A family sits down to dinner one evening. Mom, Dad, and six children ranging from twelve years old down to two years old. The older three children (ages twelve, ten, and seven) are permitted to sit with their mom and dad at the table, but the younger three (a six-year-old, four-year-old, and eighteen-month-old) sit at a different table, in a different room, and eat a different meal. Don’t worry. There is an adult there—someone who helps them to eat their food and engages them in conversation. This has been the custom of the family for some time, and every family in their area has a similar practice. Some even keep the children away from the main dinner table until they reach high school age.
The reason is that the adults want to have good discussion, and eat their meal in peace. Naturally it follows that the children, who can be quite a distraction at mealtime, eat at the other table. If they ever have guests over, they similarly have all the older children and adults sit together, while the younger children always eat together.
When they grow up, the children never learn to eat adult food or hold conversations with the adults. Consequently, they never develop an appetite for things like chicken and steak, preferring instead applesauce and mashed bananas. They do not like to have conversations with their parents because that conversation feels so far beyond them. They never grew accustomed to it. Thus, they do not sit down to dinner with the adults. In turn, the adults have grown accustomed to quiet dinners, and have no tolerance for young children at the dinner table. They would rather not deal with that inconvenience.
The transition from the children’s table to the adult table has become such a monumental step that most forego it entirely. Instead, children continue to eat meals with those in their same age range, for that is what they have grown accustomed to over the years. When these children eventually leave the house they continue to decline offers to come and eat with their parents for mealtimes—having learned from experience that they were not welcome at the adult’s table. It is not that they have stopped eating dinner with the family, it is that they never ate dinner with the family.
This is a parable about children and the corporate worship gathering.
Children Belong in Worship
It might seem like an oversimplification of the discussion on keeping children in the worship service, or sending them to a ‘children’s church’ during the same time, but it is not. The worship service is for the church, which is comprised of believers and their children (WCF 25.2). Paul addresses children in his letters (Eph 6:1–3; Col 3:20–21) which would have been read in the gathered assembly of the congregation, as was the custom of that day. This means Paul assumes the children will be present with the rest of the church, and he does so for good reason. Jesus explicitly says they should be present.
When the disciples tried to keep children away from Jesus, because he was doing very important ministry stuff, Jesus responds in a striking manner, “When Jesus saw it, he was indignant and said to them, ‘Let the children come to me; do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God’”(Mark 10:14). Would that we would have heard the words of Jesus and applied them! The posture of the disciples toward children is, at least in practice, the posture of many churches toward children. Sunday morning is the time to be reverent, to feed on God’s word, and we don’t want kids to distract us from that end.
Is it any wonder that young people leave the church en masse around the time of late high school and early college?1
The Role of Parents
But it is not all bad news, because we know not only the problem, but we have a good grasp of the solution. There is a growing body of evidence that affirms what the Bible has always taught, that parents are to pass the faith to their children. According to University of Notre Dame Sociologist Christian Smith, “No other conceivable causal influence…comes remotely close to matching the influence of parents on the religious faith and practices of youth.”2
Dr. Smith again identifies two cultural scripts that discourage parental engagement:
After age 12, the role of parents recedes, and the influence of peers, the media, music, and social media take over.
Cultural messages that encourage parents to turn their children over to “experts.” In the case of faith formation, many parents consider that to be the responsibility of clergy, Sunday schools and youth groups.3
You can’t offload this to a youth minister, or a Sunday school, or a teacher, or an involved peer. All of these are better than nothing, but the data is clear, 82% of children raised by parents who talked about faith in the home remain religiously active into their 20s.
The idea that parents bear a responsibility to raise their kids in church and bridge the gap is in no way unique to me. While it was a common practice in ages past, in our own day there are many who have made such arguments: Anthony Bradley, John Piper, Tom Ascol, Jason Helopoulos, and Doug Wilson. The overwhelming conclusion of them all is that children belong in the worship service with their parents.
Parents bear the primary responsibility for passing on faith, and the Sunday gathering is the place where that faith is most visibly embodied. The children need to be there.
