Holy Week and Children's Ministry

I got invited to wave a palm branch this past Sunday and yell “Hosanna” with the kids at worship. It was quite the parade through the sanctuary. I’m not 100% sure if they got the story, but they sure had a great time marching and waving and shouting – all things they normally don’t do in the sanctuary.

Holy Week is incredibly complex. There are so many components to the Easter story, and each piece contributes to our understanding of who Jesus was, who He is for us now and who He will be for us in the future. The concrete aspects of the story are definitely easier for young minds to take in than the theological.

This past week I read an article about the importance of how we communicate the Easter story. Depending on our approach, it can seem to make violence acceptable, even necessary, for us to receive God’s good gifts. We can hear the message over and over of Jesus having to die an inhumane, gory death, with a focus on His blood having to be shed. When we add that He died in our place, taking the death that we really deserved, then guilt and fear of what this all means can take away from what is the more important message of love and transformation and sacrifice.

The violent nature of the events of Good Friday and the very ugly human actions of disciples, people who children have been taught to look up to and admire as those willing to follow Jesus so closely, can be a challenge to convey responsibly. We have betrayal, denial, assault with a weapon, cruelty, suicide and more. The task of sharing the story is made even more difficult because it’s no longer a story that is part of our culture. Children will only hear about it at church, or possibly at school if they attend a faith-based one of some kind. We also can’t rely on parents to have the tools to share the story or to even make the time.

How do we simplify what happened without reducing its power? How do we create safe space for questions and understanding? Here are some suggestions:

1. Highlight things that Jesus asked His followers to do before He died. These are all things we can do for our friend and Saviour until He comes back. These include serving each other, loving each other, praying, believing in Him, meeting with other followers and remembering Him and what He taught us to do.

2. Talk about how sometimes when we are angry or afraid we do things we regret. Sometimes we do things that hurt others or ourselves. In Jesus’ day it was a difficult time and people were struggling with lots of tough emotions. We know that Jesus understood why the disciples and others did things that ended up hurting Him. We know that Jesus forgives us when we ask and loves us always.   

3. Avoiding talking about death is not needed or realistic. Many children have already experienced death and talking about it can be very helpful. However, focusing on the gruesome nature of Jesus’ death is not. We can talk about how Jesus took the power of death away and made it possible for us to live forever with Him and with God. We don’t have to be afraid, because Jesus became alive again after He died and showed how powerful God’s love is.  

4. We can talk about transformation and how sometimes bad things happen along the way to something really good happening. Jesus was different after He rose from the dead, but it was still Him. We can talk about changes that happen inside us that help us to show God’s love more and more. If we let God change us, then we are still us but closer to who God made us to be.

5. We can celebrate new beginnings, God’s faithfulness, the power of the story that helped so many people to believe in God’s love and Jesus’ identity as the Messiah, the Saviour who came to sacrifice Himself for all people and to make things right between us and God.  

This is an emotional week. To prepare yourself to share it with children and youth, make sure you soak it in yourself. Experience it in as many ways as you can so that it becomes more real to you. Place yourself at the different locations of the story this week and imagine how you would have responded and felt at each moment. And make sure that you take time to offer praise to God for the wonder of this amazing story that is the bedrock of our faith.