Open Thread: It’s Sunday Morning…What’s A Family To Do?

Posted byChaplainmikePosted inOpen Thread

UPDATE: This thread is sitting an IM record for posts in a short period of time. And some very interesting responses.

One of the commenters in a previous discussion raised a very interesting, practical situation facing young families that would make for a good open thread topic.

“Going to church” is very difficult for families with young children. The stress of getting everyone up, dressed, fed, in the car and on the road is difficult, even for two parents and especially if they have more than one child. The result can be both comic and tragic.

Depending on the church and on the family’s own values, a family may take advantage of a nursery and children’s ministries, or they may decide that all the family should be together in worship. This may be further stress, may necessitate almost complete inattention to what is going on in worship and may stress out more than a few other worshipers.

All of this is, of course, even more of a problem for single parent families.

Is it any surprise that many families with small children simply say that “traditional” church is impossible for them to navigate?

How can families with young children have a continuing participation in church life? Is it impossible? Should they worship as a family? Should one parent go with older children?

How can churches make this time more manageable for families with young children? Is the answer more nurseries and children’s programs? Or is the answer a different experience of the church altogether?

What’s your experience, both as a family and as a church? And what’s your advice?

117 thoughts on “Open Thread: It’s Sunday Morning…What’s A Family To Do?”

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  3. Terri,
    I love what you have to say about helping chldren feel they are part of the community of believers at through church.
    “Teaching them that their voices are needed to round out the singing. Letting them hear the needs of the community and prayer requests of the congregation. Hoping they see the heart of the people and of God through consistent exposure to other people, besides their parents, who want to follow Jesus”

    A Search Institute study showed that children were overwhelmingly influenced in their faith, not by a youth leader or pastor, but by spending time in worship with a significant person in their life, ie. parent, grandparent. The gist of this was that the time a child spends with you watching you sing, pray, listen to holy scripture and model heartfelt worship as response to God’s love is more influential on the child’s faith development than all of the children’s church and youth programs combined. And yet, we continue to segregate our children and youth from adults and older people in worship.

    I believe children should be in worship with their parents for most, if not all of the service. If you made it to the end of this thread without reading Sparki’s comments (Dec 5 4:28) go back and at least read her 8 practical suggestions for making church work with a family. I especially liked the idea of reading through the appointed lessons for the day before church (I don’t think I could do it in the morning though!) Lots of churches print the folowing week’s lessons in the bulletin for just this purpose.

    I think it’s important that kids feel that going to church is a special thing. Our four kids have always had church clothes and shoes that were just worn on Sundays. We didn’t ever get too fancy – and they might only have two outfits that rotated in a season – but they always knew what to wear to church. I’m pretty laundry-challenged, and this really was easy to keep together. My 7 yr old will even refuse to wear his “church clothes” to school, even if that’s all that is clean.

    We also always had a “church bag” that was hung in the back hall and ready to go just for Sunday mornings. I replaced fruit snacks and cheerios occassionally (please don’t tell me you don’t approve of the snack thing -good for you if your kids got by without it) and changed out a quiet soft toy every once in a while for variety. This bag was always stocked with Jesus story books – and I rotated seasonal ones for Christmas and Easter. I am so NOT a together/organized person, but this made me feel really together and the kids like their special “church bag.”

    Unless we walk in to church really late, we try to sit in the front. We’d been told to do this and it was hard to make ourselves do, but it really helps. My kids are worst in the balcony where they feel invisible and they can’t see anything.

    I had to laugh a few times reading the posts because people at our liturgical church are always suggesting that we should move to a more family-friendly contemporary evangelical style service. I’ve always felt that the liturgical framework is extremely family-friendly and I read confirmation of that over and over again (sorry if you don’t “get it” but doesn’t it make you the least bit curious that you might be missing something?)

    Since my kids were old enough to talk they’ve been singing and dancing to parts of the liturgy. Throughout the service there are places where the children can participate. By 4-5 my kids (not all Mensa candidates) had much of the liturgical service memorized so they could participate long before they could read. You can worry about mindless repetition later, but they will know scripture from the liturgy long after their memory fails them in their golden years.

    The colors of the season and banners in the front of the church are visual eye candy, as are crosses, candles and stained glass windows. I can appreciate the value of a house-chuch experience, but I personally feel blessed to have an aesthetically beautiful space that feels “holy and set-apart” for worship.

    Our church has children’s bulletins based on the lessons of the day and a children’s message every Sunday that the children come up to the chancel for. Although children don’t take communion at our church, they are encouraged to come up with their families to receive a blessing. The pastor touches them on the head or forehead and speaks a simple blessing to them – often by name. We also use children’s choirs regularly, include children as ushers with their parents, and have a staffed nursery(with the service audio piped in.

    I’ve often felt we could do more as a church (church bags, better children’s messages, quiet instruments for children to play during songs…lots of ideas on my “maybe some day” list for my church, but reading these posts made me pretty thankful for how much my church is doing already. Now I just have to find a way to help my congregation understand how good they have it, since all they can focus on is what amazing children’s programming is available at the mega-church down the street!

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  4. Our church has reserved the last five or six pews in the back of the church for “families training children”. We expect that a two year old and up can be trained to sit still and respectful. Since there are signs on the pews everyone coming in knows what to expect if one sits there or near there. If one is likely to be disrupted by a child’s movement, talk or need to go to the bathroom then one should sit near the front of the service. There is a nursery for children two and younger. Parents are not expected use it and children are welcome in the service to sit and watch adults worship the Lord in prayer, praise, hymns, and preaching. Have I ever been distracted, yes, has it led to concentrate even harder in focus on praying with my brothers and sisters, in singing praise and learning what lesson the Lord has for me, the answer is thankfully yes. The means of grace the Lord provides are new every morning!

