Beyond Fun: The Need for Emotional Balance in Children’s Worship

Abstract

This paper examines the emotional balance in children’s worship and the need to move beyond the focus on fun. The author argues that while having fun is important, it should not be the main focus of worship. This paper discusses the myth of the always happy child and the consequences of adults trying to regulate the feelings of children. The author suggests that children need to be given space and opportunity to use their own voice and shape their emotions. This paper concludes that churches should listen carefully to what children want and need in their services and adjust their ministry accordingly. The children should have a say in how their worship is done and their opinions need to be respected.

1. Introduction

A Christian pastor, at a large national conference, once told the audience that “No children” should be “allowed in the sanctuary” during Sunday services. According to an attendee of the conference, the pastor “argued that children were a distraction in the adult service”, and “they’d have more fun in an environment tailored specifically for them” (Zonio 2014). When that attendee started observant/participant research in children ministry, they found that the church’s they were working with shared the same sentiment. They often overheard children ministry leaders repeating the sentiment that “big church is boring” and that children would have more fun participating in the children’s programming” (Zonio 2014). In a different survey of Christian children’s ministers, one stated that they want “children to leave church thinking, “That was the funnest hour I had all week. And if the children enjoy children’s church, more families will place membership”” (Allen and Lawton 2012). Holly Allen and Christine Lawton, who are children ministry researchers, argue that the desire for children to have fun in worship is one of the underlaying reasons churches have a separate service for children. It was “simply deemed age inappropriate for children to sit through “boring” hymns, prayers and/or sermons when they could be more actively involved in teaching and activities that accommodated shorter attention spans and more body movement” (Allen and Lawton 2012). Having a separate service for children can make pedagogical sense and be based on developmental psychology; however, those motives are not always what is behind the desire for having the children in their own worship services.

Allen and Lawton argue that the main drive for segregating children from adults is the idea that adult church is boring for the children. Thus, the children ministry is often shaped around the children having fun and mitigating boredom by having games, crafts, and activities as the main agenda rather than spiritual formation. The mentality of trying to entertain the children while teaching them about Jesus creates songs that try to keep the students engaged. As seen below, that entails re-tuning songs so that they are easier to move to or have motions integrated into the singing or having songs specially created that are shorter and more upbeat than what would be sung in adult worship. Other songs that are introduced do not convey any specific spiritual meaning, but they are enjoyable and make the children move around with silly actions and sometimes meaningless words. Fun is okay to have in church, but should it be the main focus of worship?

A child’s spiritual and emotional development is influenced by the songs they sing, the activities they do, and the sermons they listen to. These shape their beliefs, confidence, and openness to emotional experiences throughout their life. They also learn to disregard or question other emotional states that are not present in the songs. To create healthy communities that can connect emotionally without barriers, the children who grow up in the church need to be able to express their emotions fully and freely. As we will explore, songs for children are often similar to songs for adults, but they may have different goals. The Christian music for adults seeks to produce environments that encourage praise, worship, and adoration, while the music for children also aims for fun. I am not arguing that adult worship should be more fun, but that fun is often valued more than forming the whole self in children’s worship services and letting the child learn how to communicate the richness of their emotional life.

2. Methodology

My research began with looking for the most popular Christian children’s songs, but I faced some challenges. There were no clear rankings of the songs based on views on YouTube or streams on Spotify because these sites do not account for duplicate or non-unique views. Moreover, I was not sure who the main producers and groups of the songs were. According to Worship Leader Research,1 four megachurches dominate the production of songs that appear on the CCLI and Praise Charts lists of top songs sung in the church. These are Hillsong, Passion, Elevation, and Bethel. I wanted to see how these churches design children’s worship through their online services and resources on their websites. I watched their services and listened to their worship albums that target children as their audience. I also read the materials they posted for children ministry on their websites. If the church posted sermons that were geared towards the children, I listened to them also to hear how the leaders spoke about emotional and spiritual formation. As I watched and read, I identified the keywords that recurred in the videos and used them as themes that one would expect in worship services for children.

As these churches are Evangelical in nature, I will be focusing on emotional formation that occurs in that context. Ministries that cater to other denominations, such as Catholic, Anglican, or Methodist may have different approaches to children’s ministry than what I am analyzing. Analyzing other denominational approaches to children’s ministry would be a fruitful area for further research. My time in children’s ministry as a teacher has been inside of an Evangelical context, hence my focus, although I have seen the same emphasis on fun during my time working in the Anglican context. The work of Scottie May in surveying and observing distinct children’s ministries across multiple denominations needs to be updated, but that is not in the scope of the current study (May et al. 2011).

The YouTube videos that I found were a mixture of music videos for the songs that they produced in conjunction with their children’s worship albums and worship services. These videos give insight into how the songs are performed while showing how the children and leaders interacted with the songs, and if possible thematically structured their time of worship. The videos of the worship services were directed to be used as worship alternatives by members of their church, yet since they are publicly available, they also serve as a way of showing others outside of their church how they run their children’s services. I have to acknowledge that they were not produced to show others how to do children’s services, as they are not how-to guides or purpose made instructional videos. However, because the videos are linked to a large and influential church, they also have a teaching function besides their main purpose.

