Our theme at St. John this year is For The Coming Generations – looking ahead the future children who will need to hear the Gospel. It’s a bit much for preschoolers to grasp, so my angle is to show that we all used to be little, and one day we will be grown-ups, too. I’ve asked teachers and ministry staff to give me a picture themselves when they were little, and this has been an on-going display.
I’ve also asked them to think of a faith memory – something faith-related from their childhood that they remember. The one I’ve posted is that when I was little my parents used to stand by our bedroom doors at the end of the hallway and we would all sing our prayers. “Now the light has gone away” and “Dear Father in heaven” (that’s my nephew).
The memories I am not sharing are 1) I would fall asleep with my head on my mom’s lap in church and have the same dream: standing at the top of the outside steps and starting to fall. I would stop myself by (in reality) stomping my foot on the floor. Good grief, I hope I was a little kid rolling off the pew, otherwise I would have had to have been a teenager. Another memory I can’t share: Saying I needed to go to the bathroom during the service then dorking around in the basement. Another? My dad was the pastor, so on weekdays I would go next door to the church and perform small, private concerts from the pulpit to my adoring fans, sometimes with the microphone on.