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  5. Father Theodosius,

    Can I say “bless you”?

    We are a young family with three children who have significant special needs. We also have a very precocious 2 year old toddler who was speaking in sentences at 12 months of age.

    My husband grew up Southern Baptist, and I am Catholic. Navigating church as a family has always been a complex issue. Back when we had just just one, our agreement was that I would go to Mass on Saturday and together we went to an “Emergent” mega-church on Sundays as a family.

    It was the most horrific experience I have ever had in terms of being able to worship as a family. I was openly accosted for having my son in service. If he so much as made a peep, I would take him out and then be forbidden from so much as cracking the door to hear what was being said, because I would be “disturbing” others who were trying to worship “in peace.” We attempted another church that likewise gave hostile looks at the very presence of a young child in service.

    At this point I’d had enough. I was openly afraid of taking of my kids into service and due to their significant needs, nursery care would never (and still is not) be an option even if I felt personally comfortable with leaving them there, which I do not.

    We finally agreed to end in worship as a family at a Catholic Church when we moved across states. You can imagine my delight when I saw that they had a Preschool Mass scheduled on a week-day morning once a month. It was our first time at this church, and I took the children by myself. My youngest was only 10 months old at the time. The Priest was wearing a beautiful vestment with hearts and rainbows on it, and she started to cry because she wanted to play with it. For a few seconds, I felt stuck in a dilemma. I couldn’t take her out without taking *all* the children with me, and I didn’t know how to orchestrate that without being even more disruptive than the crying. Just as I was deciding to leave, the Father came up without a word and stretched out his arms to my youngest. She immediately flung herself into his arms and started happily and quietly picking at his rainbow while he continued on with Mass not missing a step. He held her about 10 minutes and handed her back to me, as content as could be. Afterwards he came and spoke to us and re-assured me that no matter or manner of children’s noises would ever be unwelcome.

    That’s been our church home ever since. I love that my 2 year old can shout “That’s the cross for Jesus Mama!” “Look, we sing song for God now!” “Amen!” and I don’t have to cringe or worry about making people angry. I love that my children are accepted and welcomed with open arms to learn and grow in spiritual maturity with grace and love. It’s made the hectic and harried hustle on Sunday mornings well worth it.

    My husband definitely has a harder time of it than I do. He can’t focus on the homily if he has the kids there who need his attention. His solution is to attend a bible study during the week. He feels like that gives him an extra chance to focus on God that he misses when he focuses so much on the kids every Sunday.

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  6. Sit in the back when you have an infant. Sit in the front pew when your youngest is a year and a half old or older. This pertains to an LCMS church with liturgy — so there’s something for the kiddos to watch up front besides someone giving a 40-minute lecture, and then sitting down the rest of the time.

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  7. I guess I have a different view of worship. Well, obviously, since I’ve been to two Catholic services in my life–one a funeral and another a wedding.

    Probably by both temperment and experience, I have grown to worship, or express my understanding of God’s worth, primarily by absorbing the forty-minute message and applying it to my life. Or by using my spiritual gifts (which lean heavily toward service) in His church. And this, more than sitting still through that forty-minute message, is what I hope to impart to my son. And I believe, at his stage in life and with his (absolutely insane) personality, our Children’s Church program, which starts right before the message, will draw him closer to Christ than an exegetical study of the book of Amos. As fascinating as that may be for me.

    Which isn’t to say I mean to be derogatory toward others who value liturgy. Like I said, I respect it. I just don’t understand it. (And, of course, it isn’t to say that those who value liturgy don’t serve or apply scripture.)

    Worship IS meant to be participatory. We absolutely have to take responsibility for our own adoration of our God and seek the environment that most helps us do that. It amazes me how comfortable the Father is with all our differences.

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  8. Beth, it is not just that liturgical types “find it more important to share that with their kids.” It is that good liturgy is “the work of the people,” not the work of a few on an elevated stage. Worship is meant to be participatory and active for the entire congregation, not a spectator sport watched by many and acted out by a few. Worshipers in good liturgical settings have things to do throughout the service, and thus parents can teach their children about those activities and train them how to participate. In most free-style evangelical worship the congregation sits, sings and listens, period. Not much for parents or church leaders to do there but to exhort children to sit still and be quiet.

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  10. It sounds like most in the “Bring ’em all!” contingent are Catholic/Orthodox or at least gravitate to the somewhat liturgical. Is that so? Do those who find comfort and sacredness in the liturgy find it more important to share that with their kids? I respect that, as a sister in Christ. But as a post-modernish lifelong Protestant, I can’t really understand it.

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  11. I’ve been all around on this issue. When I first became a Christian, I was very active in the children’s ministries (including Kid’s Worship, Sunday School, and Youth Group). In that church, the kids were always sent out to either nursery, toddler nursery or Kid’s Worship. And then suddenly, when they hit middle school, they were supposed to magically know how to participate in adult worship. I ended up reworking the first month of the middle school Sunday School curriculum just so the kids would have *some* help. And they were still sullen and non-participatory.

    When that Church got caught up in the so-called Brownsville Revival and my (fairly new) husband and I left, we ended up in an evangelical Anglican church that was attempting to combine the best of evangelical churches with the best of liturgical churches. The church was quite small and completely devoid of children except for two teens.

    After our first child was born, the church was only slightly bigger and there was only one other child, a very docile little girl who always sat quietly through church. No nursery, no other kid programs. Which was fine until my son was about a year old. We were glowered at for letting him toddle between the pews from one parent to another. We were glowered at if we had to take him out to the hall to quiet down. We were glowered at if we left early. We were glowered at if he sang a non-melodic “la la la” during praise and worship. We were scolded when he said “Amen” a second later than everybody else for “not keeping him in line.” On Easter Sunday when he was 14 months old, the pastor had purchased an extra-large, ceremonial host and when he held it up and gently broke it into two, our son gasped and said, “Uh-oh — he bwoke it!” The pastor couldn’t help giggling a little and members of the congregation were furious with us and advised a good sound spanking.