I have reached out to the Children’s pastors and directors at these churches but have not received any replies from them. Due to the churches being located spread out and these churches having multiple locations, I have not been able to engage in participant/observer research and I believe that doing so would be another avenue for further research. A researcher could interview the children, the parents, and the leaders to get a better understanding of the goals of the ministry and why they use a particular pedagogical approach.

The worship services for children that these churches offer affect their emotional and spiritual growth not only within the church setting, but also in other places where they encounter the church produced media. These churches make worship albums for children and have many online songs and videos that the children and parents can access from separate locations, such as the home or car. Even though only people who go to or visit a specific church will experience the worship times in person, the videos and albums increase their impact on children and parents who do not attend or connect with the church or its denomination. These churches produce media for children that are not limited to their own denomination, just as other Christians from different denominations use the songs that these churches make for adults.

3. How Evangelical Churches Prioritize Fun in Worship

Child development researcher Judith Sadler writes that “children are marginalized in churches as much as in society as a whole” (Sadler 1999), having their emotional and spiritual formation not being taken as seriously as adult formation. Children are seen as the church of tomorrow instead of the church today which leads to undervaluing where children are in their present journey. On top of the expectation that children have to grow into church, there is also an emphasis on “spiritual empowerment as it caters to the perceived needs of the congregants” in evangelical churches (Dinges 2006). The idea that children cannot participate in a worship service without getting bored, and the tendency to provide too much accommodation for what adults think children need, is evident when the children’s ministries of four churches are analyzed.

Mimi Larson, writing on how children’s ministries have changed in the last 40 years, discusses how children’s ministry has moved from the original classroom model to a model focused on giving children enjoyable experiences which lead to a “trend in churches intentionally creating fun and engaging experiences that would be meaningful to the child” (Larson 2020). Ivy Beckwith, a children’s pastor, writes that children’s ministry is broken as it creates “playlands and entice(s) children to God through food fights and baptisms in the back of fire trucks”, using fun as a way of marketing church to children and families instead of making church a place that takes spiritual needs seriously (Beckwith 2004).

Scottie May’s research into children’s worship ministry makes the distinction between three distinct types of children’s ministry. The first is ministry to which focuses on a “transmissive, schooling” model “when adults” use ‘content-focused workbooks, learning tasks, or rote recitation to instruct children about Christianity. The second type is ministry for children, where “adults provide skits, games, videos, or music for children” The third type is ministry with children, where “the adult and the child are together exploring the biblical story, seeking to meet God within that story” (May et al. 2011). While my study focuses on Evangelical churches, May’s study was cross-denominational with non-denominational, Anglican, Episcopal, Christian and Missionary Alliance, Covenant, Reformed, Methodist, and Presbyterian. May and his team of researchers found that the “mega new-form churches” separated the children from the adults and focused on the children having fun and being entertained during church so that the adults could worship without being bothered or interrupted by the children (May et al. 2011). I wanted to see if the four mega churches that I looked at would fall into the category of ministry for children as described in May’s research.

4. Hillsong Kids Music

Observing a worship song medley performed by Hillsong Kids and posted to YouTube, it is evident that the worship practices exhibited by the children bear a striking resemblance to those of adult worshipers. The musical composition, characterized by a slow tempo and themes of adoration and surrender, elicits entrainment from the young congregants, who can be seen closing their eyes, raising their hands, and swaying gently in time with the music. The accompaniment, consisting of a slowly strummed guitar and a synth pad, provides a sonic backdrop for the worship experience. Adults would be filmed making similar gestures of worship while singing the same songs as the children are. What is different is that the video is spliced with images of the children having fun at church events and shows them playing on bounce houses and inflatable slides, getting their faces painted, playing in a field, and engaging in fun activities geared towards children,2 in contrast to adult worship songs posted by Hillsong’s various musical groups excluding these montages.

A more upbeat song, “For Who You Are”, is sonically close to the songs sung by adults, with guitars and drums building into the chorus while more subdued but still upbeat in the verses and bridge. The song is indistinguishable from the songs Hillsong produces for adults. One notable distinction in the worship experience is not found in the music or lyrics, but rather in the physical gestures demonstrated by the worship leader, who guides the congregation of children in motions that correspond to the words being sung. The song even incorporates moments of improvisation, with the worship leader ad-libbing over the children’s singing, which is often done by leaders over congregational singing in adult worship (Baker 2023). The young congregants respond to the music with raised hands and closed eyes, and their movements shift from gentle swaying to jumping in time with the beat.3 “For Who You Are” lacks the montages of children having fun while incorporating the fun into the experience of the song itself.

