I long wrestled with dissatisfaction around the schedule for each of our children’s ministry classrooms. Don’t get me wrong. My Type A personality loved the down-to-the-minute schedules handed to each lead teacher, and I felt a sense of success when things ran on time. Grasping to the slightest amount of order in a classroom of 3-year-olds felt like a win on a Sunday.
But my heart began to stir for our children and team members to make their way through an order of service that carried deep, theological purpose. I began to dream of making the moments we had with our children more aligned with the service their parents attended. From that desire was born our Paradox Kids classroom liturgy.
Let me explain the basics of this classroom liturgy, and then I’ll walk you through how we train the volunteers at Paradox Church to use it. The word liturgy means “the work of the people.” The order of service we repeat as adults on Sunday morning is our work of service rendered unto God. And simply put, liturgy is the rhythms and patterns we rehearse every week as we gather for worship with God’s people. Even our youngest children can be invited to participate in liturgy rather than sitting back to observe or be entertained. The work we invite them to participate in — individual pieces of our classroom liturgy serve as habits and practices that shape their hearts to love and know Jesus.
We keep our children’s liturgy simple so that children will know the glory and grace of Jesus throughout our classroom time and their lives: we invite children in, preach the gospel, give room for response, and then send our littles out on mission. The five liturgical movements of the classroom liturgy are as follows:
- God Gathers His People
- We Pray to God for Help
- We Listen to God’s Word
- We Respond to God
- God Sends Us on Mission
This language gives our team members a vision to lead in the classroom, not merely serve as babysitters. By identifying the flow of our classroom environments with the flow of a worship service — God initiating and people responding — every volunteer can see how they fit into the work God is doing in our children’s hearts.
Here is how it works. We have a poster on the classroom wall with the schedule/liturgy. Classroom time is broken down by minutes so that volunteers and children know what is coming next. Here is how each section of the schedule works.
God gathers his people
God loves to be with his people.Throughout the Scriptures we see God pursuing his people. He gathered his people to the tabernacle and later to the Temple. He established festivals and sacrifices that called his people together to meet with him. Now God’s church gathers on Sundays because God dwells with and among us.

We remind our children’s ministry team members that it is God who brings families each Sunday. We greet them with kind eyes, soft smiles, and welcome children into the classrooms warmly as Jesus gathered children around him — saying each child’s name and getting on their level. As kids enter the classroom, they gather with their peers over a puzzle or coloring sheet, and we follow the Spirit in reminding kids about how God longs to dwell with his gathered children.
We pray to God for help
If you’re familiar with The New City Catechism, you may know that one of the questions is, “What is prayer?” The answer to the question is, “Prayer is pouring out our hearts to God.” This language communicates to kids that we can trust God. What a beautiful habit for our children to be taught. When they have a need, when they are suffering, when they are grateful, when they find joy outside of God, they can come and pour out their hearts to their Good Father.
I want every child in our ministry to stand in awe of God and his power and his might. I want them to tell stories of the God who is so close that he hears our every prayer, so mighty that he can part the Red Sea. We don’t shut down children’s prayer requests, knowing that what might seem silly to an adult is precious to Jesus. We train our teachers not to hinder the children in their classrooms by making prayer eloquent or fancy or by merely dictating the content of their requests. But rather to believe that God hears both our silly requests and our suffering requests. It is the pouring out of our hearts that matters.
We listen to God’s Word
The third movement in our classroom liturgy is the most central. When we gather as a congregation, we read the scriptures and hear them taught through the sermon. In the case of children’s ministry, the teacher’s “congregation” is made up of young children who were created by God to know and love his Word.
As Haylee Bowden, our current Paradox Kids Director, and I worked on training materials for the team, she wrote these words about this part of our liturgy:
“Each week as you lead our kids to listen to God’s word, you are not leading them to listen to a historical story or learn helpful life lessons. You are leading them to commune with the God who made them, loves them, and desires to be in relationship with them. When we believe that God’s Word is true, alive, and that it changes us, we can freely lead children to listen to God’s Word. We don’t have to carry the weighty responsibility of changing kids’ hearts. We get to rely on the true, alive, and transforming Word of God to do that. May that truth free us to delight in leading our kids to simply, yet profoundly, listen to the words of our Maker.”
We respond to God
As we — both adults and kids — listen to God’s Word, it changes us. It evokes a response in us. Have you thought about how you respond when God’s Word is read or taught to you? We stand in awe of God, or we’re convicted by his Word and we respond by repenting, bursting forth in song, or rejoicing as we take communion. What if in the flow of our classroom schedules, we made room for a response from our children?

