We’ve all been there. You arrive at church looking forward to sitting in the whole service because, for once, you’re not leading a children’s group. As you arrive, you see a stressed vicar become noticeably more relaxed on your approach: ‘Oh, so glad you’re here. Mrs Not- So-Reliable hasn’t arrived to do the children’s group. Could you please help out this week?’
Sigh.
What do you do? Is there any way of saving this children’s work session from inevitable catastrophe (and surviving the next hour unscathed)? Here are some thoughts:
1. Don’t be the reason it’s last minute
Don’t be the person who forgets to turn up, or who only remembers it’s their turn the night before or on the morning itself. We wouldn’t do this if we were doing the sermon; we’d have been working on it for weeks: thinking, praying, reading, preparing, panicking, preparing a bit more, rewriting it all, before praying again! The same is true of our children’s work. I usually find the sessions which go best are ones where the message I’ve got is something I think God has given me for the group; which I have absorbed, started living and know really well before giving it. This only comes from preparation.
2. Pray!
Yes, I know you’ve only got five minutes until the children arrive in the room, but I know from experience that if I spend three of those chatting with God and two getting things ready, I will be in a better place when the children bound in. If you’ve got ten minutes, spend six with God: share your frustration at being given it to do at the last minute, express your anger, your sorrow, your disappointment, and be real with God and connect with him. Pray for the children, especially asking God about those who are coming and listen to what he says; ask God to put words, pictures, ideas, and activities into your mind which will be just right for those he knows are coming. Pray for yourself, for patience, wisdom, grace, strength, and passion. Pray for Mrs Not-So-Reliable, that God will bless her too.
3. Know your group
This assumes you’re taking a group which you have taken before, but even if not, it’s good to know the children in our congregation! What do they like? What’s going on with them at the moment? If you don’t know them well, you could always do a ‘getting to know you’ game to start you off. For young children this can be a ‘Hello’ song saying hello to each of them in turn by name. For others, it could be a ball or balloon game where they catch it and say their name, their favourite game and something about themselves or about their week. All of this will help you get to know them as well as enabling them get to know each other. This is what adults do every week over tea and coffee after the service.
4. Set something up for when they arrive
This is a challenge when you have two minutes, but even something simple can give a very powerful welcome! Walking into a room that has been set up in anticipation of your arrival feels great. Imagine walking into a room with a table all set for dinner with glasses and napkins and table decorations, even steaming plates of food! This is how God welcomes us: he is always ready, waiting to bless us. Here are some simple ideas:
Put out a colourful rug, picnic blanket or tablecloth and place some things on it.
Set the chairs in a circle around a Bible or another item you plan to use.
Blow up some balloons – you only need one for a game!
If you have one, set up a bubble machine blowing bubbles.
For young children, set up a few towers of bricks with some left to add.
Children are often much more sensitive to how things look and feel than they are to what’s said to them, so while welcoming them by name at the door is great, so is making sure they’re coming into a room which has things set out for them. For young children, this could be a few sets of toys set up and put out in an inviting way. For older children, it could be a circle of cushions or chairs, music on or a few tables of activities they can start right away.
5. Have something to share from your own walk with God
This isn’t always easy, but a personal story is always interesting, even for small children, and takes very little preparation. It could be something which happened to you this week, or something that happened a long while ago. Just make sure you tell it in an ageappropriate way, and keep to the point.
This is something I find it useful to have prepared, so why not prepare a story now for the next opportunity you have to share it? It could be in a last-minute session, a long car journey, a park picnic or a bedtime moment. Think about what the children need to know to understand the story, plan your beginning, your middle and end, and think about your characters and how you will introduce them. Think about what name you will use to refer to God (God, Jesus, Holy Spirit, Lord), and how you will invite them to respond to it: I wonder what part of that story you liked most? I wonder if you have a story like this?
If you want to link it with a Bible story, you could. If the story you are doing is one about someone who met Jesus, ask if they’d like to hear about how you met Jesus or something Jesus has done in your life. You could share a Bible verse or story which is really resonating with you at the moment, and explore it together with them – you may be blessed by their input!
6. Know a selection of ways to share a story
The key is to have a few methods that work for your group, which you have the resources for. These could include:
A play: Allocate parts and invite the group to act out the story as you tell it. This often works well if you read the story from the Contemporary English Version.