    After that, we only took him once a month. I would go one week alone. My husband would go one week alone, and the last week, we’d visit another church in the hopes of finding one that was child-friendly.

    Much to our despair, it seemed like most churches that considered themselves to be “child-friendly” exiled the kids from the main worship service. I knew from experience that the kid version was usually a paltry substitute, and I also knew the detriment of keeping kids out and then suddenly dropping them into it when they reached a certain age. Meanwhile, the churches that didn’t get rid of the kids didn’t have any kids to get rid of because the environment itself was unfriendly to families with young kids.

    Our story ends with us becoming Catholic — very kid-friendly (“Have more kids!! Have more kids!!!”) and families worship together. At the time, I had a 3-yr-old, a baby and another on the way. I seriously had no idea how we were going to make it work. I got a lot of great advice, some help and many, many sympathetic smiles and encouraging words, and I find this is really the best option for teaching kids how to worship. Here is the list of tips that I share with other mothers and fathers when they ask how to do it:

    1. Choose a service time that coincides with the nap of your youngest (or two youngest) children. Remember to put the kids down to nap at the service time every day of the week, so they get the idea. For older kids, make that hour a “quiet hour” when everybody speaks in whispers, reads religious books or whatever so that when they go to church, they are just practicing a daily habit, not trying to remember a weekly one.

    2. Make sure all the children are well-fed right before you go to church. Hungry children are restless children.

    3. Make sure all your children have either used the toilet or are in a fresh diaper right before church starts.

    4. If you have very small, unpredictable children (i.e., newborns, new walkers, toddlers in the “no” stage), sit near the back, close to the exit for a quick get-away. Once out in the hall or narthex, keep your child in “time in” — don’t let him/her wander and play. You want the outside time to be far more boring than the inside time. Bring them back in to service as soon as you can.

    5. Eventually, you’ll want to sit closer to the front so that the kids can see everything that’s going on. It’s boring to look at the backs (and backsides) of adults the whole time.

    6. Definitely put your kids in church clothes, but make sure they are comfortable clothes that the children like to wear, not scratchy or tight or too hot or too chilly. This is a good psychological signal to them to get into the mindset for church. The clothes do not have to be fancy — we have to buy all ours at thrift stores — but it really does work wonders.

    7. Teach your kids the songs, prayers, etc. at home, so that they can participate when they are at church. Don’t expect them to just pick everything up by osmosis.

    8. Praise participation in church. Our kids are all still rather young, so we give them candy, and it’s the only time they get it all week. They get one M&M for each song they sing or each prayer they participate in. They get two M&Ms each for remember something out of the readings (we have those long readings in Catholic Mass, four of them every Sunday) and two more if they remember something out of the homily. Now, of course this varies by age and stage. My 9-yr-old can just about recite the Bible passages verbatim, and he usually picks up the more spiritually significant parts of the homily. My youngest, almost 5, might only remember a phrase or an idea. Once she remembered the priest saying, “Amazing!” and had no recollection about *what* was amazing, but she got both the M&Ms and a reminder of what the amazing thing is. Through this, we are teaching our kids to listen and participate. Today, their rewards are chocolate, but when they get older, their reward will be the spiritual growth they experience.

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  12. Great discussion. My experience: I’m a mother of five who were all born within 4.5 years (one set of twins). So at our toughest (so far), they were newborn, 14 months, 14 months, 2.5, and 4.

    My contribution: Although it can be easily forgotten in the midst of our own life circumstances and spiritual need, let’s never check our “love one another” at the door to whatever building in which the Church is meeting. It will never hurt to ask those young parents if they need your physical help with their children. At the church we were attending when we had our twins, we noticed that many people moved to sit closer to us so they could be available to hold one of the babies or help the 1 year-old look through a book during the sermon while I went to nurse. It made me want to cry. It was my sermon.

    I would encourage parents of young children to do this for others even though you are in the midst of it all. And don’t ever be afraid to ask others for their help. There may be people with a heart to help but who are leery of offending you.

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  13. Crying rooms, training kids, and this talk is really scary to me. What was it that our Lord Jesus Christ said about bringing the children to him? There are no special programs of kids in my church. There is no crying room, once was one, but today it’s my office. The children belong in church. So what if they cry. They can yell for all I care. It is nothing more than a joyful sound unto the Lord. No one has ever gotten up and walked out of my church because the kid next to them or in front of them was crying or yelling. More than once a mother has started to leave with her crying child, but will always be stopped and talk it is alright. And more than once I have come down from the altar area and taken a really loud child by the hand leading them to where I had been serving and given them a tour. Yes, I am the priest.

    I will never forget the first time a five year old held up his hand during my sermon. He had a question. I answered it and he had another. And he keep asking. So did his older brother. Their parent panic. I loved it. That may have been the first time, but it was not the last time. If I don’t get questions, I ask for them. Adults never seem to ask, but the young people do. Think about it, faith is simple, the Gospel is simple. If you can explain the faith to a five year, their 20 or 30 year old parent will understand it also. Most ministers talk over the head of their congregations anyway.

    So what happen to the five year old who asked the first question? Within a year he was standing by me at the altar as my altar server. And his brother was my reader.

    One of the comments I read said something about a 45 minute services being too long for kids? I did not know that. I need to tell my kids that. There is something wrong with them. They are able to with stand the complete service. And this is not a 30 or 40 minute Roman Catholic Mass. this is a traditional Orthodox Christian Divine Liturgy. If you have not been to one, it about two hours, or more if there is a memorial services after the first services.

