In recent months, our family has been looking for a new church, due to our recent move to Waco, Texas. After the service, as we are driving home or going out to eat for lunch, we have debriefed as a family: What was good? What was bad? Just how thoroughly undigestible were those vacuum-sealed communion wafers anyway?

As I’ve listened to my two kids react to these services, and in particular, to the buffet of very different Sunday sermons that have been laid before them, I’ve been surprised by their responses. I have been preaching now for almost a decade, and I thought I knew what it is my congregants were looking for, the things I heard my kids were looking for from preachers was not what I’d expected to hear.

I began to wonder about their insights. Perhaps knowing what my kids wished preachers did might also be helpful to you, as you seek to preach to children each Sunday. So, I asked them straight—Ralph and Ivy, what do you wish us preachers did when preaching?

They Wish We’d Be Helpful

“I like sermons that are helpful to me,” says Ivy, who is 9, matter-of-factly. But what makes a sermon helpful to a 9-year-old, fourth grade girl? “When they help me with my emotions,” Ivy said, “when they help me know what to do when I’m angry, or sad, or worried, or afraid.” Ivy still recalls a sermon from two years ago (that sadly, I did not preach) that helped her trust God when she felt afraid. I don’t think there is a preacher on earth that doesn’t dream of having congregants remember sermons for two years!

Ivy’s insight caused me to wonder: When was the last time I applied a sermon of my own to the realm of emotions? When was the last time for you? Consider this as a way to “be helpful” to your young hearers. Or to use a “ministry” word: to disciple the children, and possibly adults also, in your church.

They Wish We’d Be Funny

Hands down my kids’ favorite sermon from the past two months was the one that had them retelling the pastor’s funny stories all the way home. Perhaps this is not so surprising. But what’s funny in a sermon to kids?

It certainly isn’t random jokes downloaded from the internet to add a touch of humor to Sunday. Instead, both of my children prefer to hear illustrations that draw upon funny stories from movies or TV shows that they watch. Or funny characters or mishaps from the Bible. And they are especially fond of funny stories from the life of the preacher.

What they loved about that one sermon was that the preacher was willing to share a funny, embarrassing story from his own life. They loved that he was able to be a goofball, that he was able to laugh at himself. Are you able to laugh at yourself too?

They Wish We’d Be Exciting

The third thing that both of my kids agreed they wish preachers were more exciting. “I want facts on a Sunday,” says Ralph, who is 11, “but I want exciting facts, not boring facts.” What are exciting facts? Facts about the fishermen’s boat, reported Ralph. Facts about locusts and honey. Facts about David cutting off Goliath’s head. “Or when someone prays and prays and finally God answered,” Ivy chimed in. That kind of faith building story, according to Ivy, is an exciting fact too.

What are boring facts? According to Ralph and Ivy, those are the facts that are lengthy and complicated to explain. Facts that are abstract with no physical or practical component. Facts that go on and on that never shift into an illustration or application. “I don’t like listening to a preacher who has fallen into a boring facts hole,” says Ralph.

Ralph, I completely understand. How could you up the excitement level of your next sermon? Is there an exciting fact from your text you could share?

They Wish We’d Be Biblical

The previous request flows naturally into this: My kids wish preachers on Sunday were biblical. This is the one that surprised me the most. As an evangelical preacher with a commitment to expository preaching—that is, preaching that unpacks and explains the text—I’ve force-fed my kids 100s of bible-based sermons over the course of their life. But it never occurred to me they actually wanted them that way. It’s like discovering one’s child actually likes to eat peas.

But discover it I did. One Sunday we visited a church, where the passage being preached was from Acts 16—Lydia and the jailer’s fantastic conversions. The preacher ascended to the pulpit, read that magnificent text, and then proceeded to read long passages from academic books and go on a tirade about issues she had with the city government. Ralph exited the church forlorn. “I wanted to know more about that story, but she didn’t explain anything.”

This is where we ask ourselves: Is our next sermon unpacking the biblical text for that kid in your pews desperate to know what the Bible means?

They Wish We’d Be Personal

Finally, my kids report that they wish preachers’ sermons included them. “I wish the preacher sometimes said my name in the sermon,” said Ivy, “but not saying something like ‘Stand up! Let’s give Ivy a round of applause!’ That would be embarrassing. And not asking me a question, because I’m scared I might not know the answer. Just saying my name. That’s all I want. That would be so, so cool.”

I wonder if Ivy wanted a shout out in the sermon so that she felt seen. So that she felt that the preacher knew that she was in the pew, listening that week. So that she felt included. So that she felt she was an integral part of the life of the church.

How might we seamlessly include a name of a young person present in the pews into our sermons over the next few Sundays?

Conclusion

As I talked this all over with Ralph and Ivy, I thought of other kids in churches where I have preached in the past. I wish now I had spent time asking them this same question: What do you wish preachers did when preaching?

I thought of myself as a child, and how I would’ve answered this question. I thought back to that pastor who once read a poem of mine in his sermon when I was six, and how special that felt to me, that at six-years-old my words could be part of the preaching ministry of the church. I thought of the pastor I had when I was 10, who would illustrate his Sunday sermons with last week’s Peanuts comic strip. I would sit on the edge of my pew each week desperate to hear the way he would tie Peanuts in to yet another Sunday sermon. Both of these preachers—the poetry preacher and the Peanuts preacher—taught me that sermons were for me, even as a child, and taught me to love preaching and helped me to listen to preaching even before I gave my life to the Lord at 14.

As crazy as it sounds, chances are that in your pews this Sunday is a child who is your church’s future preacher. Or your church’s next brand-new Christian. Don’t sleep on doing everything that you possibly can to bring the Word of God effectively to them. Take the time to listen to what they wish you would do and do it.

Alison Gerber is the former pastor of Second Congregational Church in Peabody MA, now a PhD in Preaching student at Truett Seminary/Baylor University in Waco TX.