Friendship and community are not optional side dishes to the main course of corporate worship. Being part of a worshiping community of believers is a New Testament mandate and a good gift from God, and there are ways a church can help facilitate Christian community between children.

As a child, my bookshelves and school’s library were full of biographies of great Christian missionaries: People like Corrie ten Boom, Gladys Aylward, George Mueller and Eric Liddell shaped my perception of global missions and encouraged me toward seeking to follow Christ in everyday life. Through their commitment to sharing God’s love, often at great…

The great danger to a student’s faith is not secularism, liberalism, modernism, Christian nationalism, progressivism or any other “ism” but a reduced Christianity that fosters youth ministry as a means for consumerism instead of participation in the life of Christ. “Do the kids like this?” is not the driving question of how youth ministry should operate even though we want and hope it resonates. We should instead be driven by questions of how to foster an environment that helps children participate in the work of God and the sacramental life of the church. We help them move from consumers to participants.

This past spring, All Saints Dallas hosted a weekly women’s Bible study titled, “Learning to Love the Old Testament,” a combination of Old Testament survey, biblical literacy, a crash course in geography, genre and historical timelines, and personal application. As we studied, I noticed that our conversations and questions often included unlearning perceptions of Old…

Praying with children can somehow feel like both an incredibly simple and overwhelming experience: What do we pray about? Do I need to use a liturgy? Is it okay if we always just use a liturgy? What if they just spend their time praying for things they want?

Most people, adults included, need some guidance on how to grieve. Walking with children through difficult subjects and painful experiences often reveals an adult’s unanswered questions or insecurities. Questions like “Why did God let this happen?” and “Doesn’t God love me?” swell up while emotions churn. As parents, it’s tempting to focus on managing emotions and behaviors rather than helping children work through their grief. Here are four tips to help with that process.

When teaching children about living a life of service, we must recognize both their inherent vulnerability and also their identity as co-stewards of God’s Kingdom.

Three days can feel like a long time in the world of a child, and spending time each day remembering the important events of Holy Week teaches children differently than when they read a storybook and the whole story arc resolves in a few minutes. They are no longer asked to just read about something, they are invited to keep pace with the story and begin to enter into it.

One of the beautiful things about guiding children in the rhythms of the Eucharist is that it holds together both an incredible simplicity and an irreducible complexity.

We catechize children when we invite them into God’s love throughout our worship and prayers. When we pick up toddlers to participate in the Eucharist, whisper to children of their own baptism days during another baptism and pass the plate to them during the offering, we have an opportunity to experientially share God’s sacrificial love and provision for them.