Another week of the pandemic down and our whole family was excited to worship God with our new kid-centric Church at Home set-up. This is a special time for our family that we designed as a substitute church worship service (minus the awesome community). Virtual church just wasn’t cutting it for our girls and their needs, even though we have an amazing church! So, let’s look at teaching kids to seek God’s Kingdom through Church at Home.
Read more here about why we switched to this new Sunday morning tradition during COVID-19.
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Loving the Church
Although we are taking a break from our community church because of the pandemic, we still want to teach our children to continue to love church.
I know that church is so much more than a Sunday morning service. I spent over ten years working for churches. However, developmentally the real concept of church is over 4 of my girls’ heads.
They know church as a place where people love them, they have fun, and they learn about Jesus. In order to preserve the fun aspect, which I believe is so important, we are not forcing virtual church.
Virtual church is the Sunday morning service. It is missing the community aspect that it was designed to have. Just to be clear, I don’t blame our church. They are actually providing several opportunities for in-person connection, that our family just isn’t comfortable participating in and I know that God gets that.
God is so much bigger than this whole COVID-19 craziness and knows our hearts. He isn’t worried about Sunday morning services. He is in control and His community will weather the storm.
Seek God’s Kingdom through Music
As a way to continue to teach our children about Sunday morning church services, we have based our routine on our church’s routine. Thus, we start with worshipping through music.
We repeat our girls’ favorites each week, but I try to introduce a new song or two, as well.
There are lots of songs made based on the theme from the week, seeking God’s Kingdom. I highly recommend Seeds Family Worship. You can find them on YouTube and Amazon Music. If you use Amazon Music Unlimited (free trial here), there are 18 albums of catchy songs based on Scripture.
Seeking God’s Kingdom Theme
Our theme was all about seeking God’s Kingdom.
Seek God’s Kingdom Through Conversation
Here are some questions and conversations starters we used:
What is a king?
- What is a king?
- How should they behave?
- What is a kingdom?
- Where are there kingdoms?
- What are kingdoms like?
Who is our King?
- Who is our King?
- What does that mean?
- What does a king do?
- Where is God’s Kingdom?
- What are some ways we seek it?
How do you treat a king?
- How do you treat a king?
- Do you have to obey the king?
- How does a king treat his people?
Again, our conversation lasted about 5-10 minutes and, truth be told, there were some “Sunday School answers” of Jesus, God, and the Bible. There were lots of Disney princess references, too. But, there was also some thoughtful and meaningful discussion, especially considering my girls’ ages (7, 3, 3, 2, and 4 months).
Seek God’s Kingdom Through a Memory Verse
I kept the memorization simple again this week. Through repetition and hand motions we learned Luke 12:31. You could also use Matthew 6:33 for this lesson. It is a little longer though, which is why I used the Luke verse for my littles.
Seek God’s Kingdom Through Play
We had so much fun with this week’s activity. My husband and I put together a crown hunt for our oldest 4 girls. Because their ages range from 2 to 7, we assigned each girl one color to look for. This simple practice helps keep the tears to a minimum around here. Tip: we also do this with Easter Eggs.
I prepped the crowns, which represent the King, and hubby hid them while the girls and I talked about what it means to seek God’s Kingdom.
After all the crowns were found, the girls hid them again and kept the fun going for a while. They even pretended to wear the crowns.
Seek God’s Kingdom Through Prayer
This week we learned to seek God’s Kingdom and that God will provide us with everything that we need. So, for our prayer, we asked each girl to say thank you to God for something that he has provided for us. Although things are different right now, God is not. He still provides and our family is so blessed by his provision in countless ways.
Conclusion
Just because our family does this on a Sunday morning for Church at Home, doesn’t mean you have to! These are activities that can be done any day of the week. Learning about God’s love for us should not be contained to a Sunday. 😀
Ideally, I hope to share each Sunday’s plans with you throughout the coming weeks and I would love to hear if you try any of the ideas. Please let me know in the comments if you try this! I’d love to hear about your experiences.
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