Where have all the Children gone?
Rethinking Church
This is part of a series entitled "Rethinking Church". You can see the first post here.
Where have all the children gone?
Apparently they have gone to church, their own church. When did kids get their own church? Have you ever wondered about that? How come when we read about Jesus teaching in the Gospels there always seems to be kids around, but when we stand up and speak in His name we tell all the kids to leave the room?
If we walked into any church from the book of Acts all the way up until about 100 years ago we would see singing, giving, preaching/teaching …… and children. Why does the modern church separate families? I don’t know but if I had to guess I would say that we have bought into the modern daycare culture and the notion that the last place kids ought to be is with their parents. We always want to hand our kids over to the specialists, even when it comes to hearing the Gospel. That is why we think we need “children’s church” so that they can see and hear the word in their own way. Or we believe that children will be too much of a distraction and will not sit still for a sermon or a service and besides they don’t understand so why not get them out of the room?
I believe it is time to reject this worldly thinking that sees children as a burden rather than a blessing and sees parents as people who need to be relieved rather than encouraged.
If we had nothing to go by but the Bible it would never occur to us to take the children out of the worship service. Consider that Paul addresses the children directly in his epistles, which were probably read out loud to each church as they gathered and consider the following scriptures;
Deuteronomy 31:11-13
...11when all Israel comes to appear before the LORD your God at the place that he will choose, you shall read this law before all Israel in their hearing. 12 Assemble the people, men, women, and little ones, and the sojourner within your towns, that they may hear and learn to fear the LORD your God, and be careful to do all the words of this law, 13and that their children, who have not known it, may hear and learn to fear the LORD your God...
Joshua 8:35
There was not a word of all that Moses commanded that Joshua did not read before all the assembly of Israel, and the women, and the little ones, and the sojourners who lived among them.
Matt 18:2
And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them
Matthew 19:14
but Jesus said, "Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven."
Paul addresses children directly in Eph:1 and Col:3.
Think about it. Which is better? To have kids ushered off to some room where we make a couple of other adults miss the service so they can keep the kids “out of our hair” and have the toddlers chewing on toys and furniture back in the nursery or have them remain with their families and watch as their parents sit and listen to Gods word being preached? Is it better to bow to the daycare culture around us or to be different and have a family oriented church that allows parents and children to gather around the Word of God every Sunday?
Please don’t misunderstand me. I do not think that what most churches do now is just wrong and sinful. As I have said before it amazes me how much leeway God has given us in how we do church. I just want us to stop and think. Why do we send the children away? Why should a woman put her baby in the nursery when we have a chapel full of women who would love to hold the child?
Let me also say that I appreciate the sacrifice that many teachers have made over the years to be in the back with the kids but I believe that it is a sacrifice that they should not have to make. Let all of Gods people gather together on a Sunday morning.
I am one of the preachers in my local church and I can remember times when I was preaching I would see a young mother pacing in the back of the chapel while she rocked her child in her arms. It did not bother me. It did not distract me. It blessed me and encouraged me to know that she wanted to stay in the room and hear the Word of God preached. I admit that we preachers need to do a better job of preaching and not be long and boring but to make the Word a feast even for the least of these. But in the meantime can we please just “let the little children come”?
I agree with this, except I don't think it's just the idea of children being a burden that keeps kids out of the preaching service.
In a lot of churches the gospel isn't preached. All you get is some "do this" "don't do that" and "encouragement". Adults have the self control to sit through 45 minutes of it, and the patience (and the pride) to keep coming back for more. Kids have neither. It causes (causes isn't the right word, I guess I mean encourages) kids to leave the church as soon as they can. They're not getting anything useful out of it, because no matter how good you live it doesn't really make your life any better.
Children's is a place where they can teach the same things but do it in a "fun" way with songs, colorful pictures, and crayons. If you keep church fun to the kids, they'll have a much more positive vision of it... when that happens the church doesn't lose members, and it may even gain them. The vision of church ministry is no longer about glorifying God, but about filling pews.
