Five Things to Teach Your Children This Christmas.

From desiringGod.org

It’s that time of year again. The stores are adorned with all things red and green. Mailboxes and inboxes are filled with ads, sales, and catalogs. Prettily wrapped packages are at the forefront of nearly everyone’s minds — especially kids’.

Christmas provides a wonderful opportunity to pour the truths of the gospel into the hearts of our children. It’s an ideal time to show them the greatest gift they could ever receive, the gift of Jesus Christ.

Below is a list of important truths to teach our children this Christmas:

1. The Story of Redemption
2. Humility of Christ
3. God Works Through Weakness
4. God Keeps His Promises
5. The Names of Christ

Click HERE to read the whole article

Follow up with your kids!

When the worship service ends, 
worship and service doesn’t. 

Train your children in interacting with adults and others after the service. You may want to encourage them to talk to at least one adult around them after the service, before joining other children their age. For your older children, you may want to encourage them to look for opportunities to serve, in watching younger children or helping with after-service activities.

Later in the day, perhaps at the end of your Sunday meal, spend a few minutes in family review.
You may want to give testimony yourselves as parents, sharing your thoughts and reactions from the sermon.  Ask your children some basic questions about their Sunday School lessons and about the sermon itself.

End with a time of prayer as a family, asking God to help you continue to apply His Word.

Taken from (blog.faithchurchpa.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Parenting-In-the-Pew-booklet.pdf)

What should we do during the service?

Taking Part In the Service

Just prior to the service, make every effort to have your kids visit the bathroom. It is a mystery how kids can go for hours without using the toilet. But suddenly (and inevitably), during the worship service, they have an emergency situation. Train your kids to avoid the potty parade on Sunday mornings. Emergency situations do happen, but more often than not, your kids are hypersensitive to their bodies, because they are not wanting to pay attention to anything else.  Again, emphasize the importance of worship and teach them not to be a distraction to others.

Set clear expectations for your children’s behavior during the service...

• Sit, stand, and close eyes with the rest of the congregation.
• Sit up straight and still - no lounging, fidgeting, crawling.
• Keep papers as quiet as possible.
• Stay awake.
•  Look towards the front. No people-gazing or clock-watching.
•  If you can read, read and sing along with the words. Read along in the Scripture passages. 

(It will help your children to have the same version of the Bible as is used in your church.

When your children need to be corrected, much can be handled keeping them close to you and whispering in their ears.
But if children become loud and disruptive for more than a few seconds, you should take them out of the service and find a quiet place for their correction.

During the sermon, you may want to allow younger children a notebook in which to draw. But as they get older and their reading and comprehension skills improve, begin to encourage them to listen more closely to the sermon. They will probably find they can understand more than they thought. Encourage them to take notes on what songs were song, what Scriptures were read.
They may be allowed to continue to draw, but encourage them to draw something they hear from the sermon itself.

Eventually, encourage your children to take notes and to attempt to outline the sermon for themselves. You may consider helping them learn to take notes, quietly drawing their attention to relevant points. Your child may have questions that arise in their minds from something the pastor says. Some quiet interaction between you and your child might be appropriate (as long as it is not a distraction to others).

However, do not just turn their participation into your project. They need to see that you are participating for yourself, that you are personally affected by the truth of God’s Word, that you value it for yourself.  At times, remind them that you want to listen too.

At first, interaction with your children in worship can seem like a distraction from your ability to worship yourself. It can feel like work. You can begin to resent the effort it takes to help your children and also to pay attention yourself. But worship sometimes is work. And working at your worship may actually grow your appreciation of it all the more. 

Taken from (blog.faithchurchpa.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Parenting-In-the-Pew-booklet.pdf)

What can you and your children do to prepare for Sunday?