Little Worshippers
Everything I have argued for so far entails a different way of understanding the worship service. I now speak to those from a broadly non-denominational low-church background. The main outcome of Sunday worship is not a large-group Bible study—and that changes much for how we think about children.
If we assume the purpose of worship is the sermon, and the purpose of the sermon is learning facts about the Bible, then naturally we will assume there is nothing here for children to glean until they come of age. The purpose of the service is worship, and children are fully equipped little worshippers (Ps 8:2).
Sunday worship forms us through the transfer of information and also through the process of engagement. It forms us to not just know things but to confess what we believe out loud. We don’t just affirm that we are sinners; we confess our sins. We don’t just learn about God; we praise him. Children are formed by this process just like everyone else. It is this formative aspect of the service that is most important for little worshippers (as well as new converts).
Children can learn to mimic a whole lot.4 Any new parent will tell you that children take their cues from their parents. Young boys pretend to shave because they see their dad shaving in the morning. Young girls pretend to care for dolls because they watch their mothers do it.
This is precisely why they need to be present in the worship gathering. Imitation is the cornerstone of learning. I learned to raise my hands during musical worship because I saw others do it. I learned to pray because I grew up hearing my mom and dad pray.
At Ruah’s worship service, when I turn in my seat to confess my sins, both of my boys do the same thing, not because they can robustly answer questions about what is happening, but because they are learning the basics.5 Mimicry is one of the most fundamental tools of learning, and the church decided somewhere along the way it isn’t true learning.
Bearing One Another’s Burdens
You might agree with everything I have said so far, but there remains a proverbial elephant in the room. Children make noises. They cry at inappropriate times. They certainly do not add to a tranquil environment. Is the cost of including children really worth it? Yes.
A church that is not filled with the cries of little children is a dying church. Training the next generation of worshippers is one of the most important things any church community can do. They are ripe disciples. They are gifts from God. We ought not treat them as though they were only inconveniences.
So when a child is in the sanctuary and making noise, don’t look. If you see a mother struggling to keep a child calm, ask yourself if you can help. If you don’t have any children of your own, then consider sitting by others who do have children and could use an extra hand. Consider the worship service as an opportunity to bear one another’s burdens.
None of this means that we simply let children do whatever. Children are not permitted to act in any way they please under the guise of ‘family integrated worship’. They must still be disciplined and formed into the liturgical life of the church. As a rule of thumb, the younger they are the more often they will need to be removed from the service. There are no rewards for keeping your kid in the service until the last possible second. If a child is misbehaving they must be dealt with. It is kind to others to ensure that they can hear the sermon and also participate in the liturgy.
Thus, keeping kids in the service is a give-and-take scenario. Parents are encouraged to keep them present for the sake of the children to learn to worship God, and they are also encouraged to remove children temporarily if the need arises.
On Children’s Ministry and Sunday School
Nothing that I am saying here means I am against pedagogically-informed teaching for children. If the children are in the service, that informs things like the length of the sermon, the kinds of illustrations that are used, the duty of the pastor to speak to the children from the pulpit, and the kinds of songs we sing. Similarly, it is a good practice to do what John Calvin did in Geneva: setting aside dedicated time for the children to be catechized and taught in an understandable way. What I am arguing against is that time of pedagogically-informed instruction being used as a pretense to remove children from the worship service.
At our church we will, in due time, have some kind of children’s catechesis that is age-appropriate and tailored to their needs. This could happen on Sunday, it could happen mid-week, it could happen in myriad ways. What will never happen is that time becoming an alternative to Sunday worship.
Practical Advice for Parents
This is rapid-fire and intended only to stimulate your own thinking on how to go about including your children in the service.
Use family worship as preparation for corporate worship. Read the passage together ahead of time and discuss key ideas. Teach them to sit still in small daily chunks of time rather than expecting Sunday worship to do all of the heavy lifting. Follow up with them after the worship service about what they learned.
Have a church bag that is ready on Saturday night. Fill it with quiet toys, crayons, paper for drawing, snacks, and toiletries. This should ensure that children can be helped in their acclimation into the worship gathering.