Giving kids an opportunity to respond involves more than doing a craft or pulling out a bag of blocks to entertain kids during the last minutes of class — though those activities could be a part of the response time that reinforces the teaching.
The goal of the response is for children to wrestle with the truths they have heard. When we confront the reality that we are sinners who need the grace that only Jesus can provide, this reality chips away at hardened and dead hearts so that we are led to burst forth in joy. So most often during the response movement, we invite kids to sing and confess their sins.
God sends us on Mission
Our classroom liturgy concludes with an emphasis on how God sends his people on mission. Our children are called to be “the salt of the earth” and “the light of the world” (Matt. 5:13, 14). Jesus commanded his disciples, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.” (Matt. 28:19). Children can learn about the importance of God’s mission even as God is calling them to salvation!
As class time is wrapping up, we prompt kids to hold out their hands and receive the blessing of God’s Word read over them. (The Great Commission is a good place to start!) Some of our teachers have put to memory a phrase like: “God is with you all week, and we can’t wait to see you again next week!”
We train our team to see this as a powerful spiritual moment, and we give them a vision for being faithful teachers up to the last minute of class time. The spoken blessing and “sending” lets a parent hear at pick-up time how we see their child as valuable and important in God’s kingdom.
This classroom liturgy is what we use to train our team members. We pray that its simplicity and richness will sow a love for Christ’s church in our littlest people that will bear fruit for decades to come. We also believe that the children’s liturgy trains our team members’ hearts. It shows each teacher how they can model to children their dependence on God through prayer, listening, and singing to God in grateful worship.
May the children in your classrooms be transformed by the Word of God. May God pour out his love for his people in a way that forms our children in the gospel and gives them a firm foundation for a lifetime of faithfulness. Amen.
8 Tips for Leading Your Family in Worship
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused many Christian families to find themselves in an odd place on Sunday mornings: home. With many churches choosing to cancel their gatherings in favor of livestream services or family worship guides, here are a few tips for parents wanting to make the most of their worship at home.
1. Teach the importance of corporate worship.
Children need to know that worship on the Lord’s Day is no less sacred in their living room than it is in a church building. Corporate worship is so vital to the life of a Christian that we should utilize whatever technology is available to stay connected to the body of Christ, to be encouraged by our faith family, and to be taught by the Word of God.
2. Limit distractions.
The living room presents more distractions than the sanctuary. Put away toys, phones, pets, and anything else that might distract from listening and participating in worship. Instruct children to use the bathroom before you start. In doing this, you can prepare an environment where worship and study can take priority.
3. Manage expectations.
While we want to limit distractions, they are bound to happen, and we cannot be angry or discouraged when they do. Be flexible. Embrace the awkwardness. Keep the mood light. Don’t let one child with a bad attitude ruin the moment for everyone else.
4. Open your Bible.
It’s tempting to sit back on the couch and passively listen to the livestream like it’s a movie. Instead, stay engaged with the sermon by opening your Bible and following along, just as you would if you were sitting in an auditorium. Make sure each family member has their own copy of God’s Word in front of them.
5. Take notes.
Watching a livestream service in your living room provides an opportunity to show your children how to take notes during a sermon. It is much more difficult to teach young children to take notes in a full sanctuary without distracting those around you. At home, however, you can instruct them to answer questions such as, “Who is speaking?”, “What are you learning about God?”, “What was your favorite song, and why?”, or even, “What was confusing?” These notes could lead to a good family discussion after the service ends.
6. Dad, take the lead.
As the spiritual head of the household, this is a great opportunity for you to lead your family. Be the one who gathers everyone together. Show a genuine excitement about worshipping in a new way. Sing loudly. Ask good questions. Encourage everyone to participate.
7. Read along.
Pray along. Sing along. Just as the Sunday gathering of the church is an interactive time, not a performance, so is participating in a livestream service. Make a joyful noise, even if it’s off-key. Bow your head and close your eyes when someone is praying. Read along in your Bible during the sermon.
8. Long for the return of God’s people gathered together.
Allowing your children to hear how much you miss the Sunday gathering of the church will help them see the importance of corporate worship in the life of a believer. In a small way, it will mirror the longing that all Christians have for the day when we will gather together with the Lord Jesus to be with him forever.
With a little planning and intentionality, this temporary season of isolation could be used to grow your family closer to one another, closer to your local church body, and closer to God.