting story for a child to read. But, he offered the first sentences of John 1. At first I was skeptical; I think of John as being mystical, sweeping, and perhaps inaccessible to a small child. But as she started practicing the words I realized what a perfect choice it was: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God…” – most of the words were on her list of Grade 1 sight words, and she was able to read them confidently.

Finally, let me share a perspective from our wider denominational context that highlights how I understand the task of approaching ministry in an intergenerational spirit. I was the music director for worship at the United Church of Canada’s General Council meeting last August, in the 100th year of the denomination. Amongst the hundreds of delegates was a core group of youth commissioners in their mid-teens to early twenties, who participated in the proceedings in a variety of ways, including leading one of the mornings in worship, and sharing position statements during a youth forum in plenary session. The latter session was truly electric, as the youth commissioners shared poignant and pointed statements of their urgent hopes for the future–and the now–of the church. They spoke in words which were carefully considered, at times sharply phrased. They demonstrated their deep investment in their church communities, and they did not shrink from speaking truth to power. In church terms, I’m still relatively young, but I couldn’t help but be in awe knowing that there would have been no comparable forum for my own voice at a similar age. At what point do we “allow” children to have a voice in their community? With “future thinking,” I think it’s often too late. I hope that enabling children’s participation in every aspect of the life of the church will teach them that they always have a part in the song.