Meditation on Luke 15:1-10
Reverend Dr. Karen Crawford
First Presbyterian Church of Smithtown, NY
Sept. 14, 2025
Our young disciples are back in worship! Isn’t it fabulous??
Someone texted me yesterday, “Rally Day. All your special young disciples will return. I’m sure you are excited, and we will have more stories!”
Rally Day means not only the return of Sunday School and our choirs singing and ringing, but also the return of a weekly children’s message or “Time with Young Disciples,” as we call it here. I do have to say that we had quite a few children’s messages for at least two of our children, Scarlett and Grayson, this past summer. That was an extraordinary blessing.
I realize that not every pastor is as excited as I am about children’s messages. One Orlando pastor says he can’t find anything about children’s messages in the Bible; it must be wrong to do them. “It is just a tradition that has no real standing from God’s Word,” he writes. “It’s time to let it go.”[1] Another pastor, who sees benefit in children’s messages, is less confident of his ability to share them. He starts his article, “Please pray for me: I’m going to be preaching three Sundays in three churches the next three months. Intimidated as I am to take to any pulpit, what really scares me is the possibility that one or more of these churches might also request a children’s sermon.”[2]
The children’s sermon as a genre has been around for more than 100 years. It was more common in the beginning when the children were separated from the adults. Ministers in the 19th century published volumes of sermons preached for children’s-only worship services, such as one of the first American missionaries to India, Samuel Nott, Jr., in 1828.[3] The idea was that if you could win the hearts and minds of the children, then they would share their faith with their parents.
Christian education has a long history. In the First Century, education was evangelism through the sharing of personal testimonies. New believers memorized statements of beliefs or creeds when they were baptized. The Roman Church in the Middle Ages, though services and prayers were in Latin and not understood by the common people, used stories, objects, figurines, drama, and artwork, such as stained-glass windows, to teach the faith. Martin Luther in the 16th century, like other reformers, believed Scripture and Christian education should be accessible to all people. His Small Catechism of 1529 was for parents teaching their children at home and for adults to learn the basics of the faith.
At the turn of the 20th century, new understandings of child development led educators to conclude that the catechism and rote memorization alone could not meet the needs of children for religious instruction. John Dewey said in 1897 that the “child’s own instincts and powers furnish the material and give the starting point for all education,”[4] and that education “is a process of living and not a preparation for future living.”[5] Relationships are as important as the concepts being taught.
Sunday School had begun as an outreach in England to needy children in the 18th century. It included religious instruction and basic education in literacy and math. Our Female Charitable Society on Oct. 5, 1817, started such a school in the church for needy children in our community with 3 teachers and 38 students, adding four more teachers the following February.
A brief children’s worship service was begun at 10 o’clock in 1898 in our Chapel, which is now the children’s library. After worship, they would form into groups and meet with their teachers in various places in the building, with older kids in the Chapel and younger ones in the pew boxes and balcony until worship began at 11 a.m. In 1950, when the Parish Hall was built, it provided space for children’s Sunday School with moveable partitions. But it was noisy and crowded. In 1963, the Christian Education addition was finished and dedicated.
When the building opened, the community’s children poured through the doors. It was, as the old saying goes, a case of “Build it and they will come.” By the mid to late 1960s, our church claimed the highest Sunday School enrollment in Long Island Presbytery. I am proud of my church that embraced its responsibility to share its gifts and resources and nurture the hope and faith of children, youth, and their parents. The calling and our challenge to remain faithful as our society changes around us continues today.
We are still learning how to do Christian education from our greatest example, Jesus Christ, the originator of children’s sermons and sermons about children. He scolded the disciples for shooing young mothers with their infants away when they came seeking his blessing. Our Savior held up the youngest children as examples for the rest of his followers, for the Kingdom of Heaven “belongs to such as these.”
When we interpret our gospel lesson in Luke today in light of our Rally Day theme of nurturing the faith community, it is easy to see that every person matters to the Lord. This is a God who cares, a God who perseveres to seek and save what is lost. The Good Shepherd leaves the 99 sheep in the wilderness to go after and save one who has gone astray. This reflects the welcome and inclusivity of God’s love and the lengths the Lord is willing to go—all the way to the cross and the giving of his life—to save us all!
Jesus is telling stories with spiritual lessons to a crowd that includes men, women, and children. These lessons, which come from the daily life in which Christ and his first audience lives, aren’t just for his 12 male followers. Men and women, boys and girls are listening and finding connections.
