Children's Church during Worship Service...

[natewood3]

This may not be where I need to post this, but this question does have to do with worship.

My wife and I attend a very small Baptist church, and we are involved in the children's ministry. For sometime at our church, we had no children at our church. Everyone that attended our church at the time did not have young kids in their home. We began having a couple come with two kids, and another older couple that began bringing grandkids to church. For a 3 or 4 months, these kids on came during the worship service, and the pastor and I felt the need to have something for the kids, so we began to take the kids into another room during the preaching. We have been doing this for about a year. I have now began questioning whether it is right to separate the children from congregational worship. We do not go to our class until after the singing, prayer, reading of Scripture, but it is right before the preaching begins.

My question is this: Should children be with their families during the entire worship service? If so, what about kids who are coming with grandparents or kids are who have family present? If having a class during Sunday morning service should not occur, how is the best way to transit to something else? In other words, if we were to stop the children's class during worship, then what do I tell the kids and church in general as to WHY we are stopping this? Any good resources on this or related questions?

 

[Kevin Lewis]

Personal conviction - keep children with Parents

Nate,

I posted a similar thread....follow it here
http://www.puritanboard.com/showthread.php?t=17984&highlight=family+integrated

 

[bookslover]

Nate,

I posted a similar thread....follow it here
http://www.puritanboard.com/showthread.php?t=17984&highlight=family+integrated

Nope. I think it's important to have a separate service for the children, especially younger children. I watch the children during our worship service and, for the most part, they're not paying attention, squirming, or are bored out of their little minds.

It makes perfect sense to have a time during the adult worship service (that is, for churches with enough staff) to have a worship service for the children - something completely biblical (of course) but geared to their ages and understanding. Children are not miniature adults, and it would both redeem the time and be edifying and beneficial for them to have a worship time that fit their capacities.

 

[LadyFlynt]

As a child, and a bus kid, the BEST part of going to church was the actual service and being included in it. Sure I was figety a bit, but the preaching and teaching of the word from the pulpit, the pastor, and the coming together of the saints is what reached me the most.

Children belong with the rest of the church in worship, not off for an additional hour of Sunday School (oh, and that is another can of worms...LOL!). Our time is redeemed with our children: by keeping them with us, by training them, by showing them how we worship, by including them in worship, by letting them worship, by conversing with them later about worship and the preaching of the Word.

 

[Bandguy]

 

[KMK]

As a child, and a bus kid, the BEST part of going to church was the actual service and being included in it. Sure I was figety a bit, but the preaching and teaching of the word from the pulpit, the pastor, and the coming together of the saints is what reached me the most.

Children belong with the rest of the church in worship, not off for an additional hour of Sunday School (oh, and that is another can of worms...LOL!). Our time is redeemed with our children: by keeping them with us, by training them, by showing them how we worship, by including them in worship, by letting them worship, by conversing with them later about worship and the preaching of the Word.

We do not have a seperate room for a nursery or school room even if we wanted to. We have as many children and youth in our services as we do adults. They are an absolute joy and I keep them in mind when I prepare my sermons. When I look at those old drawings of the Puritan churches in early America I do not see any 'cry rooms' either.

I guess if we had 12 newborns at one time we might have a problem but not yet.

 

[Civbert]

I'm not so worried about taking the children away from the parents as much as taking the parents away from the children. If my kids had to go to a "children's sermon" during the preaching, I think I should go with them. How else will I know what they are being taught? After all, that's my job right? Maybe if they tape the children's service and require parents to listen to it.

Really, if my kids not going to pay attention during the adult service, how do I know they will pay attention during the children's. And sometime I have trouble paying attention so I can't be too hard on them. I will ask my kids to tell me what the topic of the sermon was, or what bible verse was the focus. Sometime they remember, and sometime I forget. It good to talk about the sermon after the service (for me and my children).


"Funny hats", now that's and idea! Might help the kids pay more attention.

 

[Bandguy]

I'm not so worried about taking the children away from the parents as much as taking the parents away from the children. If my kids had to go to a "children's sermon" during the preaching, I think I should go with them. How else will I know what they are being taught? After all, that's my job right?

