My very first “Sunday School” or “Children’s Church” with my boys was somewhat of a bust. I really wasn’t sure what to do as the first Sunday approached. I committed to begin doing this with my kids and my wife was on board. I’d done lots of research, meditation and prayer. Yet I was left in a bit of a panic. I think my mind was still on the idea that God could help my oldest with his fear of monsters and the part of me that obsessed wanting to help him dominated my thinking and probably drowned out the more subtle promptings from God.
So I took the video lesson about God and fear that I mentioned in an earlier post and edited out the lion part and the God’s punishment part. I collected some YouTube children’s songs, thought of a craft and headed into Sunday. In fairness, my oldest loves crafts so this was not a simple add on. But as I indicted, this was not to be my finest lesson.
I had all kinds of technical problems that Sunday morning and ended up showing them the video on my phone. This was actually a blessing because they sat on my lap and they felt more engaged and connected with me and each other. They didn’t like most of the song videos I had chosen. I moved on to the craft. They made shields of faith and they were supposed to shout the phrase from the video lesson, defeating fear. It was a flop. They wouldn’t recite the phrase and just wanted to fight with their shields and it descended into chaos.
As I write about this first lesson I cringe looking at all the ways I missed the mark.
Raising Gentle Faith 