Playing with toys: For young children, allocate parts to toys they enjoy playing with and tell the story with them. Set up a ‘scene’ with cloth or bricks to make the house / river / place where the main action of the story happened. Repeat the story, inviting them to move the toys to ‘act’ the story as you tell it.
A game: Read or tell the story, using key words to form part of a version of the game Mary goes shopping. Sit the children in two teams (or one team if you have five or fewer children). Choose your key words from the story, ones which repeat often but are also meaningful (eg names rather than ‘and’). Allocate the first child or children the same first key word, the second the second and so on. When you mention their word, they have to jump up, run to the front of the room, back past their team to the back and then sit down. The first back to their place gets the team point. To start with, wait until they get back until you continue the story, but as they get good at it, you can have more than one of them running. You can also have one word which means they all have to run, preferably the most significant word in the story.
Something quiet: Set up a den, pop-up tent or a sheet draped over chairs to provide a sheltered (but not hidden) area to tell the story in. This makes it special and different, and provides focus.
Story stones: If you can, grab a selection of ten or more stones, wash them and draw basic pictures on them with a sharpie pen, you have a simple and reusable method for storytelling.
7. Know a selection of games and craft activities
This really depends on your group and their preferences. It’s always good to ask them what they enjoy, as often they’ll happily play a game they love again and again. I remember a group of five year-olds who always liked to end by playing Duck duck goose! You might feel you need time to prepare a craft activity, but open-ended craft is particularly good for children to explore their own ideas relating to the story or other activities you’ve done. Just get out a good selection of nice materials and tools and invite them to create. They will find this easier and easier each time you do it and you will find that they begin to explore their developing faith through the media which most appeals to them. Try to resist asking them what they’ve made or what they’re doing. You could ask them if they’d like to share about what they’re doing, but make sure they know that they are free to keep it private. After all, if you were doing it, you may well want to too!
Games:
• Duck duck goose
• Dead lions
• In the water, out of the water
Items for open-ended craft:
• Paper, card, scissors, pens, pencils, paints, masking tape, glue
• Tissue paper, glitter, pom-poms, sticks, string, foam sheets, felt
• Cardboard and plastic containers from recycling (clean!)
• Clay, play-dough, plasticine, plastic boards and utensils (can be cutlery)
• Chalk, felt tips, water colour paints, lining paper
• Wire, wooden, large nails, plastic pipe
8. Know a selection of ways to pray
It’s always possible to sit in a group and pray – and some groups will be happy with this - but it’s handy to have a few creative ideas up your sleeve:
Paper people: Cut out paper people and turn them into people you know, and pray for them.
Dice prayers: Invite the children to write a list of six things to pray for (people we know, people in the news, people at our church etc). Take it in turns to throw a dice and pray for the thing which was written next to that number.
Play dough or fridge magnet prayers: Write on magnets or make models of things you are thankful to God for.
Sorry prayers: Fill a bowl with water and grab a towel. Sit in a circle and explain that the Bible says that only people with clean hands and pure hearts can meet God, so we are going to have a chance to wash our hands with water and ask Jesus to make our hearts clean. Go first, saying a short, simple, appropriate sorry prayer, for example, for being impatient or unkind. Invite the children, if they’d like to, to take a turn at washing their hands and saying sorry to Jesus either out loud or silently. Make sure you tell them that the Bible also says that if we are sorry, God forgives our sins, washing them away like they were never there.
9. Know your resources
Know where you can go to get an idea. Here are some of my favourites:
LightLive.org is the free online archive of all of Scripture Union’s Light material.
GodVenture.co.uk has loads of free ideas plus packs of cards for £7.50 called GodVenture52: there’s a prayer set and a Bible set, each with 52 simple, fun ideas. Enter the code cw15 to get 20 per cent off.
flamecreativekids.blogspot.co.uk has loads of fabulous creative ideas for prayer, often linked with the Church season and specific stories.
going4growth.org.uk/growth_through_the_year has lots of ideas on celebrating many different church seasons.
10. Trust God
If you go into the group wanting to share Jesus with them and ask him to be there and help you, guess what? He will! After all, those children aren’t ours, they’re his. The group, the ministry, the church, it’s all his. He will accomplish what he wants, last minute or not.