I guess you are going to have to be involved in your children's lives and talk to them. I would even go as far as to check out the class a time or two before allowing my kid to go there. I am not saying that kids should never go to Big Church. Certainly the older and more mature they become, the more they should be involved in Big Church. I did, however, leave our son in the nursery when he was a baby. I didn't worry too much about the theology he was taught during those times when the nursery worker was feeding him, burping him, comforting him while he cried because the pastor doesn't understand children being on a schedule... , and watching him while he took a nap or played with toys. Maybe I should have...who knows? Of course, from the time he was in the womb, I have been reading the Bible to my son, praying for him, and doing everything I can to fullfill the mandate of Scripture found in Deuteronomy 6. I call it early intervention. A few hours a week is not going to cancel out all the countless hours per day that I spend with my son praying for him and teaching him the Bible. If you are worried about 2 to 3 hours a week, I would suggest to you that perhaps you need to consider spending more time with your kids at an early age, or at the earliest age possible.

 

[Semper Fidelis]

I think there are extremes to avoid on either side. I get pretty frustrated, in my circles, over the "we don't really believe in the Covenant unless we do everything as a family" crowd. Chuch, Sunday School, Wednesday Bible Studies: everything is supposed to be for the family. It's absurd.

I think some actually believe that this is the way God ordained it. Passover and several other assemblies in the OT were commanded for men. There were assemblies that included men, women, and children but they were not for all assemblies.

The Temple had a court for women and children.

That said, my priority in worship is that I hear and pay attention to the preacher. I ask Sonya regularly to bring our youngest down to the nursery because she cannot sit still. On the other hand, I do keep James (4) and Anna (3) in the service because they are not very distracting and part of my training is that they get some discipline in their bodies.

Honestly, I don't believe in children's Church so much as I would support a place where mothers and children could go, behind a sound proof window, so the kids can continue to participate in worship but not where they can distract. Since children's Church means "activity time" and "lame Bible story time" I want them in the service. I think if a "Children's Church" was done right it would have a sermon and require the kids to sit still so that they get used to the posture they are supposed to have while being under the Word. I don't want my children growing up thinking that the Sermon is the part they should leave so they can go do interesting things.

Thus, I don't make a big deal of it but Anna and James sit with us and are expected to pay attention. Discipline is good for a child. Parents that don't discipline their children so they can sit through a service will have larger issues than the fact that there children are in children's Church over the long haul. I believe discipline is a means that prepares a child's heart for the Gospel.

 

[jenney]

i wrote about "what we do" on the second page of the thread linked above, so I won't rewrite it here. It deals with children too young to sit still and where we draw the line and what church looks like for us.

If our church had a separate worship for the children I'd have to ask what the point is. If the children are too young to get anything out of the adult worship, then they are too young to get anything out of the separate worship, too, in my opinion.

I also have some issues with "children's church" that might not apply to the way your church does it. (Keep in mind I'd never heard the phrase "integrated worship" before a month or two ago, so I might be using wrong terms here!) In the one church I went to that had such a thing, the children's thing had a lot of entertainment and it was so fun and exciting that the kids never wanted to transition out of it into the regular service. It is hard for me to see how it trains the children to be part of the regular service.

If the children are out for the preaching, then where do they hear the Word of God preached? I give it to them at home, like today I talked to my seven year old about an idolatrous love of pleasure when she resents having to put away her toys and it gave us a chance to see what God says about it. But that isn't the same as the preached Word and I want them to have the whole Real Deal, not just our application of it in specific situations.

Another issue I have is the adults who lead it always have to miss the worship themselves which I think is a bad idea. I miss a lot because I have to take out my babies (unlike those Doug Phillips fans, Trevor, I take mine out at the second peep!) but I take turns with my husband or older children and figure it is only a season of missing some parts.

