For a child to participate in your weekly service in an experiential way—expressing love to God, hearing from God, responding to God—the child needs to develop a proper sense of worship. Let’s cover several essential points of your service presentation, preparation, and perspective that will either develop or hinder your child’s sense of worship. Your child’s sense of worship ultimately determines his or her participation in the song service, in personal application and response to God’s Word, and the commitment to weekly personal changes during the altar time experience.
First, evaluate your service presentation. Does it give the kids’ the impression that they are in a worship service or just a school classroom setting? The service should be structured like a worship service with an environment of respectfulness, expectancy of meeting with God, and desire to respond to God. Is your service cutting edge? Good. Is it exciting and fun for the kids? Good. But an exciting, fast paced, cutting edge service can still leave your kids void of the spiritual development necessary to know God and stay out of hell. Even though your service may have great appearance, Paul describes one of the most commonly missing elements that will develop a sense of worship in your kids. “My preaching was not with wise or persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power (1 Cor. 2:4).” If you think technology is persuasive enough to make true spiritual changes in your kids, it is not. If you think your efforts alone to “put on a quality children’s church” are enough, they are not. We must each week submit ourselves, our way of thinking, our wills to the fact that the power of God’s Spirit must be present and allowed to move in our services if anything of lasting spiritual value is to be accomplished. As pastors, we must not lose sight of the absolute necessity to admit our dependency on God and the moving of His Spirit for a spiritually successful children’s worship service. The moving of God’s power and presence in your service is essential to develop a sense of worship in your children.
Another reason we must live in dependency on God’s Spirit for our services is that no one can come to Jesus unless the Spirit draws him. So many parents, children’s pastors, teachers, are at a complete loss as to why church kids can attend services every week for years and have no interest in the things of God and no desire to obey Him. If our services are being conducted with technical excellence but are void of the power of the Spirit, their spirits won’t be drawn to Christ. Technical excellence can never replace the power of the Spirit! Only when the kids come face to face with the power of God’s Spirit and presence in your service will they be drawn to Him, feel the need to repent, and submit their wills to His.
Second, for a child to develop a sense of worship, your lessons must have a sense of urgency. What type of preparation goes into your service? Is it well planned? Good. Is it prepared in advance, not last minute? Good. But if you have not heard from God for the ultimate direction and goal of the service, there will be no sense of urgency in your message. You must have a clear sense of what changes God wants to take place in the hearts of your kids that week. You do not have any assurance that each of those kids will ever have a chance to hear that message again. God wants to make a permanent change in their lives, bringing about a new and deeper commitment each week. If we don’t challenge them to change, they certainly won’t feel the need. As we travel to speak at various churches, we often see the various messages from the gospel being presented to the children as merely ethical teachings, some options for the kids’ lives, giving the kids a chance to “take it or leave it.” I’m not saying that the pastors are not expressing that the message is from God’s word, but they are not expressing the truth of how urgent it is for the kids to submit to what God is saying. It is a matter of spiritual life or death! It is a matter of accepting or rejecting Jesus! Jesus said, “If you love Me, you will obey what I command (Jn. 14:15).” People who don’t love God aren’t going to heaven. Kids need to be taught the truth and the truth is that if they have no desire to worship God, no desire to obey Him, no desire to submit their lives to Him, then they don’t love Him. They are not going to have eternal life just because they go to church each week. We must preach the message with the urgency because the truth is that it is a matter of life and death whether or not they put into practice the teachings of God you are speaking to them.