There are a few songs that have more child-friendly language being produced by Hillsong Kids, like “Super Strong God” where the words are more simplistic, but the metaphors used throughout the songs would be at home in adult-oriented worship songs. The song has the children sing “From the ash I am born again”, “in the midst of the darkest night/let your love be the shining light”, and “Breaking chains that were holding me/You sent You Son down and set me free”.4 These lines could be from any contemporary worship song and congregations would not realize that they are singing a child’s song unless they knew the context of the song. Hillsong Kids tries to connect to where the children are while preparing them to understand the lyrics used in the songs geared towards the adults. Songs like that do not necessarily stand apart from the worship geared towards adults, but it is how the songs are presented. The lyric videos posted for the album Never Walk Alone by Hillsong Kids all start with a yellow smiling cartoon flower while a track of children laughing in the background. The context of the song has changed, and its emotional content has been slightly shifted. The subtle message is that the viewers and performers are having fun while singing the song, even if the song is slower and more of a ballad. The focus on fun is shown in how Hillsong Kid’s speak of their ministry. On their website, they describe their mission as “Through fun experiences, meaningful music and ministry that encourages children to participate, we present Jesus Christ and His Church in a relevant way, creating moments which children will never forget. Anyone can do what we do. The simple key is to love God, love His Church and have fun!”5 Along with repeating that they are Christ-focused, they communicate that they are equally committed to fun. The phrase “ministry that encourages kids to participate” is euphemistic for fun and not boring in the way that hymns and adult worship could feel for children.

Hillsong Kids continues its commitment to making worship enjoyable for children using the Funny Man Dan character. Their latest release features songs that are both entertaining and contain messages of encouragement from the Bible. In an interview with the Australian Eternity News, Funny Man Dan describes his mission as conveying to children that they are “incredible, awesome, and amazing”, and believes that humor is the key to connecting with them. He asserts that laughter opens children’s hearts, and his goal is to plant a seed of self-worth and potential in their minds.6 The adult equivalent would be a Christian stand-up comedian, more akin to Mark Lowry than Michael Jr. Mark Lowry’s songs are more “serious” in their lyrical themes and his banter between the songs is more humorous while Funny Man Dan seamlessly blends the two, creating fun theological songs.

Hillsong Kids’ mission is grounded in a desire to make biblical truth accessible and relevant to children through music. They want the child to encounter God, pursue their relationship with Jesus, and build a spiritual foundation that will guide them throughout their lives. To create that foundation, Hillsong strives to create unforgettable moments in worship for the children by blending having the best time of their lives with expressing their love of God. A successful course of ministry will end with the children feeling fulfilled in and rewarded for their praise of all God has done for them. The ministry aims to echo Psalm 8:2 and 78:4, telling the next generation about the Lord’s deeds and having the children respond by praising God while having fun. The word “fun” is sprinkled throughout their promotional literature and website, sometimes overshadowing the aspects of praise and worship.

5. Passion Kids

Passion Kids YouTube is now defunct but shows a glimpse into their approach to children’s ministry. In their welcome video, posted to give information to visitors, they make the point that the children will be “invited to join the fun in the age and gender-specific tents” where they preload the time with “conversation, games, and crafts to anticipate what the big idea and bible story for the day is”. They then have “games, worship, and teaching” with the goal of game time giving the children a time for “outrageous fun that brings kids out of their shell and sets the energy for the rest of the gathering”. During worship, the band uses motions to help the children understand what they are singing. They close out the video by thanking the parents for allowing them to create a space where the children can latch on to the excitement of church and learning about Jesus.7

Passion Kids also have in the past had exclusive worship services posted online for children. In the services, they sing songs and have time for teaching. These videos, since they were posted during the COVID-19 pandemic, do not feature the children but are designed for the children to watch at home and to participate alongside the adults in the videos. The worship songs are presented in an analogous manner to the worship videos posted by Hillsong Kids, where the songs and setting would feel like the worship presented to adults. The Passion worship videos have the leaders doing minimal motions, like placing their hands over their eyes when the word darkness is mentioned or cupping their hands around their mounts to symbolize calling out. One of their most popular videos shows them having multiple dance breaks with the leader ad-libbing telling the children to “get ready, come on, get loose, get free, we’re throwing a party, we’re going to dance, we’re going to sing” as upbeat music plays and beachballs are thrown onto the set they are recording on.8 Another video’s time of singing ends with the worship leader thanking the children at home for singing along, telling them ”that was so much fun”.9 By tagging the time as fun, it sets the expectation that the time would have been fun and leaves the children with the feeling that they had a good time. There is no thanking the children for worshipping with them or praising the Lord with them, which would change the context of the time spent virtually together.

When Passion Kids explain the worship experience that is about to take place online, they offer instructions for the children to be prepared for the time. The state that they want the children to “have a lot of fun” and after the first song in one video posted, they again state, “Passion Kids, that was so much fun”.10 In a further video, they finish singing the first and second song by saying ”that was so much fun”.11 The emphasis continues as they end another video by saying, ”Passion Kids, hasn’t that been so much fun” and that ”the fun doesn’t have to stop” as Passion Kids provides fun activities for throughout the week.12 The focus is shifted from worshipping and praising the Lord towards being entertained and enjoying the experience.

Passion Kids’ approach to children’s ministry involves creating a space where children can have fun while learning about Jesus. They use games, crafts, and conversation to engage children and prepare them for the day’s Bible story and big idea. During worship, the band uses motions to help the children understand what they are singing. The songs are lively and involve dancing and movement, ensuring that the children are fully engaged. While these songs would not be out of place in an adult worship service, they are presented in a different context, with the focus being on enjoyment rather than on having a traditional worship experience.