Before Sunday

Before Sunday, it is important to promote Sunday as the day you look forward to as a family. It needs to be an exciting day in your family and the best day of the week. It is the day that we meet with our closest spiritual friends, where we are closest to heaven, where we most enjoy the presence and blessing of God. It is the day we celebrate Christ’s Resurrection weekly and  remember that he has accomplished salvation for us. We need to speak to our children about the Lord’s Day worship service as something exciting and grown-up. This means, as parents, we need to have this perspective ourselves. 

John Piper says, “The greatest stumbling block for children in worship is that their parents do not 

cherish the hour. Children can feel the difference between duty and delight. Therefore, the first 

and most important job of a parent is to fall in love with the worship of God. You can’t impart 

what you don’t possess.” 

Cultivating relationships in the church is an important part of cultivating this attitude. It will make a tremendous difference to help your children cultivate a relationship with your pastors, their Sunday School teachers, and other adults of the church. It will make the times of preaching and instruction personal and real to them. 

Plan specifically for exercising hospitality on Sundays. It will cause your children to look forward to the day. It will make an impression on them to see the Lord’s Day as a day of fellowship and celebration, to see adults engaging in spiritual conversation after the service, to participate in it themselves. 

Then prepare for Sunday on Saturdays. As you pray at meals, pray for God’s blessing on the services of the church the next day. With younger children, find out the order of songs for the next day and sing them with your children to familiarize them with the music. If your pastor is preaching a series, read ahead in the passage to prepare for what he might say. 

Plan your schedule Saturday night as much as possible so your family can be rested for Sunday. Sometimes it helps to prepare clothes and food the night before to make Sunday mornings less stressful on the family.

Taken from (blog.faithchurchpa.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Parenting-In-the-Pew-booklet.pdf)

What is worship and how can we help our kids understand it?

Another quote:

We want to encourage our parents to be purposeful even when sending our children to Children’s Church, to take ownership over the process of graduating your children from Children’s Church. For some children, that may happen earlier; for some, it may happen later. (Every child and circumstance is different.) But families need to have a VISION, an EXCITEMENT and a PROCESS for having their family together in worship.

This process does not begin at church on Sunday mornings.

Children need to learn that worship is more than Sunday. If you don’t learn to worship the rest of your week, the worship on Sunday will not make up for it. Sunday worship is the culmination of worship, not the extent of it. 

Therefore, family worship is crucial for the preparation of your children. It teaches your children the habits and discipline of worship. It teaches your children that worship is all of life.  Family worship does not have to be scary or difficult or overwhelming. It is best to keep it simple. 10-15 minutes may be all you need - either at the end of a meal or before bed. Maybe you have a memory verse or question you are learning together as a family, a hymn you are learning together, a book of the Bible you are reading through (or Children’s Bible or devotional book).

You can use the quarterly family ministry guide for questions, memory verses and/or Bible passages.

If you are using the guide for family worship once a week, you can discuss the story and review the memory verse.

You can also use the guide for various nights of family worship
Day 1:  Read the Bible passage for the week
Day 2:  Review the memory verses
Day 3:  Go over the questions and memory verse

Taken from (blog.faithchurchpa.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Parenting-In-the-Pew-booklet.pdf)

The King is adored

KIDS in CHURCH on December 22nd.

On December 22nd, 1st through 5th graders will be in the service with the adults.
There will be notes on this webpage on December 20th.

Be sure to check out the KIDS IN CHURCH posts.  Click HERE.

Over the next couple of days, there are going to be several posts related to
kids,
children's church and
children in church

PURPOSE OF CHILDREN'S CHURCH:

"If there is a place for Children’s Church, we need to keep in mind its purpose - to prepare our children for the worship service. Putting it bluntly, the goal of Children’s Church is to get them out of Children’s Church, to graduate them. Children’s Church is not a place-holder. It is not glorified baby-sitting. It is a stepping-stone. It is not to teach them to check out of the sermon time, or to teach them that worship ends when the singing ends."  

 Taken from (blog.faithchurchpa.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Parenting-In-the-Pew-booklet.pdf)