It also makes me sad to think of my children getting different teaching from what we get. As a family we spend part of the Lord's Day talking about the sermon and how we can apply its truth to our lives. Having heard the same sermon means that we can help our children learn to listen and understand it and we can recall the valuable points ourselves as we explain them. The girls ask any questions they have about the message and talk about the hymns we sang. i would hate to miss out on that and think it would be hard to explain what their service was about since we'd not have been there.

As to what to tell people, you could tell them your reasons for the change. I don't know those, so I can't say what they are!

I hope you don't hear me as judging your decisions, past or future. I believe we both want to glorify the same God and it is to Him you must give account. I don't want to bind your conscience where the Scriptures have not given clear instruction. It's an area of Christian liberty, in my opinion.

 

[jenney]

Cross posting with me was this gem from SemperFi:

Honestly, I don't believe in children's Church so much as I would support a place where mothers and children could go, behind a sound proof window, so the kids can continue to participate in worship but not where they can distract.
(snip)
I believe discipline is a means that prepares a child's heart for the Gospel.

This is something I forgot to include. Thanks Rich!

I like the soundproof room thing. We call it a "training room" because we use it to train them to sit. The same behavior is expected there as in church, but in the soundproof room, they receive discipline for being disruptive and the crying doesn't disrupt the main service. It does disrupt the training room, which is all the more reason to get them trained quickly and out of there! Nurseries can be places moms easily get tempted to chat instead of eagerly desiring to get back to the service.

 

[Semper Fidelis]

Nurseries can be places moms easily get tempted to chat instead of eagerly desiring to get back to the service.

This is key as well. I was going to mention this. My wife used to have to go into the hall until she suggested setting up a partition in the back for nursing moms. She complained that she wanted to listen but the women would start talking to each other instead of paying attention.

The sad thing for me with children's Church that I didn't add was that most see it as normative that somebody else is primarily responsible for training a child. It also saddens me to see the sad state of discipline in most children. I grew up being expected to sit still in Church from as early as I have memories. I still can recall snippets of lessons I learned from Church as early as age 4.

 

[Herald]

We are in the midst of dealing with this same question. We moved into our current facility two years ago. We decided at that time to start a childrens church program. I now regret that decision. Children should be with their parents during worship (and vice versa). There are some notable exceptions:

1. I do support cry rooms. These are not for the slightly fussy child. Cry rooms would be for the child who is crying loud and long.

2. Nursery for infants is not a bad idea. Some infants need care that is not practical during worship. The nursery need not be staffed. No need to keep other adults out of worship.

Other than these offerings I would not provide a childrens church running parallel with the worship service.

 

[KMK]

The Puritans did not have AC or microphones either. They also wore funny hats. The fact that the Puritans did not have cry rooms proves little.

Just because children are indeed a joy, 12 newborns all crying up a storm need not sit in the front row. Out of Christian love, they can be placed in back or even separate from services without any violation of Scripture.

I did not mean to bind your conscience Trevor. I was just saying that some of us who do not even have our own building have to do without seperate rooms, just like the early Puritans in America. We are basicly a 'church plant' and I know some people look down on us because we do not have all of the luxuries that most modern American churches do. However, the Lord has blessed us with an amazing amount of peace and joy having all of our children with us for worship. I question why some people seem to be so adamant that it cannot nor should not work this way when in fact it does work for us every Lord's Day for over a year.

(By the way, we do not have heat or air conditioning either)

 

[CDM]

Nope. I think it's important to have a separate service for the children, especially younger children. I watch the children during our worship service and, for the most part, they're not paying attention, squirming, or are bored out of their little minds.

It makes perfect sense to have a time during the adult worship service (that is, for churches with enough staff) to have a worship service for the children - something completely biblical (of course) but geared to their ages and understanding. Children are not miniature adults, and it would both redeem the time and be edifying and beneficial for them to have a worship time that fit their capacities.

So, not only are the children not sitting under the preaching of the Word but the staff, too, is not participating in the public worship of God.

We are in the midst of dealing with this same question. We moved into our current facility two years ago. We decided at that time to start a childrens church program. I now regret that decision. Children should be with their parents during worship (and vice versa). There are some notable exceptions:

Other than these offerings I would not provide a childrens church running parallel with the worship service.

