There are a lot of things in life that we initially see as a problem but instead turn out to be a blessing. This is how it has been for us, working out what to do with the kids in church.

The whole process of working out what to do with the kids began a few years ago when a home church couple asked if we could do some bible study with the children. They loved God and longed for their children to know God in some of the ways they did. They wondered if the church could help them in this and proposed an all-ages bible study to this end.

>>> STUDYING MATTHEW

Now, we have a principle in our church that if anybody is enthusiastic about doing something in church, we generally try to encourage them to do it. We all wanted the kids to know some of the stories of our Judaeo-Christian heritage and some of the 'old hands' in church had enjoyed acting out scenes from the book of Acts, with their own kids. It was suggested that we try Matthew's Gospel, going from chapter 1 to the end, acting out all the parts that it was possible to dramatise.

In our church there is a home schooling mum (mom) who has taught us her 2 criteria for children's learning activities. They are:

Is the activity easy to implement? ( Can it be done, without a string of complicated preparations)

Do I like doing it?

Acting out Matthew was easy to implement because it needed minimal forethought and planning. Someone needed to scan through the next chapter, taking note of who the players were and judging if it was a theatrical possibility. Some parts could not be acted and by coincidence they were also rather difficult for the kids to understand, so we skipped them.

Acting out Matthew was also fun. There were a few children in the group who really loved acting and these ones seemed to pull the rest of us all along with their enthusiasm.

>>> BEING OPEN TO WHATEVER OUTCOMES GOD GIVES US

Another principle that our home schooling mum has, is to be open to whatever outcomes God gives to an undertaking. Expectations like 'at the end of Matthew, this child will be a Christian ' are not advisable and often destined for failure. But armed with a more open attitude, we received some wonderful and unexpected things from our 18 months of acting out Matthew (Would you believe it took us that long?):

1. Mary, our youngest child, who was 5 and 6 over this period says now that she really got to like the New Testament God we found in Matthew. This is in contrast to the Old Testament God, with whom she is having some trouble because of His warlike ways! (We are still working on that one.)

2. I hope you don't think us irreverent, when I tell you that we laughed a lot as we acted out Matthew. We discovered that a very quiet adult amongst us was an absolutely brilliant comic actor. From that time onwards, he was given more prominence in the script. There aren't many jokes in the gospels but somehow he managed to make his own as he went along!

I think that laughing and having fun in church is terribly important. There are so many things that demand our time, outside church, that we need multiple incentives to keep us faithful to each other. If we can find a way to enjoy each other's company when we are together then the important work of church is easier to do.

3. The kids helped us to see Jesus' story with new eyes. We had forgotten that so much of what Jesus said was counter-intuitive. I remember one of the teenagers complaining bitterly about the unfairness of the day labourer, who worked for one hour ,being paid as much as the one who laboured all day. As far as she was concerned, there was no way of seeing this kind of thing as fair. In the end we decided that these stories were like money in the bank. You read them and put them away in your mind like you put money away in a bank. One day in the future you might take them our and find they make sense and they can be useful to you.

4. One lady was particularly touched by our enactment of the lost sheep story. An adult in the group introduced the passage by talking about the hard work, pain and worry that loving an individual can involve. Steve, a dad acting as 'the good shepherd', was then sent off down the passage by the narrator to find Dave, his son, who was also 'the lost sheep'. Later, the lady commented on how poignant this was for her. She saw God and Steve as one, from the point of view that this kind of parental love really would suffer and put itself out for its child.

>>> ACTING OUT EXODUS

When Matthew finished, we decided to try Exodus. This soon ran into difficulties because there were often long passages with just Moses and God talking. At a group pastoral we had heard that another church usually asked their little children to make models in plasticine as someone read a bible passage. I couldn't find plasticine but bought a big tub of four-colour play dough instead. We would read the bible passage and then ask the kids to retell it using the play dough figures they had made, while they were listening. Some passages were so dramatic, however, that we couldn't resist a return to the theatrical approach. One of these was the battle between the Amalekites and the Israelites where Moses had to hold up his hands to pray it God in order for the battle to go in the Israelites favour. Our smallest girl Mary was Moses and our one boy, Dave, really threw himself into the battle scene, armed with a quickly constructed Lego sword.

>>> THE ADULTS GIVE PERSONAL STORIES ABOUT THEIR FAITH

About a year ago, another member of the church decided he would like to tell the children why he was a Christian. He remembered that in the past, other children had stopped coming to home church before he had a chance to talk about this very basic thing. He regretted this a great deal and wanted to do a better job this time around. What he said was very simple and straight from the heart. People were moved by it and the kids got to see the more vulnerable side of an adult they had know for years. In the weeks following, a number of the other adults did the same thing. We have told the local home churches about it at a pastoral meeting and now some are doing the same. It is a very simple thing to do but a valuable one, for people who share community together. I guess that is why it is catching on.

>>> THE DEMOCRATISATION OF OUR CHURCH

At the same time as we have been doing these things with the children, something else has been happening that is also quite wonderful.

Now it is natural that, if people are very good at home church activities like accompanying singing or reading stories or cooking food, that they want to do it all the time. It is hard for them to let other people do the same thing badly and the thought of being eclipsed by an up and coming star is not appealing either!

I guess some groups never get past this situation and are always held back by their local 'celebrities'. But the Holy Spirit is not a friend to such an attitude and wants many people to 'sparkle' in a home church. In particular, she wants the children to grow into abilities that help them make the church better.

I don't think any of us have talked in any detail about this in our church, we have just known that it has to happen. I have seen the Holy Spirit working for it to happen in one particular case, just recently. I will tell you about it.

We have a lady in our group who teaches music and gives piano recitals from time to time. She is really good. We love to have her accompany our singing in church. But someone had the idea that it would be good for the children, who were learning flute, clarinet, trumpet and recorder to accompany a few songs each week.

At first it was a bit 'rough'. There was a lot of giggling, and stopping and starting and the trumpet was unbelievably loud in any of our living rooms. We tried having the musicians in the next room, separated by an open doorway from the singers. This absorbed some of the sound of the trumpet but it wasn't quite right. Finally we moved to recorders or clarinets, with the possibility of a flute now and then. This was just perfect. Last week we sang Amazing Grace with base and alto recorders playing two-part harmony. It was absolutely divine - in fact it was 'amazing grace'!

Through all of these difficulties people kept asking if the kids could play each week and Doris graciously stepped down from the piano each time. It sounds like such a little thing for us all to do but I think it is part of the birth of creativity, the birth of God in these kids. It was also part of the democratisation of our church, the sharing of what we do in church, between kids and adults.

As well as taking over some of the accompaniment, the kids are offering to cook things they have learnt to make at school. One meeting 11 year old Dave offered to teach us how to do origami. That was fun too.

>>> A PROBLEM BECOMES AN OPPORTUNITY

As one of my friends from church and I thought about our journey in home church with the children we saw that what had originally begun for us as a problem - 'what are we going to do with the children' - had somehow metamorphosed into a gift.

So many great things have happened for us as we did these activities with the kids and even the simplicity of going back to basics with them has been good for the adults.

Joann Hnat, from Salem Community Churches, believes that our understanding of God is like a bell curve, starting out simple, getting complicated and then, with a bit of work, returning to something that it simple yet deeper and more profound. What has happened is that rather than holding the adults back, the children have helped to move us towards a simple, yet deep faith in God. It all began with that initial longing some of us had for our children plus an openness to try new things and vary them as we go along. I think it has been a privilege to be part of this journey and I am still wondering where it will lead us and our children in the future.