    The kids know why they are there. They know this is just s much their church as it is their parents. The parents walked to the front to receive communion, but children just able to walk will run down to receive. In the Orthodox Church children receive communion as soon as they are baptized.

    as to what we wear to church. Who cares? I don’t, and neither does God. My congregation know that under my vestments are jeans.

    So lets all go to church and cry and yell and just plain praise God with all our hearts and souls. And watch the children. They do it so much better then us adults.

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  14. We have two boys 5 and 1 and while the 5 year old should be able to sit quietly the one year old is too vocal. So sometimes we split up I go to one mass while my wife goes to another and sometimes we all go together and sit in the narthex (no proper cry room at this Church). I’ve told the five year that once he reaches six he will be expected to sit, kneel stand etc with the rest of us in preparation for his first communion. I am too much of a reactionary not to be aware of the risk of pushing too hard. We try to be flexible but kids do better with routine. My wife is conflicted because she wants us to go as a family but she also wants to hear the homily and participate in the Mass more fully. For us at least family Mass is a work in progress.

    I am worried about transmitting the faith effectively and I’m convinced from watching my son react that he will push back if I force him too much. On the other hand if I’m praying, reading religious texts, or going to week day masses, he’s intrigued and wants to be a part of it. I expect example will work better than discipline.

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  15. Although the ‘cry room’ is a great idea to remove distractions from the ‘sanctuary’, you may miss a little or a lot if you are in there.

    Personally, I can’t stand the cry room. I am thankful when a church has a nursery and faithful volunteers so I can get a much needed break, some fellowship and teaching.

    Like the Ouiz above, we are a large family and have one bathroom and 10 children ages 5 to 28 and we’ve been doing church most every Sunday since our two 10 year olds were 3. At the most we had seven children at home ages 0 to 14 and we were all going to church except for a short time when we were between churches. Even then, we assembled together in the dining room every morning to attend a service on the internet. I was doing it before that as a single mom with two (a newborn and a pre-teen). We now have only 5 at home ages 5 to 16.

    I never dreamed I would be the mom of such a large family and somehow with God’s help, we are doing it… because it is very important to us. I guess that’s the same way we manage to do church. It can be difficult, and there are mornings when I would rather just stay in bed, but something tells me I need to be in church. We’ve had mornings that I’ve wondered if maybe I should have stayed in bed.

    Our pre-schoolers went to the nursery when it was available. We don’t have one now, so they stay and attend corporate worship with the rest of the church and then all preteen children go to a separate class for Sunday instruction. We don’t have any infants now. Teenagers stay in service. I know it would be hard for our kids to sit through an entire service because they are not used to it. I would hope if they had to, they could. It seems like it would be tough for young children, but it may also be a great way to develop self-discipline.

    We are kind of ‘old school’… good behavior is expected and encouraged (rarely rewarded)… poor behavior is disciplined depending on age from time out or spanking if necessary, to removal of privileges. We try to be consistent but that’s tough. It’s not always roses, but it is amazing how God has put together this blended family in love and semi-harmony.

    Everyone has different circumstances and what might work for one family could be a disaster in another. I believe we have to work it all out on our own in the fine balance between the freedom of Christ and the desire to obey his commands that bring us life to the fullest.

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  16. I am a father of four, with five grandchildren, and all of my grandchildren look forward to church. I think that it has alot to do with the fact that Church is a family thing, with all of them looking forward to meeting some friends that they only get to spend time with on Sundays as well as each other.Now, our church has a good childcare program, as well as Sunday school, and childrens’ church programs, so they are engaged the whole morning. They enjoy it because all that surround them are enjoying it too. In the end, I think that sharing our faith as a family has the biggest impact.

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  17. Our church has a cry room in the back of the church that has a glass front and audio that looks into the sanctuary. Nothing is missed by the ones that are in the room.

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  18. I am a mom of 7 children ages 11 and under.

    We make it to 8:00 am Mass every Sunday.

    We have one bathroom.

    This is simply to encourage others that it CAN be done!

    One, my husband gets up first, gets breakfast started and wakes everyone else up (he’s such a morning person!)

    We go over the readings while they eat breakfast, so they will pay attention better during Mass.

    Everyone wears the nice clothes they picked out the night before (or what Mommy picks out for them that morning! *grin*)

    Assembly-line style, everyone brushes hair and teeth while I try to look over their heads to put on make up.

    Thanks to my husband (again), we are out the door by 7:40 am.

    At Mass, the key for us has been to sit up front, NOT bring any toys, and teach them from day one that they don’t leave our laps (or the pew) until Mass is over.

    It’s been a struggle… and the first few years I wondered if we’d EVER make it out of the cry room… but it’s paid off. Right now our youngest (13 months) is in “training,” which means one of us gets the joy of taking her out and holding her in the back.

    Our kids are not perfect by a long shot, but I think the training has been worth it, and it’s been wonderful seeing them respond at Mass and picking up on things said.

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  19. I really don’t have much to say, as I’m not married and/or have children. I do have to say it depends on the child sometimes. I’m very introverted, so my mom could always scoop me up at her long Pentecostal services, and I will be mum the whole time (except when I was forced to pray. That was when it got loud). I was too mature for most of my Sunday school classes. Imagine being 7 with a teacher going “A is for Adam, B is for Bethlehem”. Sounds weird, but there are quiet, still children in the world. 🙂 I have met quite a few.

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  20. Hats off to all parents that bring little fidgety, crying kids to church – for this cross your reward will be great. Parents are often exhausted, sick and stressed so much, they should never have to endure a sneer from someone sitting in front of them who’s kids were, no doubt, much better behaved.
    In contrast, the TV preachers always have a quiet arena.

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  21. Some situations are harder than others. Each child can be different too. Some of my children when they were young were content to draw in the pew. My youngest right now tends to get restless and sometimes I take him out to the vestibule to stretch his legs. That means I miss a couple of the readings, but I can catch up on that later in the day.

