Room for Children
When I became the mother of two young children, my Sunday church experience changed. Instead of attending a church service to focus on Jesus and the sermon, I suddenly had two noisy distractions, for myself, and everyone else. Now, when the last worship song ended, instead of settling comfortably into my chair, I was leading two wiggling toddlers down the aisle and out the doors to the children’s room. I have a love-hate relationship with children’s rooms.
On the one hand, they provide precious shelter for parents and their noise-makers while often giving them some access to the sermon (speaker system anyone?). On the other hand, they separate parents and children from the whole group, provide few visuals, while expecting you to be edified by whatever amount of teaching you’re able to comprehend while building block towers, racing toy cars, or rocking a dolly.
So, when the Lord called us to have a Sunday afternoon gathering in our own home, Keifer and I decided to make it, as much as possible, a group focused on the whole family, accessible to different languages and cultures.
We open our home 30 minutes before starting time to give everyone a chance to arrive, settle in, talk about life, set up the wooden train track for the kids, etc. When we do officially start, we give thanks for what the Lord has done over the past week and pray for any needs and burdens in the group. While we talk and pray, the kids (all preschool age so far), play around the room. Is it noisy? Yes. Distracting? Yes. But we carry on.
When it’s time for the Bible story, we call the kids to come and sit with us, and they listen and look attentively at the simple pictures as the story is told. After the story, the adults pull out Bibles, pencils, and paper, and begin to draw their own story pictures, while the kids take paper and pencils for themselves as well. So far, only Miriam is confident in drawing her own pictures, copying as closely as she can what she remembers from the storyteller’s drawings. But Teo and another little boy (both 3 years old), usually bring their pencils to me and ask me to draw for them.
“Draw house on a rock!” Teo says, referencing a story from a few weeks back.
So, I draw one house on a rock, and one on the sand, and when they ask me to add in the storm, I do, pointing out again that the house on the rock stands, while the one on the sand falls. “House fall over! House fall over!” The other little boy shouts sadly. “Yes, look at the broken glass,” I say, making cracks in the windows.
“Now draw spiders!” the boy shouts. I know what he means. When we told the story of the man being lowered to Jesus through the roof, I drew a little spider that also fell from the ceiling to the ground (kids love little innocent details like that). So, I redraw the picture as well as the spider, then gave the spider a little web when they request it.
“Now draw Satan,” Teo says, not so innocently. But I know what he wants, not some grim picture, but Jesus in the wilderness being tempted by Satan and aided by the angels, yet again a story from a previous week.
“What about our new story?” I ask. But they aren’t interested yet. Maybe next week. They’re still focused on reviewing previous stories, just as they were the week before that, and the week before that. They always remember the same details, and each time we review, they pay close attention. For these three-year-olds, the joy isn’t in learning some flashy new story, but in happily reviewing and cementing the stories they previously learned and have come to love.
It’s the timeless picture of the house on the rock, “Everyone who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man…” (Matthew 7:24). And who am I to tell them to follow Jesus any differently? In learning communally with the children, I see a broader picture of Jesus and His teaching then I do when I sit shut away. Maybe we could all do with a bit of a “distraction” when it comes to following Jesus.
About the author: Caity Lucchi started telling Bible stories as a teenager and never stopped. As an adult she left her home in Iowa to go “on mission” with her husband and two young children in the Czech Republic. She loves being able to share her passion for Jesus stories in the Czech Republic and across Europe. In her free time, Caity enjoys writing, traveling, learning new languages, and caring for her new lawn and garden.
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