Theology with Kathryn: EPC children's addition

I am the choir director at Eastminster Presbyterian Church. I direct the adult choir and I also do the children's music. Whenever I start to teach them a song about Jesus or any of the Bible people I try to make sure they know a little background on what they are singing about. For example they sang "Go Down Moses" so I taught them about Moses and how God sent him to set the people free from Pharaoh. We have also talked about Zacheaus in the tree and Jesus being born.

Well with Easter coming up in a couple of weeks we started to learn a little Easter song. I started out by asking the children what we are celebrating on Easter. They looked at me with somewhat blank expressions and I said, "I will give you a hint, it has nothing to do with Easter eggs or the Easter bunny." A few children then raised their hands so I pointed to one. This child said "We celebrate Easter because Jesus was born on Easter!" so I said "I think you are confusing Easter with Christmas, Jesus was born on Christmas." Then another child said "We celebrate Easter because that is when Jesus died!" and I said "Not quite, actually Jesus died a few days before Easter, and on Easter we are celebrating that he has risen from the dead!" At this point I was getting some very skeptical looks from these 3-7 year olds. One in particular, who has an awesome country accent, said: "BUT IF HE WAS DEAD, HOW DID HE COME BACK TO LIFE!!?!?!?!" so I said "Because God brought him back to life."

Then I asked them if they knew why Jesus died....I got a few "for us" from them and we talked about how Jesus died for our sins so that we could be saved. Then, and I don't remember how or why this happened but, we got onto the Holy Trinity! So here I am trying to explain to the 3-7 year old set about how the trinity is the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.....so we repeated several times what the trinity was and how they are three in one.

Pam, who is over the music program and plays piano for me during the children's music, said that every time the children asked another hard hitting, complicated, question that my eyes got a little bigger! I finally had to kind of just move on into learning the song!

As hilarious as some of the things they said were, I am glad that I was afforded the opportunity to explain these things to them. I know they are being taught these things in Sunday School but when they are that age they really need to be hearing it from as many places as possible!