6. Elevation Worship Kids

The online portion of their worship, which Elevation Church call “ekidz”, is “a fully programmed worship experience for your kids that includes games, Bible stories, activities, and lots of fun! Kids won’t spend the full time stuck to a screen, but instead will be encouraged to be active during worship and games” with the aim of being “a place where kids all over the world have fun and learn about Jesus. We exist so that people far from God will be raised to life in Christ and do that by partnering with parents to develop kids’ faith”.13 That mission is evident in what they post on YouTube. The Elevation Worship Kids trailer for their YouTube channel starts with the words “Welcome to Church” and then shows a montage of what to expect from the videos posted. The montage shows sketches and skits, games being played, dancing, baptisms, and times of virtual connection through video chat. The trailer shows activities that would be expected in a children’s church environment while creating a vibrant mood using colors, quick cuts, and upbeat music. It gives the impression of church being a variety of ways to engage with each other and Jesus while having a fun time.

The worship videos that are posted follow the basic format that the other churches have, showing leaders singing and dancing while displaying lyrics on the bottom of the screen so that people watching can sing along with them even if they are not familiar with the songs already. The videos they posted are broken down into two categories, having dance versions of the songs and lyric videos. The dance versions show the leaders dancing to upbeat and joyous songs, encouraging the people watching to dance along with them. They also have lyric videos, which only display the words of the song while the song plays in the background. The Elevation Worship Kids channel does not show the children and is disconnected from a more traditional worship setting. They do not show a service, as Hillsong does, nor do they invite or call to worship like Passion does. The songs are taken from their worship albums that they produce instead of from their worship services.

They describe their worship albums as wanting to show how “vibrant a life with Jesus really is. We want them to know that they don’t need to wait for the future to experience Jesus; they can experience joy in His love right here and now”.14 The statement speaks to their adult worship also being full of joy, hinting that nothing changes when they will join the adults for worship. Like the other churches, they believe that children do not have to wait until they are adults and join the main worship in the sanctuary to sing of and to Jesus. On their album, “Living Color”, they re-imagine some of the songs that the adults sing while also including new songs that are written for the children by their team. For example, they re-tune “Graves into Gardens” and make it more upbeat and bury the guitars under a strong synth beat while keeping a recognizable melody.15 The changes seen and heard here are making their way into adult worship, as Kelsey Kramer McGinnis points out that churches are moving the style of their worship more towards EDM and away from rock or pop music (McGinnis 2024). The same changes happen with the other songs that they re-tuned on the album, making their definition of a child’s song to be more upbeat and easier to entrain with.

To learn more about their children’s ministry, as the videos do not give insight into what the programs look like on any given Sunday, I explored their website where they list their mission statements for the various age groups that they provide ministries to. The elementary age group, which they call Motion, has the goal of providing a space “where kids can have fun, make friends, and find a place to belong” while “small group leaders aim to help kids believe in God and understand what it means to live like a Christian”. Their younger group, for children ages 3 to kindergarten, aims to be “a place where children can have fun, play games, and build relationships with other” while “leaders help children explore who God is and learn about His great love for us”.16

7. Bethel Music Kids

Bethel’s videos are a good counterexample to what the other three churches have modeled. The videos approach children’s worship with a maturity that the other videos do not. They trust that the children can and do connect with the songs and with God without needing the songs to be upbeat and danceable. Bethel’s Children’s ministry, as represented by their YouTube channel is the most subdued of the three that we have looked at so far. The worship videos show an acoustic guitar player, a keyboard player, a person playing a djembe, and an additional singer. There is no one dancing around on stage or trying to energize or pump up the children and there are no children present in the videos. Unlike the Passion Kids videos, the Bethel videos do not use canned sounds of children laughing or clapping in the background, and the sonic space is quiet while transitions are made. The worship is introduced, in every video, as a time to worship “with all of your heart, all of your soul, all of your mind and even all of your body” as they “give everything to Jesus as” they “worship together”.17 There is no mention of having fun and the videos are more focused on drawing the children into worship. It is a very stripped-down approach to worship.

The music videos for the albums they release, however, starkly contrast with the worship services. “Deep Cries Out” shows the children having a fun day out at the beach, swimming, playing with colorful beach balls, and pool noodles while dancing in the lake. The music is synth based with electronic drums providing an upbeat backdrop for the children singing.18 Their cover of “This is Amazing Grace,“ which is originally sung by Phil Wickham, shows children meeting up to do tricks on bikes, skateboards, and scooters before dancing to the synth-laden music. The videos have a large production with multiple scene changes and choreographed dances. Outside of the lyrical emphasis on worshipping Jesus, the songs focus on the importance of being in community as the choir and lead singers interact and are shown taking part in various group activities. These activities are high energy and emphasize the fun that one can have while worshipping Jesus. Even in the slower song, “Ever Be”,19 the children are seen enjoying worshipping in nature with each other, highlighting both the communal and joyous moments of worship, as the felt tempo of the song increases and the music crescendos, the children are shown enjoying cooking s’mores over a fire together.

8. Re-Prioritizing Emotions in Children’s Worship

All four churches examined above have fun as the main emotional focus of their times singing together. That matters because music is a way of creating and maintaining healthy and just relationships, by allowing people to share and acknowledge their emotions with others. According to worship scholar Nathan Myrick, “music facilitates that emotional bond that is so necessary for healthy communities” and “facilitates space for emotions to be engaged and examined” (Myrick 2021). Evaluating the examples of children’s worship provided by the four churches, I see that they are trying to bond the children emotionally and communally. They are having the children learn the same songs as each other, and most of the time they are the same songs that the adults have learned so that they are singing the same faith. Even though the children might not be singing in the same space as the others, they are still sonically connected and will be able to enter the sanctuary with a common songbook. That part of the children’s ministry is healthy.