    The 10:00 AM Mass has a children’s liturgy of the word where kids between the ages of four and six can go to another room in the church and hear the readings at a children’s level. They are invited out before the readings begin and are brought back in after the homily so they can bring up the gifts, which they are really excited about. Although this does not happen at all the Masses it gives everyone a chance to focus on the Word at the appropriate level.

    Eric R. I like your fifth point and seem to run into it constantly when trying to encourage the kids I teach to go to Church. I guess I’d have more luck if they were old enough to drive themselves…

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  22. If you want to use it as an exercise in teaching your kids how to be still and quiet and stand and actually sing the songs and stop crawling under the chairs and don’t tap the pencil on your head and no you can’t go get a donut, then that’s all well and good.

    And I think it’s doing that that is the problem.

    That training needs to be done at home, and enforced/continued at church. And it’s part of the general training and teaching that we all need, as people–that being part of a family–God’s family–and serving others often requires doing things that aren’t our first choice.

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  23. We adopted our son at 17 1/2 months. It took nine months before he would go to Sunday School or Children’s Church without crying hard enough to make himself throw up. As a new, stay-at-home parent, I was refused even this small break. (Although I had wonderful friends who took him (crying and all) while I went to class twice a week.) To have him with us even now (he’s seven) means I just have to accept I probably won’t be listening to the message too much.

    I remember sitting through church as a kid. I remember singing, communion, Gramma’s cough drops, drawing on the bulletin, and being told a million and a half times to be quiet and sit still.

    I guess from my point of view, it would depend on what you want out of a church service. If you want to use it as an exercise in teaching your kids how to be still and quiet and stand and actually sing the songs and stop crawling under the chairs and don’t tap the pencil on your head and no you can’t go get a donut, then that’s all well and good. If you, for some reason, wanted to listen to the preacher? Let’s give it up for Children’s Church leaders. I love and adore them forever.

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  24. 1) I’m a father of two little girls, 4 and 1. My church responsibilities put me at the church at 6 AM on Sundays. It happens that I live close to the church, and walk home after our early service to get the family, and we walk to church together. I normally get home just in time to help my wife finish dressing the girls. She does most of the morning prep by herself. On the whole, I think she would say that it isn’t stressful most of the time (my wife is a GREAT mom, very organized).

    …I like the previous poster’s suggestion that living close to one’s church is very beneficial. Driving 30 miles to the Mega is probably not helping the stress of Sunday morning. Not to mention the fact that your church experience becomes disjointed from your community life.

    2) At our church, we have a nursery in both services, a “nursing mother’s” room at the side of the sanctuary, and children’s church that the kids ages 4 to 8 go to after they participate in the early part of our second service. We have TV in every room in the church, and the service can to watched from anywhere. So, all in all, I think we do a decent job. One concern for us is that if we are going to send the kids away, then they need to be sent to a place where they are being taught well. That is a big priority for our church. Veggie Tales, while great fun, are not appropriate teaching materials for the spiritual formation of children. (IMHO)

    3) I minister among the young families in our church. Child care is ALWAYS an issue. For whatever reason, our parents don’t like to get baby sitters. There seems to be some sort of guilt associated with leaving them with someone else. I wonder if part of the issue is that so many parents are working long hours that they don’t want to be unnecessarily separated from their children. This perhaps speaks to a whole other issue in our society.

    4) Some of the families that come in 15 minutes late and rather frazzled for 9:30 Sunday School or 11 AM service, are the same families that weren’t late for the 8 AM soccer game on Saturday, and they won’t be late for school on Monday. Priorities and be part of the problem.

    5) Do we need to redefine “church”. Maybe. We certainly need to do many things better, and there are several valid reasons why a family could choose to leave their church. However, my experience with people is that there will always be a new excuse as to why its just too hard to be at church. In the end, the family that is dedicated on worship, fellowship, and spiritual growth within their local Body will make church attendance (somewhere, someplace) a priority. Those that aren’t, won’t.

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  25. I probably have a different image of “community” than some of the commenters. Don’t get me wrong because I’m all for adult community, it’s just not my top priority. Given my preference I suppose I’d rather be “fellowshipping” with the guys from work down at the local pub on Monday nights catching the game, instead of teaching a catechism class to smart-mouth junior high kids at the parish. My family and I enjoy “fellowshipping” with neighbors, families from school, or whoever we happen to bump into at McDonalds, Wal-mart, or the ball park. Heck, we even let the Baptist kids across the street come over and have dinner or cookies at least once or twice a week.

    Misty sounds like a wonderful lady and I hope for the continued success of her house group; but sitting around her living room singing songs and talking about my feelings wouldn’t be my top choice for fellowship. And theologically speaking it doesn’t fit my image of Christocentric worship.

    Sitting quietly and listening to the Word of God is the best way for me to hear what he wants to tell me. And it’s the only way I can peacefully go out and fellowship with this wonderful, crazy world he has created.

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  26. Oh, and let kids doodle on the bulletin. I did when I was a kid, and I heard every word being preached. Now my kids are the same way. The sermon-centric service can be hard on visual-tactile children…and adults.

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  27. I think there is a difference between a church being tolerant of crying babies and the sheer lack of a sense of a sacredness that most evangelicals have grown up with in worship. Not a Sunday goes by that even adults (not just teens!) are not openly talking during church, texting, or leaving their cell phone ringers on. If the same people did that in a movie theater, they would be kicked out or yelled at. If one truly believes that God is present in the worship service, then I would think that should occupy ones attention. Young children may not be able to grasp that yet, but if they see their parents distracted by conversations and electronic gadgets, they are going to assume that nothing important is really going on. If they see their parents captured by the presence of God, then they will want to experience it, too. Try teaching by example before breaking out the rod.