Good move.

General question to all: These "services" --when are the facilitators of them among the congregation's public worship of God?

My covenant children are indeed part of the Lord's congregation. Why would I send them away? The congregation's public worship of God isn't school.

 

[non dignus]

I think the children should wear headsets like at the United Nations....

Pastor:

"Thou shalt also suck the milk of the nations, and shalt suck the breast of kings; and thou shalt know that I, Jehovah, am thy Saviour, and thy Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob. "​

Translator:

"....and you shall have snacks......"​

 

[KMK]

I remember Pastor Morecraft preaching one time and he told this story about how he visited a church once with his granddaughter and he was so insulted that they offered his granddaughter a bag of toys to play with during the sermon. Then he said, "But after a few minutes of the sermon, I was asking for a bag of toys!" (It is a lot funnier coming from Morecraft than me.)

 

[NaphtaliPress]

I agree the hyper Phillips folks are a bit much. But my former church has a cry room with a glass window and piped sound; there is a nursery for infants. The children are expected otherwise to be in the service, which has been the practice since the very early 1990s. I'm single but amongst those I've known the last twenty years which regularly practiced family worship, the children really were trained at an early age and could sit through a service; the morning one often ran 2 hours. The book I'd recommend on the subject is Revealed to Babes: Children in the Worship of God, By Richard Bacon. The pastor wanted to call it "No Nurseries" but went with the better title in my opinion. This was published by Old Paths some years back but is in PDF for now (my understanding is fpcr.org will be changed significant sometime in the coming months so I don't know what content will continue online for free and what not; grab it while you can).

 

[jawyman]

We have both a nursery and kid's church. My 4 year old daughter loves kids church, because it is geared for her age and the children are taught about Christ at the appropriate age level. Now when she turns 5, she will remain with us in the service. My 2 year old son also attends kids church. I shouls say they both remain with us until the sermon and then they are dismissed, so they are hearing the Word.

 

[KMK]

I agree the hyper Phillips folks are a bit much. But my former church has a cry room with a glass window and piped sound; there is a nursery for infants. The children are expected otherwise to be in the service, which has been the practice since the very early 1990s. I'm single but amongst those I've known the last twenty years which regularly practiced family worship, the children really were trained at an early age and could sit through a service; the morning one often ran 2 hours. The book I'd recommend on the subject is Revealed to Babes: Children in the Worship of God, By Richard Bacon. The pastor wanted to call it "No Nurseries" but went with the better title in my opinion. This was published by Old Paths some years back but is in PDF for now (my understanding is fpcr.org will be changed significant sometime in the coming months so I don't know what content will continue online for free and what not; grab it while you can).

It wouldn't allow me to 'save'.

 

[Herald]

I remember Pastor Morecraft preaching one time and he told this story about how he visited a church once with his granddaughter and he was so insulted that they offered his granddaughter a bag of toys to play with during the sermon. Then he said, "But after a few minutes of the sermon, I was asking for a bag of toys!" (It is a lot funnier coming from Morecraft than me.)

I'd like to believe that those folks who have their heads down and writing are taking copious notes during my sermons. The truth is they are probably playing tic tac toe.

 

[natewood3]

I have not read all of the replies so far, but I do appreciate your responses.

For clarification, the kids I teach are from 7-12. My lesson normally comes from questions in the Catechism for Boys and Girls. When I first started teaching, I did go through some of the OT stories, because they were suprisingly unfamiliar with basic OT stories, such as Adam and Eve, Abraham, Moses, etc. I didn't go into much details, but just some overviews of the things that happened in their lives, stressing God's trustworthiness and watchcare over us. I tried to start having the kids memorize questions of the catechism, but they would always seem to "forget" to do it during the week, and I honestly just gave up doing that. I have, as I said, continued to teach through some of the questions of the catechism. My point is that it is not just "play time." I make worksheets for them after the lesson, so that they have to actually use their Bibles and look up verses that related to what we were learning.