The issue that I am raising is that the songs that frame the worship experience and give the service meaning are not forming the children to be able to deal with the whole spectrum of human emotion. There are songs of joy, praise, and adoration present in the playlists and services given by the churches which are wonderful and needed. I find it problematic that the aim and mission of children’s ministry is dependent upon it being fun. As I watched the videos and read the material available on the websites, the desire for the children to have fun was at the forefront. Elevation Kids mission statement, “Motion is where kids can have fun, make friends, and find a place to belong. Small group leaders aim to help kids BELIEVE in God and understand what it means to live like a Christian”, places having fun, making friends, and finding a place to belong as the main goals, while helping children believe in God is secondary and helping children understand the Christian life is tertiary.

Hillsong Kid’s mission statement has fun as part of the tertiary goal of the ministry. It states that “We believe that teaching children to love God and others takes place in both the home and in the church. For this reason, we seek to partner with parents (the greatest teachers of all!) and with church pastors and leaders, equipping them with great resources. Through fun experiences, meaningful music and ministry that encourages children to participate, we present Jesus Christ and His Church in a relevant way, creating moments which children will never forget. Anyone can do what we do. The simple key is to love God, love His Church and have fun!”20 The primary goal is to teach children to love God and others, the secondary goal is to partner with the parents and then they make it a goal to have fun while doing so.

Bethel Kids statement that “Our hope is that kids are inspired and equipped to partner with Jesus in every area of their lives”.21 is better formatted. There is more room for emotionally forming the children in every aspect of life by being directed to addressing every area of the child’s life without the goal of having fun being front and center. Out of the four churches looked at, Bethel does the best at presenting a well-rounded approach to emotional formation. Passion kids is close to Bethel in their statement that “Jesus is our lead story in every room of our House. In fact, He’s our only story—even in Passion Kids. We want to lean in with the families of our House who are raising a generation of children to know and walk in a relationship with Jesus”.22 Bethel’s mission statement forgoes mentioning fun as part of their mission and focuses more on the spiritual formation of the children.

According to James Francis, a scholar studying religious formation and education, “Faithful participation in forgiveness, reconciliation, and shared vulnerability contribute to spiritual maturity. These activities require a posture of intimate communal engagement that expands personal capacities and evokes insight outside of the individual, leading to their relational growth” (Francis 2019). The mission and practice of cultivating fun above these virtues leave the children without the ability to share their vulnerabilities due to space for sadness, questioning, and sharing the depths of their feelings are not created. Frances continues that those who avoid exposure to these feelings develop a technique of preserving themselves by not questioning what they were raised to believe. That stunts their ability to express deeper feelings than joy and happiness due to being raised with the prohibition or negative emphasis on these feelings. Kate Adams, who studies emotional formation in children, agrees with Frances. She states that “The importance of the spiritual space(s) which a child inhabits is not to be underestimated, for it can affect their beliefs, confidence and openness for a lifetime” (Adams 2019). Adams, along with Frances, is making the point that limiting the spiritual and emotional spaces that a child can access creates problems for their whole life while having access to more diverse spaces opens their world. If they do not express sadness, doubt, and confusion in worship, those emotions will remain hidden behind the desire to have fun.

9. Myth of the Always Happy Child

The desire for children to not express grief, doubt, or confusion stems from the myth of the always happy child, which is the idea that children exist in a state of innocence where they are always seeing the world as a wonderful place full of love and acceptance. It also contends that children are always happy and that they need to be kept in that state by their parents and caregivers. Carole Klein writes that “the sight of children “unhappy” fills us, then, not just with loving concern, but with guilt” and that guilt reflects and keeps track of our inadequacy to properly raise and care for a child. Many parents and educators think that “a happy child is evidence I’m doing my work well” and any divergence from having a joyful child is a sign that the caregiver has failed. Klein’s argument is that adults overlook a child’s feelings because they want the child to be naive and innocent and sheltered from the world where sadness, death, and loneliness exist. They can feel pressure that if the child experiences anything but happiness, they have failed the child (Klein 1975).

The myth is apparent in the worship music videos and the services made for the children. The videos only show any child having an experience that could be labelled as having fun. They might be shown in deep reflection or in a moment of religious bliss, and these are portrayed as the child liking and accepting the experience. The music videos have the children doing things that are usually fun, such as biking with friends, playing on a rope swing over a lake, and eating lunch together. The video does not show the child who is left out because they are slower on the bike, or scared to use the swing, or finding themselves isolated in the corner during lunch. Since these videos are used to advertise their church and albums, the omission of these details makes sense. However, the videos still give the impression that the children are happy and having fun and possessing a religious fervor that is only possible if they are innocent.

