Involving Kids in 'Normal' Church Services part 2

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During the All-in service today, there was another small win.  There's a little fellow, about five years old,  who has taken a shine to me, and each Sunday he sits with me at the front of the church, while mum minds baby sister.  He has a bit of a reputation for being wild, and he loves to talk, not very quietly.  Usually he's off to Sunday school before the Bible readings, but today he was sitting there with me, chatting about a toy umbrella he had with him.

An idea came to me, that I must have read somewhere - I know it's not one of mine!  He can't read very well yet, but he's confident with counting.  So I scanned the psalm we were about to read together, and noticed that it mentioned 'children' a few times;   I asked him to listen and tell me how many times we said children.  That worked well, so I looked for words that occurred a few times in the next passage - 'brothers and sisters', and 'love'.

My young friend also came up the front with me when I stood up to preach, and stayed there for almost the whole sermon (his mum took him away for a few minutes, but he returned with a bounce).  And I was delighted, on two counts: he made little comments on the way through the sermon, and every one showed that he was listening;  and afterwards people told me that the others kids took extra notice too, because he was there.