I didn’t grow up with children’s sermons, and for my first five years of ministry, I never gave them much thought. In fact I’m not sure I’d even seen one done before. I had an idea of what they must be like: a pastor taking precious minutes of a worship service, using a forced, talking-to-children voice to give a watered-down moral for the children. The very concept sounded hokey to me. I never thought they would become a vital part of my ministry.

My opinion changed completely when I moved to plant a church out of First Presbyterian Church of Columbia, South Carolina. Sinclair Ferguson was the senior pastor at the time, and he loves children. He also knows how to speak to children. He helped me see the place and power of a good children’s sermon in the worship service. Week after week, he gathered up his robe and sat down in the front of the sanctuary to get eye level with the kids. Most weeks he brought props—he once borrowed the snakeskin I had just ...