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  28. In a pew-less Orthodox Church, it is easier to manage toddlers and babies because you can walk around a little and even leave without disrupting all the people in your row. You can pass babies to grandparents, godparents, etc. much more easily. A lot of modern churches are like lecture halls and the slightest commotion is noticed by everyone. Also, sermon-based churches require a more perfect silence than liturgical churches.

    This is not to say that it’s permissible for children to run around yelling, but there a little more wiggle room in an EO church.

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  29. I am not sure if changing Church, or at least radically changing Church will solve the youth flight issue. Along with that issue is the parent flight and I believe its occuring not because we are not entertaining enough, or biblical enough, or charismatic enough. I believe that we are too prosperous and God to many is just a side note. Where do we have true church growth? Africa – where Catholic and Evangelical alike are seeing an increase in the faithful. Here in the states if we have Church growth it is because we are seeing movement from one pot to another. Many more though are just worshiping a secular God. Why God? They’re not suffering or poor or struggling – in fact they have every gadget they want. Yes – I am over the top in genralizing and, to be honest I just like the traditional liturgical Mass/Divine Liturgy – so I’m biased.

    I just believe that the fragmentation we already have in Chritianity will increase ten-fold if we throw out communal worship.

    As for isolation – I can’t speak for the evangelical crowd. Catholic parishioners can sometimes seem cold and unwelcoming – but then once we dig beneath the surface there are mens and womens groups that help to build up the faithful on a more personal level. I do understand though that there can be isolation in a church community and even, as I have read here, some shunning – I just have not experienced it.

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  30. Douglasah
    “I’m not sure I understand the issue… I go to a small church that has Sunday School before the service. (Otherwise a fair amount of the congregation would be “in back”.) I tell young parents that if they think their baby will cry – to sit next to me. I don’t mind the crying at all. (We don’t have a “crying room”.)”

    I suspect the larger the church the more likely that one or more of the crying kids will be those who have 2 settings. Quiet and loosen fillings of anyone within 100′. And there are diaper incidents which just require attention that pews and chairs are not designed to be used for.

    Note to new parents. Never ever ever leave the house without a complete change of clothes for anyone in diapers. Period.

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  31. Grew up catholic and my mom informs my I was a rotten little bastard at church,,, though I don’t remember any of that. Spent 12 years as an evangelical/charismatic and raised 2 daughters in that time. It was especially hard for my wife who breastfed our first child… not really any place in a small church to go. Returned to the catholic church and while my children are fairly well behaved they do find church at times boring. My take is that It’s probably a good idea to have a place to take children for breastfeeding and if they get loud so your not interupting the service… that’s just common sense. for older children I do think they should be a part of the service and behave themselves. If that requires discipline then that’s what it takes. I don’t get offended by children who are a little restless… but if they are acting like chimps well sorry but it’s time for the parents to act like parents. As for little babies that cry during the sevice… I actually don’t mind that at all, as it always seems to remind me of the incarnation.

    mike

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  33. I just have a couple of additional comments, and I will give a prolog with “in my humble opinion:”

    Regarding defining “Church”; Church is attached to human culture. That is not a bad thing but a natural thing. Human culture is dynamic and constantly changing. The first century Church looked radically different than its “redefinition” after 312 AD. The Medieval Church was redefined (over time) especially after the Schism. The Renaissance Church was redefined both on the Catholic side and of course more radically on the Protestant side. The American Church after the first and second great awakenings was redefined. So if we should not be open to a redefinition now, then which of the old definitions do we adhere to as the ideal? There are people on this blog who define church very differently from each other.

    Now the foundation of the Church, which is not open to redefinition, is simply the Scriptural mandates. I really believe that if you were to borrow one of those memory erasing lights that the Men in Black used, and erase you personal and cultural memory, then pick up a New Testament, you would find that the mandates for Church form as being extremely simple. Those, of course, are not open to redefinition.

    One of those, as someone has shared, from Hebrews, in my paraphrase, is that Christian isolation is not an option, and I totally agree. However, I will add a caveat, and again I’m just trying to be brutally honest, that isolation can easily occur within the walls of a traditional church, not just among those go-it-alone Christians. The real solution is, in the second half of that mandate, is ‘encouraging one another.” This did not take place in most of the traditional churches I’ve attended. The best I’ve seen it was in a “parachurch” experience in college and in a small group that I led for seven years, which was part of a large Evangelical church.

    But Christians should be just as alarmed by seeing the absence of this part of the mandate within the traditional Church as they are alarmed at the “freelance’ Christians go it alone.

    Now back to Michael’s original question, all that I am saying, is that we are loosing 80% of our youth . . . so something isn’t working. We need to look at what we are doing wrong, and I suspect . . . again in my humble opinion . . . that forcing small children to attend services that they don’t understand may be one of the issues.

    Misty, if your church was on our island, I would be tempted to jump ship to it. But now we are part of a very traditional, Dutch-reformed Church. I will add that the best church experience that our children ever had was when we were part of a house-church community. The kids learned more and actually loved church. It was the highlight of their week. Yet, ironically, many of our Evangelical friends and certainly my mother-in-law and my sister-in-law (Lutheran minister) were deeply disturbed that we had “taken them out of the Church.”

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  34. IIRC the Old Testament has something about the maximum distance that should be traveled on the Sabbath. Looks like the radius is about 1 kilometer (.6 mile). OTOH it is easy to make shibboleths out of almost anything.

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  35. thinking back to the original post: “The stress of getting everyone up, dressed, fed, in the car and on the road is difficult”

    I do have the additional blessing of living 1 block away from a Catholic church and 2 blocks from the public school my kids attend. So that does make for a quick and easy walk to church.