Jerome Berryman, writing on emotional development in children, claims that the existential limits of religious education should be “death, aloneness, freedom, and meaninglessness” and that we should not shy away from these topics when children are present. Talking about these deep issues with people of different ages can be a benefit for everyone (Berryman 1990). The four churches mentioned above left out or avoided these subjects in their songs and lessons. When death and aloneness were brought up, they were only in a state before salvation and the children were comforted by the lyrics of the songs that death was defeated and they will never be lonely again because Jesus will always be with them. Berryman continues that “many adults assume that children do not experience existential questions” (Berryman 1990). The denial that children confronting death and loss risks children not opening about their feelings and questions as they feel that to be open would “risk adult disapproval or … discount their own experience and acquiesce to the adult’s interpretation” (Berryman 1990). The songs and lessons taught then force the children to agree with the adults, betraying how they truly feel or to have their feelings disrespected. Either way is a rejection of how the child feels and leads to stunting emotional formation.

Tony Eaude, a researcher on children’s emotional development, brings more insight into what Klien and Berryman are discussing by adding that “an expectation that children should say that they are happy, even when they are not, or do not know how they feel, restricts their ability to learn to process more complex and difficult emotions” (Eaude 2009). If the child only knows how to express happiness or joy, they will not know how to emotionally deal with situations where emotions become mixed together. The way the emotional education is disseminated in these children’s ministries seek “peace, comfort, and safety” which are good things to pursue, but the constant pursuit can lead to never being able to find them because the person is always pursuing them and cannot recognize them when they have them. Instead of trying to find these feelings, Eaude suggests that one needs to accept the limits of one’s life and identity (Eaude 2009). Eaude’s conclusion, like Berryman’s, is that we need to embrace and make room in kid’s lives for death, alienation, freedom, and the feeling of meaninglessness so that they can be whole. The perception of children as always happy should be abandoned and church leaders should turn their focus from perpetuating the myth to creating resources that help children deal with their complex emotional lives.

As suggested above, parents play an important role in the emotional development of children as they model emotional regulation around the children. The music that the parents listen to with the children in the car or around the house communicates an attitude towards the world that the parents and the children can adopt and internalize. If the adults are listening to radio stations or playlists that play songs found on the CCLI Top 100 or similar lists, those listening will only hear songs of praise (Jesse 2022), instead of hearing songs that express sadness, doubt, and loneliness while still being Christian. Further, the tv shows, movies, and other visual media the children are exposed to convey a message about how to express emotions appropriately. And most importantly, how the parents communicate with each other and to the children model how to emotionally navigate the world. The problem that Berryman, Eaude, and Klien are pointing out is that adults are often offering a vision of the world to their children that does not coincide with reality with the goal of trying to shelter the children from any distressing events. An example of that is adults not explaining death to children by choosing to use confusing and harmful euphemisms like “they fell asleep”, “they’re gone”, or “they are no longer with us”. These are trying to hide the painful reality but can create misguided ideas about death in the child’s mind.

An example of the intertwining of emotions is found in the Christian practices of Holy Week. There is a true joy knowing that Easter Sunday is coming and on that day the church will celebrate the resurrection of Christ. Following the liturgies of Holy Week, the church practices expressing different emotions as they progress through the Passion narrative. There are moments of hope, humility, and sadness on Maundy Thursday as the church practices humility by washing each other’s feet before they strip the altar. On Good Friday, the recognition that Jesus was crucified starts to sink in as somber songs are sung. The Holy Saturday service takes the church through laments and sadness while the Easter Vigil tells the whole narrative from Creation to Redemption, ending with a burst of pent-up joyous hallelujahs. Children can experience the full spectrum of emotion in one week if the services are built around the story of salvation. If Holy Week is only about the resurrection, and children are taught to focus on the joy of happiness, then the children will not be taught how to express their emotions and that expressing a variety of emotions in worship is welcome. The myth of the always happy child gets perpetuated by adults and leaders who work hard creating programming and services that keep children happy.

Ridgely gives a plausible reason adult are trying to keep children’s religious services fun. Ridgely argues that “memory allows adults to feel that they already understand childhood perceptions” (Ridgely 2012). Adults can have a rose-colored view of their religious experiences as children and remember their Sunday School experiences as up-beat and fun producing now cherished yet vague memories. The parents are attempting to re-create that for their children so the children can associate the church with having an enjoyable time and stay or return to church. Or it is possible that they remember their religious upbringing as strict and boring and are trying to avoid their children thinking that? Ridgely continues to discuss that the world children inhabit is decorated with what adults think the children want, often without the input of the children.

10. Letting Children Use Their Own Voice

A consequence of adults trying to regulate the feelings of children is that the belief that children are too immature and not developmentally able to regulate their own feelings. The adult believes that they are acting in the best interests of the child while only considering how they feel without asking the child about their feelings (Blanchet-Cohen and Rainbow 2006). Blanchet-Cohen and Rainbow highlight the point that “input from children is considered only when the adults want to hear it”. For a child to have agency or a voice, they have to make sure that it aligns with the adult’s already established expectations of what the child would want or need. It can be imagined that a child would be asked to be taken more seriously and the adult(s) rejecting that plea because the adult does not view the child as capable of being serious. Instead of holding back the child, the child and adult should explore together and partner with them. The adult may learn from the child how to use their imagination, be more creative, and express their feelings. The child might learn from the adult how to engage with power structures or how to give themselves a voice and regain their agency.

