Question, how you do you talk about worship with your kids?

I can distinctly remember the moment in Sunday School when I was told that when Christians die they go to heaven to worship Jesus forever— and ever, and ever, and ever….

Honestly, as a seven-year-old, I thought that sounded incredibly boring. As I got older my feelings that being Christian meant never doing anything fun continued to grow until I decided to leave church altogether.

Now I’m not saying that kids are incapable of engaging with faith issues without it being super fun, but I am saying that maybe the way we define “worship” needs to change.

I wish someone had told me then when I ran to catch a rugby ball with the arms God created for me specifically— that it was worship.

Or that when I looked up at the dark night sky dotted with millions of stars above my country home and gasped in wonder, that it was worship.

I wish I had known that worship can be as simple as thanking God for making the ocean I skipped stones on and didn’t have to be sitting in a pew singing songs that had big words in them.

I wish I had known worship can be as simple as letting the wonder of this world and life God has given us sink into my heart.

That it’s laughter and it’s joy.

I wish someone had told me worship can be as silly as dancing around the house in your underwear— like King David so boldly demonstrated for us!

And ultimately I wish someone had told me that the best act of worship I can offer to live in the fullest expression of who God has specifically made me to be. That when I’m living in His love, that he receives so much joy and glory from that.

Eventually when I came back to faith at the age of 18 I started to learn some of these things for myself as I read the Bible. But imagine the impact of teaching our kids how diverse and FUN worship really is?

I’m still a young dad, my son is only two years old, but I hope that I can communicate to him that worship isn’t just when I’m on stage with a guitar. That worship happens when I give to others, when I thank God for him at night before he goes to sleep, that worship happens when we wrestle on the living room floor and watch the deer lazily chew grass in our back garden.

So I want to ask you all, how you do you talk about worship with your kids? And how have they responded? I’m really honestly asking because we’re a community here and I want to learn from you all too. Because these are the kinds of things that could shape our children’s view of God forever!