Baby Pew Sitters

It is the practice of many churches to remove the children for most or all of the Sunday worship service for a “children’s church.” Pastor Christopher D. Hall calls this a disservice.

I’ve seen only a few pre-kindergarteners singing the liturgy, at least   not without skipping, swaying, or twirling. I’ve only heard a few lower   elementary kids comment on a particular sermon. But they have ears. They have   received the Holy Spirit, for God is at work in them, even if they do not understand   intellectually. “Let the children come to me and do not hinder them,” Jesus   said. Jesus is there in those means of grace.

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Comments

[Kyle French]

I really appreciated this post, though it re-agitated an old consternation I have with my own church: we have children's church for the entire service, originally on the grounds, but now as a kind of substitute/Sunday school. Meanwhile, we are very careful to reject the standard model for youth groups because it pulls kids away from their parents.

On the other hand, I kept wanting to point out to the author that not all of us baptize our infants, and so we don't necessarily say that they have "received the Holy Spirit."

[Lucy]

I really enjoyed this article. My church has no nursery and no Sunday School (except during Lent and Nativity and then it's before church). As a parent of small children, it is often frustrating when one's baby is screaming or even just playing loudly. I haven't been able to fully pay attention to a sermon in almost seven years. But I know that my simply being there is just as important as their simply being there. My spirit hears and worships even if my mind is otherwise engaged, just like my children. Fortunately, my priest takes the same approach as the author and he is completely unfazed by the noise of kids during his sermon and involves the children whenever he can (during a baptism or seasonal celebrations, for example).

I am now Eastern Orthodox, but I grew up a non-denominational evangelical. It would have been generally acknowledged that kids should be in the worship service (although some would have gone straight to the nursery), but not in attendence for the sermon, which could last 45 minutes to an hour and is when they have Sunday School. If that kind of church was to take this approach, the pastors would have to quickly learn the art of brevity! I don't have much experience with churches outside of my evangelical-then-Orthodox journey, but it seems to me that if communion is either not a regular part of the service or is at a different place than the end (thus changing the "build-up" pattern of a service), having children stay for the whole service would be more difficult and would make less sense. I could be totally wrong about that, but I couldn't imagine trying to contain and silence my children for 45 minutes if there wasn't a reason for them to be there afterwards. I would be interested to know how liturgical Protestant churches handle this.

[Norman Huebert]

Re: Baby Pew Sitters. Youth for Christ in the 1940's was a truly authentic movement, however in time it became mere entertainment. The progression to "full-time" children church commenced shortly thereafter as adult church services became more sophisticated during the emerging economic surge following WWII. Recent seminary graduates became youth pastotrs who brought the latest youth programs to further fruition. However, too many youth are kept in a never-never land of perpetual entertainment. Many churches promote this sub-culture from toddlers through high school with a common result that young adults too often leave the church soon after. Inorder to keep their young people, church elders opt to bring the sub-culture into the mainstream of the church. Consequently many compromises have replaced meaningful Christian worship with a cacophony of sound that is concurrent with raucous mainstream media. As one employed by one of America's largest year-round church camps serving over 1,000 church youth each week, one cannot help but observe the toll taken on church youths' spirituality over the past several decades.

[Garrett]

Pastor Hall’s argument, as I understand it, is that children’s church deprives children from participating in the sacramental presence of the Body of Christ, in addition to giving adults a false impression about the nature of the church service.

I absolutely agree that participating in the Body of Christ is an important part of a worship service. But I don’t understand what it is about the sanctuary or the chapel that privileges it as the place where the Body is present. Do latecomers in overflow rooms suffer for their tardiness by temporarily failing to be a part of the Body? Do ushers and greeters fail to be a part of the Body until they take their seat in the pew? Perhaps I’m revealing my own theological ignorance here, but I fail to see how it is that the Body of Christ is delimited by the doors of the sanctuary.

Rather, I would suggest that the Body of Christ is present wherever believers gather in His name. If children of believers are believers themselves (as Pastor Hall seems to affirm), then the Body is constituted no less fully in the Sunday School room than it is in the sanctuary. On the other hand, if these children are not believers, then it seems that it would be better to prepare their intellect and emotions for eventual saving belief via some sort of Sunday School.

Allow me to say more about this last point. Everybody seems to agree, and I think it’s undeniable, that having children in the pews is incredibly distracting. Moreover, no matter how still they sit, and how closely they listen, they’re just not going to get much out of the sermon. Some will no doubt argue that they are nonetheless getting spiritual benefit, but if that’s the case then why not preach the Word at a developmentally appropriate level in Sunday School? This would give them spiritual and intellectual benefit.

Thus, I see no reason why my two-year-old daughter can’t be (or prepare to be) a part of the Body while gluing bits of straw onto her Moses basket picture. And on the way home, we can talk about what she learned (e.g., the name of Moses’ sister), whereas had she been in church with us, she would, I think it is safe to say, have learned next to nothing.

One thing that does come out of Pastor Hall’s article, I think, is that if children are indeed believers (and this will depend on which view of baptism is the right view), then churches should somehow institute the sacraments in Sunday School. If they’re not believers, then, as I mentioned above, the best thing is to prepare their hearts and minds to receive the gospel via instruction that is given at their level.

[DwightP]

In Christ, there is neither male nor female, slave nor free, child nor adult -- OK, I made that latest up. However, it serves to get at my point: Stratifying the church by age groups is as wrong as stratifying by gender or any other marker. There is no easy end to the slippery slope that nurseries during liturgy starts us on. Because older people like certain kinds of hymns, should we have separate elder-services and how about singles services? It's nonsense.

