These are just a few thoughts I came away with after leading my group on Sunday. They’re possibly not rocket science but forgive me sharing anyway!
1. It’s easy to wreck stuff
We were looking at the parable of the prodigal son and we’d had lots of interesting conversations about the story: our favourite parts, the most important parts… we’d removed bits of the story to see if we still liked it and there’d been some great insights from really well-engaged children.
To aid this I’d been careful not to say what I thought and just worked with the children’s ideas, affirming their responses.
One thing we’d talked about is where in the parable the children thought God might be. Interestingly no one said the father was God, but we sent them off to work with different resources to explore the bit of the story where they thought they might find God. This was good and I joined the drawing table and saw that most children were drawing either the pig farm or the city. That was really interesting as children seemed to be exploring the idea that God was to be found in the tough places, not home on the farm.
And then I wrecked it.
One child was talking with me and clearly was worried about getting the ‘right answer’, so I was trying to affirm to him that there was no wrong answer – he could put God anywhere he wanted; God is everywhere so you could draw him anywhere in this story. And as I said that I watched him relax and the lightbulbs going off around the room. He had his correct answer, he could just draw the sky and God could be everywhere and all the children could stop thinking and relax, God was everywhere; they had a correct answer.
It reminded me again of how important it is to give children space to think for themselves and how easy it to close that down! I did try and get it back and conversations continued but I never quite felt we had the flow we had before.
2. Sometimes you need to hold your nerve
Another activity we had was a time of silence, all the children lay on the floor in their own spaces, some under tables, and some in a corner; all over the place really and we all just had some time with God.
We’ve done this before and I know my group can do it fine, except this week we didn’t settle as well. We had some giggles, some pretend snoring and lots of fidgeting; I was so close to asking them to be quiet when I remembered, ‘Hold your nerve and lead by joining in.’ I closed my eyes and lay down flat on my back and hoped! Over the next 30 seconds, to a minute the noises drifted away and we had silence, we would not have managed that had I started policing it. I just needed to trust the children, trust God to be with them, and the children needed to see I trusted them.
Sam Donoghue is the Head of Children’s and Youth Ministry Support for the Diocese of London.