Don't get me wrong, there are teachers for young children that teach the gospel, and talk about things that really matter. Especially in our church. I'm just talking about where the idea came from in general. If the gospel were preached, if it were preached well and passionately... I don't think as many kids would leave the church ASAP, and I don't think we'd need to put kids in their own little church.
Some churches are doing what you're talking about, by the way... and it does work.
I agree somewhat with what David said about children not being able to sit through church. I don't think that having a diffrent class for the younger kids is a great idea. Kids have questions that they need to ask and they can't very well stand up in the middle of the sermon and ask Steve Gruen, Eric Hall, or Jim Green what adultery means. The main sermons tend to deal with things that are of use in our daily lives and these are issues that kids sometimes know nothing about.
So really the question is, Is it better for children to sit and listen to someone talking about having hindrences in adults lives or is it better for them to be sitting with a group of a dozen other kids there own age and extending their knowlege of the Bible in general and being able to ask questions about what they don't understand?
stephen, i guess that would be where the parents come in. God's Word isn't something that is inaccessable to children, even if a particular sermon is clearly oriented towards adults. it is the parents' responsibility to teach their children, even if that comes in the form of asking them questions about the sermon on the car ride home to help them understand what had been said.
There is only one church that I know of (and no it is not mine) that kids are actively involved in all aspects of the Church. Geiger Memorial Brethren Church at 26th and Lehigh down in Philly is the church I refer to. The kids, from grade school on up actively pray and participate in the service. This is a "King James only" church which personally I do not agree but you will always hear little kids saying amazing prayers and reading scripture during church and evening services. Some are kids of the lay leaders some are from off the street who go to chruch to actually learn. (Imagine that) It is a small church, that is dying like my own but it boldly proclaims the truth and they start with the young. It is also involved in Christian Endeavor which I find is dying out also.
In my own church I am amazed where all the people have gone from my age group. There are only 2 left. ( I am going on 36) Once they became old enough to make their own desicions on going to church they stopped coming. Is this because they did not feel welcomed, is it because their own parents made them come but did not live what the church taught so they figured why bother? Is it because reletivism seems to have taken hold and they found churches of "Do what you want too and believe what you whant to believe" where instead of "Holy, Holy, Holy" it's "Fun, Fun Fun"?
My church is a church that survived for more than 100 years and has seen many generations of families continue to come. I myself am a third generation person having my parents who now attend yours and my grandparents having attended it. But now it has little time left. Is it our own undoing for not training the next generation...I often wonder. We have gone from 300 worshippers on average to the low 50's in just my generation.
I admit I did not read everything here so I might have been off topic...the kids in the church I mentioned are not thought of as "after thoughts" but as imporant members of God's family and I have been blessed to have come to know many of them through my involvement there.
"Let the Children come indeed"!
I think the problem with having kids in sermons is that their bored out of their minds. We need to remeber what it was like to be an eight year old kid. I remember that when I was a kid and there was no adult to do the second service class I would be stuck listening to the sermon. I kept thinking to myself, "This is so boring. I don't even understand anything he's saying."
As a little kid I could think of no greater torture than sitting in a big room listening to some guy talk for 45 minutes and not be allowed to talk. When I went back for the second service I got to learn Bible stories and at the same time do things like act them out or play trivia games about it with my freinds and I learned alot.
The answer can't be to make the little kids do something they don't want to do because they won't learn anything. If your a little kid and you don't want to do something like go through a sermon you'll occupy yourself in whatever ways you can. The fact is the kids learn much more when they want to learn more and this is what we need to remember.
At the same time, Stephen, you gotta remember that just because it's normal doesn't make it right. Put yourself in the place of an 8 year old who just had a toy taken away from him because it's time to stop playing. He's going to be bored, and he's going to hate it. That doesn't mean you should give it back.
But you raise a point about small children not being able to get much out of sermons, especially if the preacher acts as though the small children aren't even there. I think the best solution is probably a mixture. I don't think that the preacher should always have to break his messages down so that a 6 year old can understand them... but I think that 6 year olds should have the experience of hearing the gospel from a preacher.