If people don't like the noise of children, then they should get over it. Even though children don't seem to get anything, they are. Whether baptized or not, the Spirit will be working on them.

Two illustrations (from a relatively high-church Lutheran congregation): When my daughter was three and we were in the car, with her in the back seat and me driving, she asked me "Papa, when is Lent over so that we can get the 'Alleluia' back?" And again: A friend went into a dark kitchen to get a snack from the refrigerator; his son was mounted on his shoulders. When my friend opened the fridge door, his son (about 3, too) sang, "The light of Christ" -- the entrance dialogue from the Easter vigil (which we begin in total darkness).

Dwight

[Fr Ian Wetmore]

When I was an assistant curate, I learned a lot from my rector sitting in on his marriage prep sessions. When he explained the purposes of marriage from the Book of Common Prayer, one of which was "the procreation of children to be brought up in the fear and nurture of the Lord" (Canadian BCP p. 564), he would always wag his long index finger in the terrified groom's face and say, "and, young man, that means that your kids had better see you on your knees in church every Sunday of life!"
I am adamant that in my parish we will not have Sunday school, children's church or any other thing going on when all God's children should be gathered round his Altar as one body, the grown-ups praying, singing, etc on behalf of the children who are too young to follow along, as well as of the blind, the senile and the absent. Kids shouldn't be doing other things at just the time when the rest of the Body of Christ is most intimately connected to its Head! How else are they going to learn how to connect themselves?

[David]

This is a great topic and something I've been leurggsting with. Our oldest daughter (9) is required to sit in church with us. We do allow her to take notes, but she isn't allowed to draw or write about things that don't pertain to the sermon. However our son (4) but with some servere mental disabilities and baby 13 mo. do go to childrens church/nursey. (this is where I'm having troubles.) Up until about 3 months ago, the baby stayed with us, but was starting to cause alot of distraction and other ladies encouraged me to put her in the nursery. ( I do like it that I now get to enjoy the service, but I really feel guilty about not keeping her with us. (and reading this post almost gives me the courage to take her back out and keep her with me. Now, for our son . He isn't capeable of sitting still and doesn't comprehend the word quiet. (he's 4 but is about a 18 mo. age level) He will ask the same thing all day .even though the answer is always the same and it may be like that for a few days or weeks. But it is constant (sometimes even every 3-5 min. all day.) He does like to be with the other kids his age even though he doesn't talk, sing, answer questions or color ect.I was raised in a conservitive church. Us kids had a sort s.s. lesson and then sat with everyone else in church or the sermon. We go to an Independent Baptist Church and while most of the other families do homeschool, when it comes to alot of other things, we are the only ones who choose to be more stict on some subjects. There doesn't seem to be any family intergrated churches close to us. I'd love to hear your feedback. Thanks again![] Reply:April 29th, 2011 at 12:32 pmRhoda,I think when it comes to questions about specific children, God gives the wisdom to the parents. Ask your husband, read God's Word, pray for guidance and use your knowledge of your child to make your decision in accordance to the Word of God. May God grant you wisdom as you parent your children for His glory![]

[Riaz]

One of our fine priests used this iqttaouon, a sort of parable, from Chesterton at the conclusion of his homily yesterday. It's quite telling and although food for thought, even more cause for comtemplation and perhaps redoubling of efforts to stand up, in Faith. This was aimed squarely at what the government is doing regarding Religious Liberty. Suppose that a great commotion arises in the street about something, let us say a lamp-post, which many influential persons desire to pull down. A grey-clad monk, who is the spirit of the Middle Ages, is approached upon the matter, and begins to say, in the arid manner of the Schoolmen, “Let us first of all consider, my brethren, the value of Light. If Light be in itself good—” At this point he is somewhat excusably knocked down. All the people make a rush for the lamp-post, the lamp-post is down in ten minutes, and they go about congratulating each other on their unmediaeval practicality. But as things go on they do not work out so easily. Some people have pulled the lamp-post down because they wanted the electric light; some because they wanted old iron; some because they wanted darkness, because their deeds were evil. Some thought it not enough of a lamp-post, some too much; some acted because they wanted to smash municipal machinery; some because they wanted to smash something. And there is war in the night, no man knowing whom he strikes. So, gradually and inevitably, to-day, to-morrow, or the next day, there comes back the conviction that the monk was right after all, and that all depends on what is the philosophy of Light. Only what we might have discussed under the gas-lamp, we now must discuss in the dark. -GK Chesterton, Heretics (1905) [Nice quote.]

[Luzimeire]

Father continued the seires of homilies on the Beatitudes that have been going on through Lent. He focused on Blessed are the peacemakers . Father spoke about three levels of peace- with God, with ourselves and with our fellow man. He explained that true peace cannot come without God, and dispelled the myth that to be a peacemaker is to be a pacifist. He pointed out the differences between what the world considers to be peace (lack of external conflict) and the peace that passes all understanding that comes from God. It reminded me so much of what is going on in America right now. People of conscience, especially Catholics, are being asked to shut up and submit to a false peace in the name of healthcare. Anyone with a big enough Catholic family has probably felt pressure to not rock the boat in various circumstances (irregular marriages, cohabitation, children not being baptized) to avoid a family argument and keep the peace . Sometimes our notion of being a peacemaker is a cover for cowardice, I suppose. Father's homily gave me much to think about and made me pray for fortitude during the Offertory, not only to stand up to the lions of injustice in society, but to have the courage to do the right thing when it comes to sticky family situations. I was reminded that I need to be faithful in small things if I am to be faithful in big things. Fortitude is not something I regularly pray for as I am usually so focused on patience, but this homily drove me to pray for fortitude in a way that I have not before.