Both genders and all ages are shepherds in Jesus’ day and in ancient times. Rachel (who would go on to marry Jacob) in Genesis and Jethro’s daughter Zipporah (who would marry Moses) in Exodus are shepherds caring for their father’s flocks. Every person in this agrarian society would understand the responsibility of a shepherd. The loss of just one would have great impact on not just a family, but the wider community. When the one who is lost is found, it is cause for celebration. The shepherd in Christ’s story calls all his friends and neighbors to say, “Rejoice with me, for I have found my lost sheep… For there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.”
Today, the woman sweeping her house, searching high and low for the lost coin, grabs my attention. Jesus is reaching out to the women in his audience. Sweeping or vacuuming is something I do almost every day. Every woman or girl in Christ’s audience has held a broom and swept a home, probably every day. Would it be a serious thing to lose one silver coin when the family had just 10? Of course it would! It might mean less food to eat. This would be a loss not just for one family but for the community. This is why the woman, when her diligent and persistent sweeping results in the discovery of the lost coin, calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, “‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost’… For there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”
Today, our congregation is a little different than it was in the 1960s. Our Christian Education building is no longer crowded with students, and we use only two classrooms and a few adult teachers and teen helpers for the program. We are hoping that next year, however, we will be able to divide the group into three classes. We will need a few more faithful teachers and helpers. God will provide!
I am sure that some of our older members may feel as if something has been lost when they look around the sanctuary and don’t see as many young families as there were in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. I don’t see it this way. I know of too many churches that no longer have any Sunday School students. They have given up on Sunday School. May we never allow that to happen here!
I look forward to the lessons the Lord will lead me to share during the Time with Young Disciples. I look forward to talking with the children about their lives of faith, hearing their voices, and seeing their expressions when I share stories or ask questions they aren’t expecting.
The children, when they come to us, already have faith. They know the Lord, though they might not yet have the words to talk about their faith. Christ, our Lord, has made himself known to each of them. He has claimed them in their baptisms. I firmly believe that children have as much to teach us about faith as we have to teach them. If you spend time with children in church, you will find that they understand what prayer is, without having to go into complicated explanations. If you ask them if they have any prayer concerns, they are anxious to share them with you.
The children, no matter how many are here, are precious to us and will continue to be a priority in my ministry. In some ways, I think Christian Education or Faith Formation, as we call it now, has improved because the program is more intimate. The teachers and helpers really get to know each of the children by name and personality. They receive more attention not only from those helping in Sunday School, but from the members of the church. We know when they are in church. We notice when they are not. We have truly become a church family.
I invite you now to celebrate and give thanks with me today on Rally Day, as we recognize the hand of God and the move of the Spirit in our lives and in this place, and as we seek to be faithful and nurture all the generations. Like the shepherd and the woman in Jesus’s stories, I invite you to rejoice with me as we share the stories of our faith community, celebrating our 350th and 200th anniversaries this year, and all that our faithful and loving God has done and will do as we seek God through Word and prayer.
Let us remember that every person matters to the Lord and treat everyone as if they matter to us. Let us remember the shepherd who left 99 to find one and the woman who didn’t stop sweeping until the 10th coin was restored and reach out to the children and youth when they are here and when they are not.
And let us be diligent in our prayers for their families.
Dear friends, rejoice with me as we consider all that was lost and found.
Let us pray.
Good Shepherd, thank you for your love for us, a love that would lead you to go after the one lost sheep, or sweep away the dust of our lives until you have restored the one lost coin. Thank you for your suffering work on the cross and the promise of salvation that remains the same, though the world around us is ever changing. Thank you for the children and young families and the volunteers who are willing to serve them in Sunday School. Bless them, Lord, and help us, to grow all the generations in spirit and number, to nurture the faith, hope, and love of all the ages, for all the ages. Stir us to treat all people as if they matter to us, for they matter to you. Lead us to pray and rejoice with you, faithful God, as we consider what you have done, all that was lost and found. Amen.
[1] Nathan Eshelman, “Suffer All The Children: Why a Children’s Sermon?” July 2, 2025, at https://gentlereformation.com/2025/07/02/suffer-the-children-why-a-childrens-sermon/
[2] Chris Gehrz, “A Brief History of the Children’s Sermon” at https://www.patheos.com/blogs/anxiousbench/2018/01/brief-history-childrens-sermon/
[3] Chris Gehrz, “A Brief History of the Children’s Sermon.”
[4] John Dewey, “My Pedagogic Creed” in School Journal, vol. 54 (January 1897), 77-80.
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