Returning to Carole Klien’s research, “Obsession with happiness slaps masks not only on children but on ourselves as well. Our eagerness to keep them “happy” paints confusingly cheerful faces over tearful experience”. Klien means that adults should show how to be aware of and honor all parts and moments of their emotional life. Eaude agrees and suggests a reason for caregivers’ desire to paint events as happy. He states, “The attributes associated with good mental health are often undermined by adults, sometimes with the best of intentions. For instance, most children can show amazing resilience if they are not overprotected”. A child taking cues from adults is often seen on the playground. A child’s reaction to falling on the playground depends on how the adult responds. If the parent expresses concern, the child will be concerned but if the parent stays calm, the child will also stay calm unless they truly need assistance or are hurt. The same thing happens when an adult listens to what the child is feeling. When a child says they are angry, doubtful, confused, or sad, it is better to ask them why they feel that way than to ignore those feelings. By paying attention to the feelings, even if they seem unimportant to the adult, the adult can help the child deal with their feelings later.

The child needs to “believe in their own ability to cope if the task is emotionally not too daunting. So, in building up children’s ‘emotional muscles’ a balance has to be struck between overprotecting children and ignoring their emotional needs” (Eaude 2009). Children need to face emotions that are often considered inappropriate for children to feel so that they can learn how to accept and manage their and other people‘s feelings when they arise. The emphasis on having fun atrophies the other emotional muscles. Parents need to hone “their awareness of their child’s emotions, communicating their understanding of their child’s emotional states, and helping their child learn to tolerate and recover from periods of emotional distress” (Hajal and Paley 2020). So that they can help the child grow confident in expressing their emotions and recognize when emotions are unregulated. However, the child should be partnered with so that the adult is not helping the child learn only what the adult wants them to. As Ridgely phrases it, “Children must be recognized as substantive beings with particular concerns of their own, concerns that alternately agree with, diverge from, and challenge what adults have taught them” (Ridgely 2012). The children in Sunday School and child-oriented worship services need to be given space and opportunity to use their voice and shape their emotions that may go against tradition and allow for sadness, grief, fear, and frustration to be sung about and lived through together.

It needs to be acknowledged that “Children are more than just repositories for adult concerns for the future have of their faiths” (Ridgely 2012) and are capable of deep spiritual thought, devotion, and understanding. The four churches examined have spiritually deep lyrics in the songs that they have their children sing, exploring death, resurrection, and sanctification yet the intertwining of fun and faith can lessen the seriousness of those doctrines. Further, whenever death or any negative emotion is mentioned in the lyrics, that emotion is immediately negated by the following lyric, chorus, or verse as it is in adult worship songs (Jesse 2022). Children lead complex emotional lives that are often taken for granted, and allowing them to sing about feeling alone, angry about how people are treating them, grieving for a loss is an important part of making sure that they grow up into adults that can express those feelings and teach the next generation how to express their feelings.

11. Conclusions

The way that your church speaks about the worship service in the material they produce needs to align with a robust emotional experience. Looking at the videos posted, blogs connected to their website, and general copy on the church’s website, I had expectations set about what a service would look like and what emotions would be expressed. Those expectations that worship would be a fun and enjoyable time where children connect to each other, and Jesus, were met when I watched the videos posted. Sometimes, the services stated that having fun was their objective or purpose, which made having fun seem more significant than theological or emotional development. There is no problem with having fun in worship, yet it should be balanced out with opportunities to gain experience expressing other emotions and live in spaces that are not focused on entertainment. An emotional balance needs to be found in children’s worship by incorporating reading texts from Scripture that are emotionally diverse and challenging, like Ecclesiastes, Jeremiah, Lamentations, and the lament Psalms. Children need to know that the bible speaks to them about their feelings of loneliness, being marginalized or left out, and frustrated at how they are treated or their current situation. The leaders can also sing and produce songs that express the same sentiments. A way that leaders can help strike a balance between providing times of joyous and fun worship and sincere expressions of other feelings is to look at how we frame the services and the words we use during the service. The words used in ad-libs during songs or introducing songs or the worship time influence how the song is perceived. Historian of the American Prosperity Gospel Kate Bowler’s send-off telling people to have a “beautiful, terrible day” (Bowler 2024) can help the children understand that it is okay to have both a beautiful day and a terrible day. How one introduces, talks about, and dismisses the service sets an emotional tone and leaders need to find a way to personalize a message that normalizes having different emotional experiences.

Children’s worship services should let the children express their feelings fully. Churches should check if they are reinforcing the idea that children are always innocent and happy in their teaching, their song selection, and their worship style. The churches should listen carefully to what the children want and need in their services and adjust their ministry accordingly. The children should have a say in how their worship is done and their opinions need to be respected. One practical way of letting the children help shape the ministry is to ask them to draw church pictures and explain what they mean (Zonio 2014). A follow-up activity is to ask the children to draw a picture of how they wish church were for them. These are straightforward ways for the children to share their views and feel heard. If necessary, you can do the activities with different age groups or with focus groups if your group is big enough. Another suggestion is to have children actively engage in the process of reviewing curriculum to a level appropriate to their understanding. Children can also engage in role-playing at a church service and comment on what they enjoyed and found difficult. A simpler idea would be to seek children’s input in what songs are sung during children’s worship services. What matters is that the children are being heard while the adults are shaping the services to form the whole person so that the children grow up to be emotionally well rounded and be able to deeply engage in worship.

