Do you struggle to keep your child reverent during worship at home or church? Discover some ideas shared by various families that might help you.

How to help your child be reverent during home worship:

1. Be consistent in holding morning and evening worship. The regular practice of these home worship times will greatly help the child be reverent during church services.

1. Start the worship service with a prayer asking for the presence of the Holy Spirit. Prayer will help prepare the child for the worship time.

1. During singing, let the child play musical instruments (toy ones) to encourage them to praise Jesus.

1. Make gestures that match the song lyrics while singing.

1. Let the child actively participate in worship by choosing songs, leading singing, offering prayers, and if older, reading Bible verses or the worship material.

1. When telling stories, use illustrations with books, pictures, felt, or objects. Let the child hold the object while you tell the story.

1. After the story, provide a related activity for the child to do, such as coloring a picture, making a collage, or another project.

1. Keep the worship service short and engaging, appropriate for the child's age.

How to help your child be reverent during church services:

1. Prepare a small bag at home with everything the child will use at church. Bible, lesson, notebook or small books, colored pencils, etc. Keep the items in this bag exclusively for church use.

1. Before entering the church, pray with the child, asking for the presence of angels to help them be reverent and learn during the service.

1. Encourage the child to participate in the initial parts of the service during singing, prayer, and other segments, and if necessary, provide an activity to keep them reverent only during the sermon.

1. For young children, let them look through an illustrated children's Bible or another illustrated book of Bible stories. Cloth or felt books are excellent for babies.

1. Help the child find the Bible verses the pastor mentions, mark them, and either place a small sticker next to them or underline them with colored pencils. This activity is ideal for helping children learn to actively participate in the sermon and can be done with very young children.

1. Give the child a drawing to color. If possible, one related to the sermon topic. Be careful when using markers, as they can stain church pews. Crayons or colored pencils are better in this regard, but sometimes pencils can also be noisy.

1. Encourage older children to draw something related to the sermon topic. This will help them start paying attention to the message.

1. Write down keywords like “Jesus,” “love,” on a piece of paper and ask the child to make a mark or an “x” each time they hear the word during the sermon.

1. Older children can have a special notebook to take small notes about the sermon. For example: date, pastor's name, sermon title, Bible verses read, and something interesting they learned.

To read accounts of how other families conduct home worship, see the series “In the [Family Name] Home, Worship is Like This” clicking here.

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