Let me say this: Sunday morning (we do not currently have a Sunday night service) is the only time the kids are present. The couples that bring their grandkids are not able to bring them any other time, and the couple that brings their two kids live 45 minutes away, and the mother works on Wednesdays, and the father has bad health. Hence, Sunday school and Sunday morning worship service is the times available for teaching and for any type of class. There is another SS teacher, and I do it during the worship.

I haven't ever liked doing it during the preaching, but at the time it was the only time available, because many of them didn't come to SS. So honestly, it began during preaching because it was pragmatic and the only time I had the opportunity to teach them. To be honest though, there are times when they hardly pay attention to me, but I am not sure they will get anything from the preaching at our church. They seem to know very little about the Bible, so I am not sure what they would get out of it.

My main concern is that I don't want to separate the kids from the means of grace in the worship service. At the same time, I feel as though I am teaching the Word to them, as well as exposing them to Gospel truths each and every Sunday.

 

[NaphtaliPress]

My main concern is that I don't want to separate the kids from the means of grace in the worship service. At the same time, I feel as though I am teaching the Word to them, as well as exposing them to Gospel truths each and every Sunday.

If it is wrong to separate them from the regular means of grace, whatever good is being accomplished at that time, it needs to be done at some other time.

 

[natewood3]

Everyone else agree with Chris's point? I tend to think it is wrong to separate them from the regular means of grace also, which is why I started asking questions in the first place.

 

[JonathanHunt]

I'd like to believe that those folks who have their heads down and writing are taking copious notes during my sermons. The truth is they are probably playing tic tac toe.

Why did I never think of that?

 

[KMK]

Everyone else agree with Chris's point? I tend to think it is wrong to separate them from the regular means of grace also, which is why I started asking questions in the first place.

Read the posts above and I think you will see who agrees with you and who doesn't.

 

[KMK]

I'd like to believe that those folks who have their heads down and writing are taking copious notes during my sermons. The truth is they are probably playing tic tac toe.

To quote Homer Simpson:

"It's funny 'cause it's true!"

On a serious note, there are those who learn best when doodling or knitting or note-taking etc. It is sometimes those who are nodding in agreement the whole time that have no idea what you're talking about!

 

[Robert Truelove]

Yes, I believe the children should be in the worship service with everyone else. To say that children, even very young ones, do not get anything from the preaching is unbiblical. God's word does not return void.

It is a historical fact that the children have been in the worship services all the way back to the first century. If the church in Ephesus had "children's church", then their children would have never heard Paul say the following when the epistle to the Ephesians was read to the church...

Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. “Honor your father and mother” (this is the first commandment with a promise), “that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land.” - Eph 6:1-3

Paul had no doubt when he wrote that epistle that the children would be present in the congregation when the letter was read. So then should our children be in the congregation during our services.

This may not be where I need to post this, but this question does have to do with worship.

My wife and I attend a very small Baptist church, and we are involved in the children's ministry. For sometime at our church, we had no children at our church. Everyone that attended our church at the time did not have young kids in their home. We began having a couple come with two kids, and another older couple that began bringing grandkids to church. For a 3 or 4 months, these kids on came during the worship service, and the pastor and I felt the need to have something for the kids, so we began to take the kids into another room during the preaching. We have been doing this for about a year. I have now began questioning whether it is right to separate the children from congregational worship. We do not go to our class until after the singing, prayer, reading of Scripture, but it is right before the preaching begins.

My question is this: Should children be with their families during the entire worship service? If so, what about kids who are coming with grandparents or kids are who have family present? If having a class during Sunday morning service should not occur, how is the best way to transit to something else? In other words, if we were to stop the children's class during worship, then what do I tell the kids and church in general as to WHY we are stopping this? Any good resources on this or related questions?

 

[5solasmom]

Good post Jenney - I agree.

 

[bookslover]

Everyone else agree with Chris's point? I tend to think it is wrong to separate them from the regular means of grace also, which is why I started asking questions in the first place.

You mean, if there's a children's service and an adult service at the same time, that the Holy Spirit can't be in two places at once?