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Kids' 'Sunday best' behavior often isn't
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___Last Sunday during the children’s sermon, our pastor gave quite a stirring talk about courage, and he chose an excellent example to make his point.
___ "Boys and girls, today we’re going to talk about a woman named Rosa," he began. He wasn’t two sentences into his story about Birmingham and
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MARK WINGFIELD
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buses—-all the while cleverly referring to his subject only as Rosa--until one child spoke up loudly and said, "Her last name was Parks!"
___ "Yes, that’s right," he said, trying to thinly disguise the fact that his well-thought-out strategy of story telling had been blown by a kid who had boned up on the civil rights movement.
___ Then he went on to tell about the struggles people like Rosa Parks faced in Birmingham in the 1950s and ‘60s. Soon another child burst out: "It was called segregation!"
___ By that point, the master storyteller clearly was being outdone by his understudies. The congregation was snickering.
___ It got worse, though, when he attempted to make the point that people who act courageously also may be scared. He asked the children if they thought Rosa Parks was afraid when the police were summoned because she refused to give up her seat.
___ "Noooo!" the children chimed in unison, much to his surprise.
___ "Well, don’t you think she might have been afraid when she went to jail?" he replied.
___ "Noooo!" the children shouted even louder.
___ "Well, how about when she had to go to court and stand before the judge?"
___ "Nooo!" the children declared, with all the conviction of someone who’s been there personally.
___ Finally, in a desperate attempt to revive his point, our pastor asserted: "Well, I see none of you would be afraid, but I think Rosa Parks might have been, and I would have been."
___ With the fine display of brilliant children we had witnessed that morning, I only wished my own two boys had been among the crowd of well-educated suspects. But alas, the day impressive behavior fell upon the children’s sermon, my children were at home sick.
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___We were talking last Sunday afternoon with one of our neighbors who also attends our church about that morning’s children’s sermon. As the parent of a highly talkative and not-the-least-bit shy fifth grader, she confessed that she holds her breath every time her son goes forward to participate in the childr
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ALISON WINGFIELD
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en’s sermon. In fact, she said, she worries every time he gets near a microphone.
___ Who ever knew church could be such a hazard for children? But it is. There are a thousand ways children can embarrass their parents at church.
___ Ours are getting to be experts at it. Those shy creatures who used to cling to or hide behind my skirts have disappeared. Now they still hide--behind plants and walls--so they can jump out and scare people or play "spy."
___ Another hazard we face is on Wednesday nights. One of the girls at church has a bit of a crush on our boys and she torments them. She loves to chase them. Fellowship Hall on Wednesday night is not the best place for that. It never fails that just as I start filling my plate in line, they see her coming and try to hide or pull on me so that my food hangs in the balance.
___ We try to teach our children respect for others and how to come to church with the right attitude of worship and openness to learning. We leave thankful that the church and they have stayed intact one more Sunday.
Mark Wingfield is managing editor of the Standard. Alison Wingfield is a freelance writer. The Wingfields moved to Texas from Louisville, Ky., where Mark had been editor of the Western Recorder, in which this column appeared weekly.
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