Six Years Old

When I preach to a congregation of mainly children, I preach to the six year olds.  I have a knack for doing this.  I see that they stop with the wandering mind and start to look at me with concentration.  Get them early with the first sentence or two or not at all.  I have found that if the six year old can understand me,  sense that I am talking to them, so can everyone else, or most everyone else.  We never lose our sense of being a child. We build on it but never replace it.  I still have the six year old in me.  It is the source of many of my stories, that are of course true history.  Only my enemies deny this.  May God do thus and so to them.  I don't bother trying to preach to just the Junior High people about some moral issue.  I lose the six year olds.  Besides, the Junior High are just as interested if I focus on the youngest ones.  I know what it is like to be bored in church.   I have been the kid in the pew.  I guess I have compassion on the six year old.  If they start their church life bored or feel ignored, then it is hard to overcome that "expectation" later in their life.  I think it is important to be a grown up priest, but not too much.