    I’m not saying that people should move to be closer to their church; but there is something to be said for worshiping at the local church (closest to your house) no matter whether you like the pastor or not. We are raising 4 kids in an average 40yr old 3 bedroom house, so we are forced to share things and bump into each other once in a while (not to mention the beauty of discovering why God created backyards with trees to climb). It was just my wife and I when we bought the house, and we didn’t even go to any church at the time. But we aren’t moving anywhere, and having a priest celebrating mass across the street everyday is one big reason.

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  36. We have been blessed to find a home church that meets Saturday evenings. Just about everyone has young children. We’re trying to figure out as a group how to address these issues.

    Currently we do a meal and lots of fellowshipping. Then we all sit down as a group for singing and a tale of a “God experience.” Then, two of the wives (rotates depending on whose house we’re at) takes most of the children off for working on a curriculum we’ve agreed on, modified as desired to make it better. The littlest kids can play among the olders while they do the lesson. Babies are usually in parents’ laps.

    We’re being pressured to let our daughter stay over at the in-laws’ every Saturday night so she can go to traditional church with them on Sunday morning. That way she can get into a ‘real’ Sunday school class.

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  37. I’ve seen it done most of the different ways that American christians have come up with in the last century. Immediately after being saved I spend a number of years in the “Plymouth Brethren” assemblies. As a general rule the PB groups that I was associated with had the children in the communion service – PB tends to have a separate communion only service. I can’t recall any occasion where the children were in any way truly distracting from the service, that’s not to say that at the time people weren’t occasionally annoyed. The PB attitude to much of church life is an as the Spirit Leads approach.

    In my current congregation, a conservativish United Methodist church. Most of us enjoy the spontaneous contributions of the babies. We do run a Sunday school program that meets during the worship service, but on Communion Sunday everyone is in the sanctuary the whole time.

    A lot of our kids come from the neighborhood, unaccompanied by either parent. We have since I have been attending had kids who are autistic, have ADHD, etc. We have found that for most of them the key is to meet them at their need(s) as best we can. We also encourage everyone to come to church regularly. As Heb. 10:24 – 25 urges.

    * 24. And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works: Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching.

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  38. For context – our relatively small church has one service(after Sunday school) with about 100-125 people. There is a nursery option for babies and toddlers. Pre-K and Kindergarten stay in until the sermon starts. 1st grade and up stay in the whole time. It works pretty well most of the time and most adults realize the kids are not robots that can be programmed. We also have some rocking chairs in the back row for use with the wee ones who remain in the service or for those who need to nurse.

    One of my favorite things is that I simply get to sit with the two oldest(9 & 7 – both girls) – something that rarely happens during the week. They will rest their head on my shoulder or even in my lap at times and that’s just fine by me. I don’t expect them to follow a sermon that even I have a hard time tracking with(a whole other issue, *sigh*). They do sing and do the recitations with us so don’t think they check out the whole time. 🙂

    BTW, I completely get JMJones point and think that we unconsciously(or consciously even) put on our Sunday-happy-Christian faces and that’s a shame. iMonk has talked about this kind of thing here before so it shouldn’t really be a surprise when someone else says it. There is a certain Christian facade that we are under pressure to maintain – and that happens on Sunday morning as often as it does anywhere else.

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  39. terri,

    I understand why you used those words. I’ve actually received some of those eye rolls/stares and even at church. It’s usually from some “holy” older lady that carries her rosary and never misses daily mass; but has nobody to come visit her during the holidays because of the way she has treated people her whole life (sorry for stereotyping people). But what’s a guy to do? You can either slap the old coot senseless or forgive them (it’s not always an easy choice). Thankfully the majority of folks I see at church comment on how sweet and cute the young whipper snappers are.

    I do hope that more parents take teaching kids to “behave”, act “respectfully”, and “not be bratty” seriously; but my 3 youngest are healthy active boys so I’m well aware that perfection is not an option. I’m afraid teaching kids these things gets lost sometimes between soccer, travel soccer, birthday parties, baseball, fall ball, travel team, bowling parties, basketball, wii, piano lessons, dance recitals, Nintendo dx, build-a-bear parties, and flag??? football.

    Ps – If any “adult” tries to organize a fantasy football league for kids I may seriously lose faith in my fellow Americans.

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  40. When I’m trying to be a mature adult in regard to church and the things of God, I often find kids more a distraction. When I remember there is a way I am called to “become as a child” (vs. childish), I realize how much I benefit from having them around. Dallas Willard once said “God is childlike” so it must be part of our imago Dei (so adolescents in some mysterious way:)). Yes we are to grow up and put away childish things but when the real and living Jesus present, children are welcome. Obviously, we should not make kids being “in” or “out” a law. They need a break from us as much as we may from them. But I confess most of my annoyance with kids in certain settings is because I have forgotten to remain childlike.

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  41. Funny. If the reason for the long Mass is because the priest keeps making his point over and over again during the homily (or is just rambling) then my three year old usually gets fidgety enough to distract him 😉

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  42. Mmm – very interesting accounts on here of how the other half lives.

    I can see that if your normal service runs well over an hour, with a very long sermon, then it might indeed be better to hive the small kids off to Sunday School or a children’s service or the like.

    Regarding getting there on time, my mother operated on the venerable rule that, as long as you made it for the start of the Gospel, you were there in time (no ducking out early at Communion, though). Irish people are (in)famous for liking short Masses; there was a comment in the Peter de Rosa “Bless Me, Father” books to the effect that Irish people were perfectly willing to go to the stake for their religion, but they wouldn’t sit through a long Mass 😉

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  43. We (including my wife and 4 kids) walked away from the Sunday morning “show” 8 months ago and feel more free and less stressed than ever. We realize the need for Jesus led community and we are engaging in it differently until the Spirit leads us otherwise.

    Read Viola/Barna’s “Pagan Christianity” and Viola’s follow up book “Reimagining Church”.

    Where the Spirit is, there is freedom!

