How to write a sermon worksheet

There is no one right answer to this: I suggest that you play around with ideas until you and the children find something that works and then continue to change it up occasionally (such as every new sermon series) so that it doesn’t get stale.

As for writing your own: first up we have our Needs (which are things to prioritise on a worksheet) and Wants (which you can select a few different things from for each worksheet). Be realistic; you only have two sides of paper. Then I’ll expand more on those things and make some suggestions for what questions you could ask further down the page.

• Somewhere to write their name, the date and the passage (maybe a series title if your church has them).

• Questions on the passage – to help them break down what is going on; these should be written with regard to the original readers (How does Paul want them to respond to …) not us, which I do find especially hard to do with Wisdom Lit and Letters.

• Questions for application – What difference is hearing this sermon/reading the passage going to make in their lives? This may not be the same application that the preacher has for the whole congregation (although it should probably be related), since you can help narrow it down to their age range.

• Room for their questions: and an encouragement to ask a parent or Sunday School teacher/youth worker/preacher at the end. We’ve had kids in services on alternate Sundays and met on the other Sundays during the service to discuss these q’s from last time. Or if you regularly eat together after the service that’s a great time to grab a table together and answer these things. Or you could attach a post-it note to the worksheet and have an anonymous question box for them to put the note in (and another for blank post-its so they can be reused!)

• An activity: Not compulsory, but it’s a good option for keeping young bodies and minds quiet near the end of the sermon.

• A service observation question: because the preaching isn’t the only important bit of church.

• A tracker: Depending on how your church does its sermon series it’s good to keep an eye on themes that are repeated or Bible books that are mentioned. I also like having a box that I rewrite once a series and not every week!

• A memory verse: This could reinforce one from Sunday School or be connected to this passage or a theme you’re following.

• Diagrams: This very much depends on the passage but they can be really useful to help understand exactly what is going on.

• Can you ask the preacher for their main points – the kind of thing that gets displayed on a powerpoint? If you take a key word out here and there you’ve got an ongoing activity for which listening is a pre-requisite.

• Observation questions such as; Is our passage from the Old or New Testament? Who or what is the main subject? Who is the passage written to originally?

• Context: What happened in last week’s passage? Whose life are we following? What events led up to today’s passage? Who is writing this? What are the circumstances of the people that the author is talking to?

• For narrative sections: a put these events in order question is a great one. A picture version of this is good idea if you have less able readers, you can also suggest that they caption pictures to help them to understand. Here’s a example I created for Acts 3 where John and Peter heal the lame man:

• What one thing will you change in your life this week because you’ve heard this?

• For an Old Testament passage I quite often use this section to link that event to the gospel.

• Is there a person or people group the author would want you to identify with? Why do you want to be like this person? What do you need to ask God to help you with to be more like …?

• If Paul wanted these things to be true of the church in … do you think they should be true in your church? How can you see God doing this in your church? How can you be a part of what God is doing through your church?

• A key verse or memory verse, in bubble writing to colour in, maybe with a few extra words thrown in that need to be crossed out.

• A picture to colour. This will obviously need to be different depending on the passage.

• Draw a picture of … For example an application of any of Psalms 146-150 might be to praise God whatever your circumstances. So have two boxes with these captions: Draw a picture of a time at school when you can praise God. Can you think of another time when you could praise God? Or draw a picture of something in the passage. Put it in a frame.

• Write a prayer. Give them some hints.

• Wordsearches or Crosswords. Googling these is about 50% successful: I quite like making them just using a table layout if I have time. There are also wordsearch generators, like this one, online.

• Code breaking: choose a key verse from the passage. Type it out in ALL CAPS with no punctuation. Then change it to Windings font (or a similar symbol based one) and space it out so they have somewhere to write. Provide the alphabet and its matching symbol as a key.

• What songs did we sing? What did you enjoy most about the service today? Who was leading/preaching? Was there anything special about today’s service? Who/what did we pray for? Write down at least one announcement/notice.

• If you’re working through a theme in your sermons provide a box on each weeks sheet to help them track which book you’re in.

• A box that provides some key themes found in the book you’re studying and they need to circle the one they think fits best for the week.

• For a NT letter ask them to write down what problem the church is having that the author is writing to them about.

• For a prophet you could ask them to spot things that will be true about Jesus.

• You could teach them some Bible Study skills by asking them to find and write repeated words in a passge.

• If there’s a lot of traveling going on you could provide a map and ask them to mark the journey. Or if there are genealogies to complete a family tree.

• Venn diagrams to show the differences between Pharisees and Saducees or to compare how different Gospel writers describe the same events.

• A chart like this one which shows howJoseph’s life is similar to Jesus’, but could also track someone’s emotions or a bar chart showing how many times various words are used in a chapter or book.

EXAMPLE WORKSHEETS

These are the kind of worksheet which don’t need any changing from week to week because they’re not specific to any sermon or passage:
Here’s a Youth Work Sermon Sheet and a slightly more child-friendly version; the Children’s Work Sermon Sheet. These are perfect for when there isn’t someone who has the time to write a sheet every week. It’s also useful because as kids get older, they need to take more responsibility for listening and connecting by themselves and a less detailed sheet can encourage that and be a nice step between a worksheet and a notebook.

If you’d like worksheets for the whole of Acts (yes, every verse!) you can find them here. You can also use them for inspiration for how to ask questions, to see how often you can get away with using a maze, have a look at fun layouts etc.