Children in the Worship Service

Not that I don’t agree with having children under the main preaching service as soon as possible, but I fail to see how he comes to that conclusion from those three references. Certainly cannot say God prescribed it.

I agree that God neither commands nor prescribes this in what these three verses say. But what I do think is that these verses challenge our thinking to consider what is possible and perhaps what is preferable. Would you agree with that?

BTW, if you’re ever in the NYC area on a Sunday or Wednesday, stop by for a service!

Yes. Definitely a good conversation to have.

Big problem with the manner in which the writer used those passages. That is not exegesis. I would be very cautious of what he preaches. If he is willing to use those verses to make that claim, I wonder what else he does. At least he said “it appears that children participated” and did not go any further than that.

He is getting some publicity by it; perhaps that was his only goal.

I think it is certainly a stretch to see these verses referring to the need to have family integrated worship. I don’t believe that 1John 2 is even a reference to physical children, but rather an endearing expression used by John. I think children need to experience worship at least part of the time with adults, but these verses say no such thing.

I don’t know that those verses make a command, but I do think it’s safe to assume that ancient church services had a lot of kids in them for a bunch of reasons. Christ said “let the little children come to Me” in a mostly adult situation, buying milk to feed a baby would have been prohibitively expensive for most poor slaves in the early church, organizing a nursery in a house church would have been a great way to get raided by Roman authorities, and more.

Today, one big consideration is that we all too often tell kids that they’re welcome in Sunday School, nursery, children’s church, youth group, summer camp….really just about anything except for regular church, and then we get surprised when they grow up and say “we got the hint” by not showing up. Practical, not Biblical, I concede. But worth contemplating.

This is all useful conversation, and I am a proponent of maximizing participation in the main worship service.

My argument is with scriptural application. If we use Hennebury’s rules of affinity, any scriptural application to this topic is, at best, a C4. That means each congregation is at liberty to decide how they want to do it.

I found this article by John Piper very beneficial:

http://www.desiringgod.org/articles/the-family-together-in-gods-presence

From my perspective, one of the challenges is the inability of parents to teach their children to sit still for any period of time. My wife and I addressed this in two ways. One was our family worship which was age appropriate and modeled church worship. We’d sing, pray, read scripture, and have a Bible lesson. The second was what we called DEAR time. (Drop Everything And Read) This had a number of forms. When the children were younger, we’d stop what we were doing and read to them for lengthening periods of time. They would even ask for DEAR time sometimes. As they got older, we’d let them read to us. One goal of both of these was to teach them to sit still and listen and then ask and answer questions about what they had heard.

Side note: We tried to avoid providing “stuff for them to do”. (i.e. coloring books etc.) Today that would probably be letting them play a game on your phone. Anyway, a few weeks ago our pastor experimented with a children’s mini-sermon. As he spoke to the kids I looked around to see a good number of adults checking their phones while the little ones listened.

Let’s hold the horses on the idea that family-integrated worship has been the historical norm:

http://www.reformation21.org/blog/2016/02/is-familyintegrated-worship-t…

https://blogs.thegospelcoalition.org/kevindeyoung/2014/09/25/history-he…

Hello Jason. I haven’t interacted with you previously, but I can assure you that publicity was not my only goal. In fact, it wasn’t my goal at all.

I use the www.shepherdthoughts.com website primarily for the purpose of providing resources for the congregation of Faith Baptist Church. In recent generations, pastors often provided a booklet rack in the church lobby to share written materials for their people; this is my “booklet rack” :) I use it secondly to help improve SEO for our church website. And I also use it to provide helpful materials for anyone else who discovers the site and reads or listens to the resources provided there. As an aside, I didn’t forward this post link to anyone at Sharper Iron for posting. Tyler posted it on his own.

If you read the three references I cited and reflect on their actual historical setting, it seems most reasonable to conclude that children were in the audience during corporate worship. This observation is not prescriptive, but it is a very reasonable observation. In the corresponding podcast, I think I mention that churches will handle this matter in various ways. For instance, Tyler described his “middle” approach. Here’s what we do, which I would also consider a “middle” approach:

1. All children (minus infants) participate in the initial worship service. Children 5 yrs. and down dismiss to separate S.S. classes. This class rotates through systematic, foundational teaching of the biblical narrative.
2. During the worship service, I do things to include our young people. I provide children’s note sheets, and often correlate the sermon slides with the kids’ note sheets as well as the adults’ note sheets. To distribute the children’s note sheets, I use junior ushers (junior high/elementary boys assigned to this role).
3. Sometimes I include a “children’s moment” early in the service. I invite all children to the front to sit around me (or around another man in the congregation). I use an object lesson, brown bag lesson, etc. to teach a Bible truth. The adults like this as much as the kids!
4. As Ephesians and Colossians illustrate, I also work hard to speak to all cross-sections of the congregation in the message. I speak to adults, teens and children in various ways (directly, through illustrations, and in applications). I speak to fathers/mothers, wealthy/poor, employers/employees, various occupations, various stages of life, etc.
5. I remind children that they can pray in times of open corporate prayer. They also can participate in the Lord’s Table if they have professed faith in Christ, parents’ consent, and their conscience is clean before God.
6. Our second “service” during the school year features a 90-min. FrontLine children’s program devoted Bible instruction for all children 6th grade and younger.
7. Our second “service” during the late-Spring and then summer months features a 90-min. children’s program that provides systematic instruction at a higher level on the biblical narrative.

In addition to these core features, we provide other miscellaneous opportunities for children to receive necessary biblical instruction, etc.

As you can see, I am not advocating for an all or nothing approach that places all children of any age in every corporate gathering of our church. But we do work hard to include as many children as possible in the Lord’s Day AM worship service (the main church gathering) each week. And in doing so, I work hard to speak to them and involve them in that service.

Yes, every church will handle this differently for various legitimate reasons. But I do think that the verses I’ve mentioned are relevant, though not dogmatically prescriptive.

For the purpose of focusing this conversation, let me mention that I do not advocate for family integrated worship, if you mean that every child (infant and beyond) should participate in every church gathering, and that no age segregated ministry should occur. The only purpose for my post was to explain why in our church we include our children (1st grade and older) in the AM Lord’s Day worship service. You can read my response to Jason to see how we minister to our children in various other ways that a family-integrated church would not do.

Tyler, thanks for sharing how you adminstrated the ministry of your church to your children. Great ideas!