Encourage their engagement. When you stand, have them stand. When you kneel, have them kneel. When you open a Bible, give them something to hold open. When you sing, encourage their little voices to sing. It is not a goal to merely keep them silent, but to teach them to engage with all that is happening around them. Bring them down the aisle for communion so they can see what you are doing. Have them stand on a chair so they can see what is happening from the pulpit.
Engage in the service yourself. I am looking at you men. Sing loud. Sing to the Lord so your children may hear. If you don’t have children, sing to the Lord so that the other children in the congregation may hear. Confess the faith aloud. Don’t check your phone. It is not only a distraction for you but you are teaching them. Open your Bible and look at it so your children understand what is happening. Listen attentively so they might learn to listen attentively.
Remove them. If they become loud then take them out momentarily. If they are being a distraction then teach them discipline. Sit near the back and at the ends of the aisle.
Practical Advice for Churches
This may come back to haunt me in the future, for many of these areas are things we need to grow in as a church, but nevertheless here goes.
Cry Room. Have a space, ideally noise isolated, that mothers can take their young children to for nursing and discipline. If a child has skipped a nap it is an incredible grace to have some place for a mom to take their fussy toddler. Stock this room with quiet toys, as many crayons as there are colors, and enough paper to stack to the moon. Pipe in sound from the sanctuary to the cry room. Bonus points if it has a view of the pulpit.
Sound Engineering. Consider the acoustics of your sanctuary and seek, so far as you are able, to make the sermon and prayers clear to all in the congregation. Account for the noise of children. If the space echoes then seek to dampen the noise. If the speakers are poorly positioned consider investing in a better set-up. If you want kids to be present then make it as accessible as possible for parents and others to engage in the service with kids there.
Sermon Length and Pace. Keep sermons shorter than you otherwise would. When you hear the kids begin to stir like a waking dragon, consider landing the plane. If a child makes a noise that would have distracted from what you just said, then repeat yourself. Pause for mothers to quiet their little ones. Don’t just talk louder in an effort to drown out the noise. Apply sermons to the children who are there to hear you minister the word of God to them.
Sanctuary Layout. Make sure the chairs or pews are arranged in such a way that allows many endpoints. Leave space in the back of the sanctuary for parents who need to stand and rock newborns. Ensure the whole place is baby-proof.
Liturgy. Make the bulletins and other aspects of the liturgy accessible to children. A great place to start is the many resources developed by the PCA.
Conclusion
A family sits down to dinner in the evening. Mom, Dad, and six children ranging from twelve years old down to two years old. Everyone sits together at the dinner table. Some sit in high chairs, some use smaller forks, dad helps to cut up the food for the younger kids while mom feeds the littlest one broken bits of cornbread. The conversation is halting but full. The dinner table is anything but quiet, and yet there is much that is accomplished in that chaotic time. The family eats together, speaks together, engages together. The older children ask their four-year-old brother what his favorite color is, what he did that day, and help him to remember to eat the carrots he has nudged to the side of his plate. Midway through the meal dad has to pull his six-year-old daughter aside for the way she spoke to her mom. They reconcile quickly and dinner continues beyond the interruption.
Over time the children grow up and continue to come over for dinner. It has always been their dinner table. They have always been welcomed there.
The sounds of little children at the table show that there is life there. The family is growing. In due time the older children have little ones of their own. Everyone always eats together, and although there is not a quiet moment, it is all filled with joy.
Discussion Questions
Have you ever attended a church with family-integrated worship?
What are some pitfalls of having kids present at the service?
How can you prepare to engage in worship with the knowledge there will be some level of distraction?
*For a satirical follow-up to this more serious engagement, consider watching: Mr. Thompson and the Vicar Invent Children’s Church.
Read the full article, Parents No. 1 influence helping teens remain religiously active as young adults, by David Briggs.
Babies have a very complex mirror neuron network that enables them to learn all kinds of things from the earliest ages.
For a number of ways the practice of including the children in service benefits kids, read: Corporate Worship: 10 Benefits for Our Children.
