Children's Church Service

Subject: Children's Church Service
From: Barbara Shaw
Date: 18 Sep 06 - 10:06 PM

Anybody got any quick ideas for songs to do at a Sunday church service (Christian) aimed at families with children? All the ones in our bluegrass gospel repertoire seem to deal with death and sin, which is not exactly the kind of light but godly type song I'd like to do for kids. We need three of them we can do as a duet with guitar and banjo for next Sunday!

(Besides "Jesus Loves Me, This I Know"...)

Subject: RE: Children's Church Service
From: wysiwyg
Date: 18 Sep 06 - 10:28 PM

Wings of a Dove-- lovely imagery the kids can relate to, especially the baptism by John verse-- they will have seen lots of baptisms most likely.

Life is Like a Mountain Railroad-- shorten it a bit.

By the Mark-- not really gory, and they will have heard about crucifixion already

In the Highways-- They may have seen Oh Brother and it's kids that sing it there. It's VERY singable...

Are You Walking And A-Talking With The Lord? (Hank Williams)


Other possibilities:

Do Lord

Beautiful Home

Beautiful Life

Blessed Jesus Hold My Hand

Farther Along

God Put A Rainbow In The Cloud

Green Pastures

House Of Gold

I Am a Pilgrim

I'm Using My Bible For A Road Map

I'm Working On A Building

I Saw the Light

Keep On The Sunnyside

No Disappointment In Heaven

Turn Your Radio On


PM for chords and maybe a sound clip if helpful. We've done all of the above with children present. Whay they REALLY like is handling the instruments, after. :~)

~Susan

Subject: RE: Children's Church Service
From: mg
Date: 18 Sep 06 - 10:32 PM

What is the children's crusader hymn? Blessed Lord Jesus. I don't know the words so don't know how appropriate it is but tune is nice. mg

Subject: RE: Children's Church Service
From: Barbara Shaw
Date: 18 Sep 06 - 10:40 PM

Thanks, Susan! We had decided on "Turn Your Radio On" already, and have the chords for several of the others. You've given me some great ideas for new ones to learn.

Also thinking about "Hold Fast to the Right" but changing "my son" to "my child" and changing the "learned from your mother" to "learned from your parents."

Subject: RE: Children's Church Service
From: wysiwyg
Date: 18 Sep 06 - 10:56 PM

Don't be afraid to give them something with a little meat on the bones-- kids don't like to be fed a load of crap or pap, and really kiddie-oriented ones will only appeal to really young kids-- more likely you'll have a mix of ages and some of them will be way too cool to go for little kids' stuff. What you want in church outreach to families is to hook the parents, anyway.

The suggestions above come out of our own weekly service and have gone over quite well. I'd say with the short time you have to work it up, stick to your genre of most familiarity and go for the ones you've heard if you don't happen to have all of them in your repertoire. Mug 'em up, play with dramatic pauses and eye contact with the kids. Oh, and used congregationally, the usual instrumental breaks don't quite work.

And seriously, the kids will want to plunk a string or two or come close for a real good look. The parents will find this very disturbing and try to control the kids' fingers, but what I do is just keep a ratty old autoharp out they can absolutely not hurt at all, and help the parents understand that their kids will be very, very careful if they leave it all to you to manage.

Don't have TOO much fun, now! :~)

~Susan

Subject: RE: Children's Church Service
From: GUEST,DrWord
Date: 19 Sep 06 - 01:36 AM

All God's critters got a place in the choir

dennis

Subject: RE: Children's Church Service
From: Joe Offer
Date: 19 Sep 06 - 01:50 AM

Hi, Barbara. I like:

• Give Me Oil in my Lamp

Also "Joy, Joy, Joy" and "Noah and the Arky." Lyricsn
on request, after I get a good night's sleep.
-Joe-

Subject: RE: Children's Church Service
From: GUEST
Date: 19 Sep 06 - 05:52 AM

"What you want in church outreach to families is to hook the parents, anyway."

Nothing like good old Christian manipulation.

Subject: RE: Children's Church Service
From: GUEST,oldhippie
Date: 19 Sep 06 - 07:30 AM

Little Brown Church In The Vale

Subject: RE: Children's Church Service
From: Sorcha
Date: 19 Sep 06 - 09:04 AM

Jesus Loves the Little Children (red and yellow black and white)
This Little Light of Mine

Subject: RE: Children's Church Service
From: Barbara Shaw
Date: 19 Sep 06 - 09:20 AM

Such great suggestions! We've got to get out of our rut and try some of them... We've accompanied the children's dance choir a few times on bass and guitar, and the girls especially were transfixed watching me play the bass! But this time we need to focus more on the songs and needed some ideas. It's good to see that such a range of songs have been tried and found to work, rather than just hymns.

I agree that "hooking" the parents will get them back with kids happy to be there, thus improving the chances of adding some spiritual foundation to our crazy lives.

Subject: RE: Children's Church Service
From: MMario
Date: 19 Sep 06 - 09:23 AM

'give yourself to love"

Subject: RE: Children's Church Service
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 19 Sep 06 - 12:11 PM

"Make me a channel of Your peace"

The prayer of St Francis