Creative Sermon Notebooks

I took a snapshot of our grandson in church last Sunday as he took notes on pastor’s sermon. It reminded me of a time when his father was a young child and we were in a church where I was the pastor.

Carmen had prepared home-made sermon notebooks for each of our children. She simply stapled together some sheets of paper, cut to a size that would fit inside their Bibles. We expected them to write down something from the Sunday sermons at an age-appropriate level. That might mean an actual outline of the sermon, a comment on the verses being discussed, or even a picture inspired by what they heard.

Over Sunday dinner we would look at the notebooks and review the lessons learned that morning.

One day we were surprised to see an elaborate picture of a violent storm drawn by our middle son Kent. There were dark clouds, bolts of lightning, and cartoon captions of the BOOM of thunder. Caught in the storm were two stick figures.

I mentally reviewed the sermon but couldn’t recall any reference to such a storm. But Kent had an answer for us. “Don’t you remember, Dad? You said that James and John were the sons of thunder.”

If your children don’t keep sermon notebooks, start today. You’ll be amazed what they learn.