Likewise, parents have a part in the emotional development of the children and need to be active in exposing their children to media that show a more comprehensive emotional approach than the media examined in my study. By presenting the children with music and worship experiences that are emotionally diverse, the child will learn to grow into healthy expressions of their feelings. Doing this takes effort and discernment, as most media aimed at children is focused on fun and entertainment and avoids the hard subjects in life that make up reality. That might mean bringing the children into the adult services and rhythms of worship. For instance, I have a friend whose daughter in middle school looks forward to their church’s Maudy Thursday service, as they remove the altar and emotionally get ready for the reality of Good Friday and Holy Saturday. She understands that the church is going through a sad and solemn period and appreciates the change in emotional tone that happens during that service. The parents merely invited their children into their worship in order to help the faith and emotional formation of their child.

An issue might occur where the worship that the adults participate in does not incorporate the full spectrum of emotions and thus would need to shift in content also. Further study could be undertaken to see if the adult services at these churches studied above have a truncated version of emotions present in their songs and sermons. If they do, a loop may be formed where the children are taught to only be joyful and express fun because the adults are also taught to, and when the children grow up, they continue to worship without sadness, doubt, or grief being expressed because they were never taught how to express themselves fully in worship. To correct that, the children and adults would have to see that a change is needed and work with others to be intentional about what emotions are present or absent in their worship experiences.

Each of the four churches, and those churches following their model, could seek to be what May called ministering with children. The children and the adults need to journey together and explore the various aspects of faith and emotion in an intergenerational practice. In my experience teaching children in church, they appreciate being taken seriously and being able to explore the questions and concerns that they have as they grow into their faith. Kara Powell, Chap Clark, and the Fuller Youth Institute recommend that churches provide a safe space for children and young people to express their doubts and questions, as these are not toxic or damaging to their faith. What is damaging to the faith formation of children is suppressing questions and not allowing the children to ask their questions (Powell and Clark 2011).

One way to foster the asking of deep and probing questions is to read the full bible (Powell and Clark 2011) instead of a truncated version that does not teach the children the stories of people wrestling with faith and God that are in the text. Eva Jenny Korneck advocates for children’s bibles using the book of Job and their case can be extended to Sunday School curriculum. The argument is that children can understand the themes of Good and Evil, perceived righteousness, and the desire to understand why God allows events to occur that do not perpetuate our happiness (Korneck 2012). The children need to know the full story of the Bible and understand that it is not just a collection of happy stories where everything has a happy conclusion. By trying to shelter the children, the church may be driving the children away from the church because the children do not think the church has any room for their feelings of doubt, confusion, grief, or sadness.

Further, the churches can set aside time for fun, while also focusing on being serious about leaning and growing in the faith. May tells a story of a church that had a store where children could buy candy and trinkets with memorized verses and signs of attendance, but the children did not complain when the store was taken away (May et al. 2011). Transforming the mission and vision of children’s church to creating disciples of Christ instead of being a good time with friends will help children mature in the faith and continue to believe and grow in their adult years (Powell and Clark 2011). In short, children’s ministries like the ones studied above need to shift their thought process from being about entertaining programs to faith-sustaining formation, utilizing the full spectrum of emotions in their curriculum.

Returning to Berryman’s statement that religious education should include “death, aloneness, freedom, and meaninglessness”, the ministries should encourage the children to engage in holy wonder and Godly Play (Berryman 1995). The children should be asked to imagine that they were in the stories and be encouraged to ask questions about what was happening or how the characters felt. They should be asked to put themselves in the shoes of the people in the story and talk about how they would feel in those circumstances. They need to have the space to think about how Mary or the disciples would have felt at the foot of the cross, or at the empty tomb. Would they have felt joy, sadness, confusion, or something else? By having children read and interact with the text of Scripture by using their imagination, they can reveal that they are thinking about in a deep and profound way that might be missed by the curriculum.

More research would be needed, but I would hypothesize that the children in the videos do not perceive fun as being too dominant in these programs, as they are accustomed to church, and worship, being centered on joy and fun. The children need to be asked how they feel about their services and what they would change. I suggest that we ask the children if they feel that the services oriented towards their age group are overly focused on fun and if they feel like they are missing the chance to learn and grow in meaningful ways. The children also need to be asked if they feel like any part of their emotional growth or needs are not being met. It is important that the interview and survey questions are developed along with children so that the questions do not bias the answers towards the responses the adults want. Ridgely asks, “What would a child-centered survey reveal about young people’s definitions of religion, tradition-specific practices, and theological questions?” (Ridgely 2012). The children’s answers then can be used to shape curriculum and activities that occur in child-centered worship services.

As suggested above, there are other avenues for further research that would be helpful in the area of emotional formation in children. Surveys can be done with parents and educators, trying to understand if fun is overemphasized in the classroom at school. Also, media that is directed towards children, like films and tv shows, could be analyzed for how they show emotions and if there are any trends in how the media deals with complex emotions. These avenues were outside of the scope of the current research although they are worthy of being explored.