Children in Worship

We delight in the gifts of children in our midst at South Arm. In fact, our faith community has a long history of celebrating the gifts offered among us by children and youth. This has helped to shape our approach to worship to a significant degree. At each worship experience:

• we strive to have two lay leaders, a younger and an older person, because we believe that the generations of our life learn best when we are together in sharing leadership;
• we offer families with younger children the opportunity to walk/play with their child/ren in our narthex (the area just to the east of the sanctuary, behind the glass doors and large windows). We have found that this closeness and visibility allows for greater comfort and connection between the congregation and the children;
• we build a Learning Together time into the first part of our worship, during which we usually invited the children and youth to come to the front, sit on the steps and participate in a conversation or story before leaving for Church School;
• we schedule regular “cross-generational” experiences — especially planned worship during which all the generations of the Church gather together under the sign of God’s love, the Cross.