Desiring God Article.
Read the above article first or possibly skim it if you can.
I read this article that John Piper re-posted on his blog recently. This is something I've thought a lot about before but don't really know where to come down on it. I think if I was forced to choose between children's church or no children's church, I'd choose to have no children's church. What we see happen in churches where kids and teenagers' worship experiences are separated from the rest of their family's and the rest of the church's is that isolation occurs and young people want worship services that are tailored specifically for their preferences and to theirs alone. It's not so much that these are selfish kids or anything like that, but rather that we as adults are teaching them to be that way. I certainly understand and sympathize with parts of the argument in favor of children's church, but I think if you read this article you will see that children are actually better served to worship alongside mom and dad than alongside Jimmy, Susie, and their other friends back in "extended session." The sermon might not be specifically targeted at five or six year olds, and they will inevitably be distracted. But they will be learning that the mature worship of God is an important and joyous thing that they should long to be a part of. As parents and adults we need to be people who are willing to struggle through the hard moments of discipline and potential distraction--with the long-term goal of helping children grow to love worshiping God.
What do you all think? Children's church--pros? cons?
1 comment:
In an ideal world, it would be wonderful for children to sit in awe and learn how to worship from their parents during an intense worship service. Unfortunately, what generally happens is that parents (and the other adults around them) get severely distracted from their worship by the children.
The children don't observe an awesome form of worship; they observe harried and irritated parents who don't seem to be enjoying themselves at all. Is that really what we want our children to see and model?
I'm not sure about the make-up of John Piper's church. However, at our church, the average family has at least three children under the age of 5. That automatically means mom and dad are outnumbered. When one child starts to do a child-like thing (playing on the floor, jumping up and down, talking loudly, etc...), the other children follow their example. Then Mom and Dad end up embarrassed and discouraged. That's not something I want happening in my worship service.
Today is a different age from when we were children. We knew how to sit and behave, because that's what was expected out of us everywhere: home, school, church, public. These days, children are very rarely held to those sorts of standards anywhere. It's unfair to expect a child to come to a service once a week and follow standards that are completely foreign to him or her.
That's why we do a mixture at Elston. We do want children to see their parents modeling worship. They see that at least once a month (right now it's twice a month) during Family Sunday. On the other Sundays, they go to Children's Church where they are taught how to worship through several means: observing passionate adults who love Jesus with all their hearts and are committed to authentic worship, teaching different forms of worship (music, prayer, bible reading, lifestyle) through age-appropriate lessons, and being held to an appropriate standard of behavior. The service isn't to let them run wild. It's to teach them how to behave in a worship service and how to worship Jesus truthfully.
The adults who are in charge of Children's Church hold the children accountable to behave and pay attention. We have already seen a huge difference in how well the attend to worship when they are together with their families on the off Sundays.
I'm a huge proponent of doing whatever brings people closer to Christ. At Elston, we are actively seeking to reach adults who are unsaved. They don't know how to behave in worship...how could we expect them to teach their children how to do what they themselves know not? Perhaps if we had a congregation of born and bred Christians who have been in church all their lives, then it would work different for us. However, we are truly a bunch of ragamuffins, and doing what we can to reduce distractions while bringing people (young and old) to the foot of the cross is what we're all about.
Those are my personal opinions at this point in time. :)
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