Appendix B
Wonders of Worship

Wonders of Worship provides an opportunity for children from kindergarten to second grade to learn about and practice worship. We spend the whole year focusing on “who,” “where,” “when,” “why,” and “how” we worship.

The first month we focus on “What is worship?” and answer that it is:

  1. God-centered: a gift we give to God, our only response to the holy King.
  2. Bible-centered: the Bible is wholly true; the whole Bible talks about worship; its two parts are the Old Testament (the Savior is coming) and the New Testament (the Savior is come).
  3. The high point of our week: we can worship anytime, anywhere, but corporate worship is the culmination of all we do.
  4. Active work: we use our heads, our hands, our hearts.

We then focus on the rationale of our God-centered worship, or “Whom do we worship, and why?” Our informing Scripture is Isaiah 6, Isaiah’s vision of the Holy One on his throne, robes filling a temple, smoke, shaking doorposts, and six winged seraphs calling back and forth. The children memorize Isaiah 6:3, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.” They also love memorizing three verses of the hymn “Holy, Holy, Holy.” They ask to sing this hymn almost every Sunday and sing it with exuberance, seriousness, and reverence as they recall Isaiah’s vision and his response. When they learn the verse about “all the saints adore thee, casting down their golden crowns around the glassy sea,” we study Revelation 4. Again the children often respond in an almost stunned silence and awe as they consider the worthiness of the Lord and our great calling to respond in worship forever.

Heading into the Advent season, we learn from John 12:41 that Isaiah’s vision was of Jesus himself. From “Pursuing Christ” we learn the catechism question: “Who is King over all things? The Lord Jesus Christ is King over all things.”1 It is a moving thing to see how seriously and worshipfully the children sing, “O come let us adore him” as they consider the eternal King of Isaiah 6 and Revelation 4 lying in a manger on our behalf.