I was leading some training recently on children and worship when something occurred to me. This often happens to me when I am speaking – a new idea just drops into my head about the subject. Sometimes I blurt it out and develop it live on stage (this is a bit high risk…), while at other times, I think about it while continuing the talk. This is equally high risk as the new thought is then taking away brain space that my talk needed so I literally slow down to make things more manageable and people wonder if my batteries need changing. At this point, I realise what’s going on, blurt the idea out in a slightly more formed way or leave it and generally forget about it. This I suppose is not the hallmarks of a well-ordered mind but I seem to survive!
As this particular training was part of our year-long course (the Children’s Ministry Academy), I felt confident in just blurting it out.
We were talking about the way that spiritual rituals can be a powerful thing for children and that we shouldn’t be afraid of using them in our children’s ministries. The thought that occurred to me was that while we often look to develop the way we do prayer and worship with children, looking out for new songs, activities and liturgies, we never get to change communion much.
Yet, in all my years working with children, I’ve never once heard a child approach communion by groaning and saying, ‘Not this again!’ If the key to running good children’s groups was a constant drive to move everything forward and make this week better than last, then the Eucharist would be a disaster for children. But it isn’t, so why?
With communion, we have two powerful things in play that are going to be making a key difference.
One is the way that, as we express our togetherness around one bread, we teach children they truly belong here, but that’s a conversation for another day!
The second thing is that, as I mentioned before, we also have the ritualistic nature of children to think about; all research into children’s spirituality has found it to be ritualistic. Children will find thoughts or activities that make them feel closer to God and then consciously return to them in order to find God again. This is often a little thing like a special thought or looking out of a particular window, but it holds that it should also be true of grander rituals that children are regularly exposed to.
There is a dual challenge here: about including children well in communion, but also about how we plan ritual into our sessions. What can you do every week that will over time become more powerful, not less, and become a pillar of the spiritual lives of the children in your group? This need not be rocket science: think candles, silence, multi-sensory stuff and simple liturgies. But most of all, we need to have the confidence to do them again and again, rather than chasing a new thing.
Sam Donoghue leads the Children and Youth Team for the Diocese of London.