Do you have a leadership role in the children’s music ministry at your church? If so, you may be underestimating the influence you are having in the lives of the children you are nurturing! Someone has said, “Whoever takes a child by the hand takes the parent by the heart.” You are ministering to the child and to their entire family. You are also touching the present and the future in ways you cannot imagine as you plant seeds of faith in the lives of children. Here are some practical ideas to maximize your impact both in the here and now as well as the future.
Start Early
According to the Gordon Institute of Music Learning, music aptitude develops early in life. It fluctuates according to a child’s formal and informal musical experiences, then stabilizes after age nine. In other words, a child’s musical IQ for life is set by around age 10! Music ministry for children has a tremendous impact on a child’s musical development. At a time when many schools are eliminating music, churches can help children create foundations for a lifetime of musical expression during a critical phase of their brain development.
Help Untuned Singers
Helping untuned singers is another essential task for children’s choir leaders. According to Helen Kemp, 17% of children need extra help to sing on pitch. Her book Of Primary Importance offers excellent suggestions and techniques for helping untuned singers. These techniques include vocal exploration, singing games, and strategies for selecting appropriate songs. Uncertain singers often struggle to keep a steady beat, too. Preschool and younger elementary children benefit tremendously from experiencing lots of fun, steady-beat activities.
When we make an extra effort to help children become tuneful singers, we are giving them the gift of singing for a lifetime of praise. It’s hard to contain your joy when you help an uncertain, unpitched singer become a soloist in the Christmas musical!
Make Connections
Children’s mental health is front and center these days. Those who teach and work with children have observed higher levels of anxiety, loneliness, and emotional struggles. Despite the challenges children may have faced in the past, there is good news! The effects of trauma can be mitigated through positive relationships and experiences. Mental health professionals point out that participation in faith-based communities correlates with positive mental health outcomes. Community music making, especially singing together, is often linked to mental and physical health improvements in children.
Children participating in choir can benefit from the collective healing power of music and its social element. Churches can provide a uniquely powerful and healing space for children to find acceptance and belonging through their children’s choirs. Children make positive connections with others, express joy, experience worship, and grow spiritually as they participate in choir.
Plant Seeds of Faith
A young man approached me at a conference. He covered his name tag and asked, “Do you remember me?” He looked somewhat familiar, but I couldn’t come up with his name. He revealed his nametag and smiled. His name was Matt, and he had been in my children’s choir some 20 years earlier. As we visited, he started singing some of the songs he had learned while singing in our children’s choir. He recalled every word of every song! It dawned on me that the lyrics children learn in choir stay in their brains forever. The words and truths in those songs become a part of their spiritual soundtrack, ready for the Holy Spirit to bring to remembrance later in life during times of celebration and challenge.
Select a Variety of Songs
Children enjoy a variety of songs and musical experiences. Too often I’ve selected songs with a 4/4 time signature, in the key of F, and with a melody that begins on middle C. Mix it up! Over time, choose songs in a variety of key signatures and time signatures. Children enjoy songs in minor, worship songs, scripture songs, spirituals, hymn arrangements, and global songs from other cultures. Have a look at Angel Song – it’s in B-flat minor in 6/8 time. Songs with lyrics that have a strong rhyming pattern make them more fun to sing and easier to memorize – listen to Bethlehem Night for an example of a song with a solid rhyme scheme.
While catchy, rhythmic songs are easily learned and fun to sing, children also respond well to reflective songs that take their worries and hardships seriously. Cecelia enjoyed singing in our older children’s choir as we rehearsed a selection of songs about the life of Jesus. Our program had a number of upbeat tunes along with one especially thoughtful song titled You Are Not Alone.
Cecelia attended regularly despite her father’s cancer treatment. Then, quite suddenly, her father lost his fight with cancer. His funeral was on a Monday, and Cecelia was back in her front-row choir seat the following Wednesday. We were rehearsing a peppy spiritual about the birth of Jesus when Cecelia raised her hand and asked, “Could we please sing You Are Not Alone?”
Her voice blended in with the choir as we sang:
When you are afraid that no one really cares
About the way you think or feel, and love’s not anywhere.
Words of Jesus spoken on a mount in Galilee
Are true today as long ago, for you, and yes, for me.
Lo, I am with you, now and always,
Whether times are good or bad,
When you’re happy, when you’re sad,
Remember, remember, you are not alone.
Remember, remember, you are not alone.
Through songs like You Are Not Alone, we can point children to a God who can handle their questions and concerns. We can also plant deeper spiritual concepts as time capsules which will come to fuller understanding as children mature in faith.
Create a Legacy
I don’t think often enough about the legacy of faith that has been handed down to us – and our command to pass that legacy to the generations that follow. Psalm 78:4, 6–7 reminds us to
… tell the next generation
the praiseworthy deeds of the Lord …
so the next generation would know them,
even the children yet to be born,
and they in turn would tell their children.
Then they would put their trust in God
and would not forget his deeds
but would keep his commands.
My paternal grandmother was born in 1885. I still remember her faith, her witness, and her kindness to me as a seven-year-old child. I’ve also had a unique opportunity to pass my faith along to my grandson, who I am guessing will retire around the year 2076. I have hope and confidence that he will pass his faith along to his grandchildren, who in turn will retire around 2130. When I consider the arc of time from 1885 to 2130, I am thankful for those who have planted the seeds of faith in the past and will continue to nurture and plant seeds of faith in the future. I’m also thankful that we can use God’s gift of music with children in this process!