If I were setting it up, I'd probably have the kids in with the adults at least once or twice a month for the preaching service. I'd also want to have a short class after the preaching service, where the people who know how to teach kids best can go over the sermon with the kids... but I dunno.
...I wonder what they did in Acts...
Also: Here's a question... what is it that makes sermons difficult to understand for children?
there are things that we don't expect children to be able to understand, and children (and people in general) have a habit of rising to the lowest expectations. yeah, there was a lot of stuff as a kid that i didn't get at the time, but those things were festering in my brain, biding their time until they could pounce out into my matured consciousness years later. i think kids are capable of a lot more than we give them credit for. yes, of course, there will be things like allusions to literature or movies that will pass right over their heads. but, overall, when it concerns the Bible, i don't think there should be any problem. not that there isn't, but that there shouldn't be.
though, as far as the early church is concerned, i believe that the children would have been right there in the congregation. children are directly addressed in multiple books of the greek scriptures (ephesians, 1 john)... letters that would have been read by one person to the whole church.
I agree with what Abby said about children being able to do more than we give them credit for, But I don't think it's like taking a toy away from a little kid and him having a tantrum. The problem is that the kids just aren't interested, its like how when i was still 10 years old my dad tried to get me interested in football and learn the rules, but to me it was just a bunch of fat guys running into eachother and it was boring. We can tell the kids to pay attention and to learn but that really doesn't make them do it, but if we give them something to do that they like and mix it in with their learning then we can get them to understand. Even if we have to do it so that they're don't realize they're learning until later. I remember when I was very small I used to read Autobahn Society books on Animals all the time, I didn't think of it as learning but I liked learning about how a snake can swallow a pig whole and how some birds can run as fast as cars. what i didn't know was that this whole time I was learning biology. Same thing when we would act out stories in the Bible, I thought it was really cool, A big giant is killed by a little kid with a peice of cloth and the entire planet is destroyed by rain. It was way cooler to hear about the actual thing that happened then to discuss WHY the actual thing happened, which tends to be what they do in a lot of sermons.
And David to answer you question about why kids have trouble following sermons, for me there are two main reasons. One: When going through the Old Testament or Jesus's Teachings theirs a diffrence in aproach from a preacher and a sunday school teacher. Take this for example/ When Steve Gruen preached on Mark about when the Pharasee's went up and questions Jesus he read the passage, then taking for granted the audience understood the general idea of the passage he stepped forward and pointed out specifics about the passage such as the logic behind the actual answer, While a regular sunday school teacher would approach it with little child reading the passage and then taking a step back and telling the kids how the pharasees didn't like Jesus and giving them reasons why they didn't like them and just explaining the idea in general. And Two: one of the best ways for kids to learn is through object lessons. If they hear about some blind guy who rubs mud on his eyes and can see, they won't comprehend it like they would if they had a teacher saying how it was a miracle that God did for the man and explain the whole thing to them. But really the main point is that most preachers are talking to adults who don't need to go through the passage a few times to understand it were as kids are a different story.
Thank you for your comments. As a preacher I have no expectation of all children understanding the sermon. i can only speak for myself but when I preach I am trying to communicate at about the level of a 12 year old. That way I hope to be understood by most of the people in the room. This comes naturally to me because i basically have the brain of a 12 year old boy. (dont tell)
I would rather have 5 year old fall asleep with his head in his mothers lap than separate families every week. should we care if they are bored? other adults have to leave the room to teach them every week. why? so they wont be bored? they may or may not get anything out of the sermon but it is not the churches job to teach my child the things of Christ. It is my job. If the only christian education a child gets is sunday morning then we have big problems. Sunday morning is about corporate worship. Why is my church always trying to separate my children from me?
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Yes, it is sad that we do not expect children to have the capability to sit still during a service. I remember growing up that we had to sit in church and it was for 2 hours. But it is going take real committed parents to make a change, which you know are small in number.
Welcome back Jim.
Sam