How to Teach Kids About Jesus: Stories and Prayer, Age by Age

Teach children about Jesus the way the Gospels do: through his stories, his words and his prayer, told by someone who loves him. Start with one truth, that Jesus knows them by name and loves them, and add his stories and teachings as they grow. Pray to him together every day, and let them see that he matters to you.

It helps to remember that Jesus was a child once, and that he too learned a little at a time. Luke tells us that “the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom” (Luke 2:40). At twelve his parents lost him on the way home from Jerusalem and found him three days later in the temple, “sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them, and asking them questions” (Luke 2:46). His parents did not understand what he said to them, but “his mother kept all these sayings in her heart” (Luke 2:51). Then he went home to Nazareth, and “Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man” (Luke 2:52). Growing, listening, asking, treasuring: that is how faith takes root in our children too, year by year.

In a few plain sentences, the same ones every time. You might say to your child:

Jesus is God’s Son. He was born as a baby in Bethlehem and grew up in a family, like you. He made sick people well, he was kind to people nobody else wanted, and he taught everyone about God his Father. He died on a cross, and on the third day God raised him to life again. He is alive now, he loves you, and you can talk to him whenever you like.

Children ask the same question many times, and they are comforted when the answer stays the same. Over the years each sentence can open into more. When they are ready to ask why Jesus died, how to explain salvation to a child walks through the words, the stories and the verses.

The churches have done this for centuries with catechisms, short questions and answers made to be learned by heart. Martin Luther, in the Small Catechism he wrote in 1529, headed its parts “As the head of the family should teach it in a simple way to his household”, and his answer about Jesus begins, “I believe that Jesus Christ, true God, begotten of the Father from eternity, and also true man, born of the Virgin Mary, is my Lord.” The Westminster Shorter Catechism of 1647, still printed by Presbyterian churches today, opens with a question a child can answer for life: “What is the chief end of man?” “Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.”

Give a little one a single picture and come back to it often. Jesus gave us one himself: “I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine” (John 10:14). The shepherd “calleth his own sheep by name, and leadeth them out” (John 10:3). A three-year-old knows what it is to be called by name and carried. Tell them Jesus is the shepherd and they are his lamb, and say their name when you say it.

This is the parable that gives the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd its name. It is a way of teaching small children that Sofia Cavalletti and Gianna Gobbi began in Rome in 1954. Its catechists say the points that “most enchant the children” are “the personal love and presence of the Good Shepherd: He calls each one of His sheep by name”. In the United States alone it is found in more than 1,250 Catholic, Episcopal and Orthodox settings and in several other churches.

At this age, faith is mostly something a child sees and does with us. Say a short prayer at bedtime and before meals, using Jesus’ name. Keep a children’s Bible with pictures where small hands can reach it. Let them light a candle with you, fold their hands, sing a simple song about him. They will not understand much of it, and they do not need to yet. They are learning that Jesus belongs in our home.

Begin with the stories that show who he is, and keep the words close to the Gospels. These eight work well read aloud, one a night, from about age four:

Story	Where to read it	What a child can take from it
Jesus is born	Luke 2:1–20	God came to us as a baby
Jesus blesses the children	Mark 10:13–16	Jesus wants children near him
Jesus calms the storm	Mark 4:35–41	Jesus is with us when we are afraid
A boy’s five loaves	John 6:1–14	Jesus can use the little we give him
Zacchaeus climbs a tree	Luke 19:1–10	Jesus looks for people others avoid
The good Samaritan	Luke 10:25–37	A neighbour is anyone who needs help
The lost sheep	Luke 15:3–7	Jesus comes looking for us
The first Easter	Matthew 28:1–10	Jesus is alive

Read the story, then ask one question and let the child answer. In the storm, the disciples woke Jesus and cried, “Master, carest thou not that we perish?” (Mark 4:38). Ask your child when they have felt like that. In the feeding of the five thousand, the miracle begins with a child: “There is a lad here, which hath five barley loaves, and two small fishes: but what are they among so many?” (John 6:9). Children love to hear that a boy’s five loaves and two fishes fed the crowd. For Easter, Matthew’s account is a good one to read with the young, because the women run from the empty tomb “with fear and great joy” (Matthew 28:8). For Christmas, there is more in how to tell the Christmas story to kids, age by age.

More than we might think. Five of his teachings are short enough for a six-year-old to say by heart:

1. Love God and love people. “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart”, and “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” (Mark 12:30–31).
2. Treat others as you want to be treated. “And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise” (Luke 6:31).
3. Forgive, and keep forgiving. When Peter asked if seven times was enough, Jesus said, “Until seventy times seven” (Matthew 18:22).
4. Do not worry; God takes care of you. “Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?” (Matthew 6:26).
5. Talk to God as your Father. When his disciples asked, “Lord, teach us to pray” (Luke 11:1), he answered, “When ye pray, say, Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name” (Luke 11:2). The longer form most churches say comes from the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6:9–13).

The Lord’s Prayer is the best place to start praying together, because it is his own prayer and Christians of every church say it. Pray it at one meal a day, and a child of five will soon know it. Point to the birds in the garden when you talk about worry. Practise forgiving at home, where brothers and sisters give us plenty of chances.

Read a whole Gospel together. Mark is the shortest, sixteen chapters, and a chapter a night takes a little over two weeks. Older children are ready to meet Jesus the way his first followers did, one day at a time, in his own words, and to see why John wrote his Gospel at all: “these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name” (John 20:31).

Welcome their questions, even the hard ones. Jesus at twelve sat among the teachers “asking them questions”, and the questions were part of his growing. If you do not know the answer, say so, and find it together with your Bible, your pastor or priest, or your church’s catechism. A child who sees a parent search honestly learns that faith can bear the weight of a real question.

Many of the best talks will happen on the way somewhere, in the car, on a walk, at the end of a long day. Two disciples walking to Emmaus met the risen Jesus without knowing him, and afterwards they said, “Did not our heart burn within us, while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the scriptures?” (Luke 24:32). A teenager may not want a lesson. They may still want to talk while you drive.

Churches ask parents to go first, and they offer to walk beside them. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says, “Education in the faith by the parents should begin in the child’s earliest years,” and, “Family catechesis precedes, accompanies, and enriches other forms of instruction in the faith.” It calls the parish “a privileged place for the catechesis of children and parents” (paragraph 2226). Catholic parishes prepare children for first confession and first Holy Communion, usually at about seven.

Many Orthodox families pray together at an icon corner, a place in the home, ideally facing east, with the family’s icons, a lamp or candle, a Bible and a prayer book. Fr. Philip Tolbert of the Bulgarian Eastern Orthodox Diocese of the USA, Canada and Australia writes that “parents are the first and most powerful teachers of their children, whether or not they are consciously attempting to teach anything.”

Lutheran and Anglican churches prepare young people for confirmation, often with a catechism. The Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod still teaches from Luther’s Small Catechism, and the 1928 American Book of Common Prayer calls its catechism “an Instruction, to be Learned by Every Person before he be brought to be Confirmed by the Bishop.” Baptist, Pentecostal and non-denominational churches do not usually hold confirmation, and many of them, like many other churches, gather children in Sunday school or children’s church. Whatever your church offers, use it, and bring home what your child learned there. Ask on the drive home what the story was. Read it again at bedtime.

The people in Mark’s Gospel did the simplest thing of all. They brought young children to Jesus, and when the disciples tried to send them away, Jesus was displeased. “And he took them up in his arms, put his hands upon them, and blessed them” (Mark 10:16).

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