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  44. I find it interesting that some want to change church to suit their view/lifestyle/convenience. Church to me is a time to worship God. That i am fed is a by product not a goal. Kind of like self-esteem sould be a by-product, not a goal. My bias is showing…

    From everything I studied Jesus meant us to worship as a community. The Jews worshipped in this way in their Temple and Synogogues. Paul did not just proclaim the Gospel to individuals, he also formed churches. Christianity is not an individual effort. And that includes our kids – and the need to teach them and show them that we keep holy the Sabbath day.

    Redefining church, in my opinion is like recreating God in our own image. If there is something we don’t like we just change it until the next person with an opinion comes along, then we change it again, and again, and again…

    Just my opinion…

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  45. Wow. 72 responses. I know this will be lost in those 72 responses, as I didn’t read them, just because there were 72 of them.

    However I think step one is redifine church.

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  46. I’m not sure I understand the issue… I go to a small church that has Sunday School before the service. (Otherwise a fair amount of the congregation would be “in back”.) I tell young parents that if they think their baby will cry – to sit next to me. I don’t mind the crying at all. (We don’t have a “crying room”.) We have quiet activity bags for some kids, with picture books and quiet toys, and I’ve seen some Jr. High aged kids with hand-held games that they brought from home.
    From what I’ve seen, most of the “burden” seems to be self-imposed. Where genuine difficulties arise – people seem happy to help out if they are told what help the parents want (like having a child sit with them while Mom or Dad sing in the choir…).
    Church IS a verb – an inclusive verb. We NEED to have everyone share in “Churching” for the experience to be complete for the rest of us. Church happens on a number of levels. If we say it HAS to be such and such, we’re missing out on participating in the whole message. That’s is worse than not hearing part of a sermon.

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  47. As I would expect, a complete spectrum of opinions and experiences in each of about 10 simultaneous dimensions. We have 3 energetic boys, 7, 3 & 1. Sunday is very difficult for us. When possible, we put them in SS and try to sit together in the service. When possible. Our church mushroomed from 60 to 600 in our 13 years as a church, with two increases in building size. Our new sanctuary is a few years old.

    Before, we had two overflowing services. Tandem sunday school classrooms with closed-circuit TV handled the overflow (crying room, too) until our building was complete. But that turned into a haven for families with small children. We had a great time of showing grace to each other, and it turned into a training time and acceptance of other families and their children. Kind of like a community, like church should be! The day our new building opened? All that community was gone in one week. Somehow the new building just had a weird anti-child feel to it, and everybody stopped bringing their children.

    I think a re-thinking of church is needed. It needs to be a community in its meeting instead of adults sitting silently. I can see why young families stop going.

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  48. One additional observation. Evangelicalism has not done a very good job in general at teaching ADULTS what worship is and how to participate in it. Many churches have little more than a stage show with a long sermon. Parents will naturally have a hard time helping their children appreciate that. What if worship were truly “liturgy”–the work of the people–in our churches? Couldn’t we find ways of including these little ones in the people’s work?

    I think the burden lies not only on parents, but on church leaders to actually practice and train our congregations to worship…as a verb (thank you, Robert Webber).

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  49. … but this is all more than just a little frustrating. One more thing we don’t do correctly or to the expectations of the brethren, who can now sit in sanctimonious judgment of our parenting and spiritual formation skills, or at least our motivations for the decisions we make. You’d think being already acutely aware of our own failings as parents would be enough without the pile-on of admitting a struggle such as this. Apparently not.

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  51. Justin:

    If you’d like to respond with some kindness and mature perspective, you’re welcome. But you’re going to have to do better than that post.

    MS

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  52. I cheat. My dear husband is not a Christian, so while he likes to come to Mass (he does believe in family), when we have a child under two he stays at home while I take the older children to Mass.

    Really this is a venerable Catholic approach: the obligation to attend Mass has always been considered not to apply to a parent needing to care for a young child, and families with babies often have one parent stay home: the other parent goes to Mass the next week, or sometimes to a Mass later in the day.

    If my husband is out of town on a weekend, like everyone else I just do my best, and take cranky baby or toddler to the vestibule or outside, following along in my missal and making a spiritual Communion.

    Daily Mass is a great way to introduce tiny people to church: the businessman’s noon Mass at our downtown parish runs 45 minutes, with a 5-minute homily. Just right for preschooler attention spans.

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  53. One opinion: I’ve always thought that children who are old enough to go to school and sit still for extended periods of time should be able to sit still for an hour at church.

    One recommendation: A book called “Parenting in the Pew” by Robbie Castleman. She came to our church several years ago and did a seminar on helping parents train their children to worship in the “big service,” and she has many wonderful insights.

    One observation: When I was a child, I loved being in the “big service” with my folks. I’m sure I squirmed and tried their patience, but in our traditional Methodist church, there was so much mystery, and color, and drama in the sanctuary. Stained glass windows, banners, colored robes, choirs, candles, wonderful architectural details, so many things led to a sense of seriousness and mystery that piqued a child’s imagination. Not much of that for a lot of kids today in “big box” churches. A lack of a sense of the “sacred” may be hurting our kids.

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  54. j. Michael Jones,

    Your faith tradition is different from mine – and after reflection I can understand your point of view if your service consists of an hour of sermon.

    My memories of Church when I was younger was that of a place of holyness and sacredness. Don’t get me wrong – I was bored and as I got into my teens I didn’t want to go – in fact I was agnostic for a time. But I never lost that sense of awe and wonder when I walked into Church. For me it was more than a building – symbols and images and smells that from my childhood are in my head and continue to this day. Those memories, and my reading and studying and finally opening my heart is what brought me back. I hope my children will remember the same.

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  55. How a larger church handles it. 1500 to 2500 over 3 services over the last 15 years.

    Nursery is there. Staff by volunteers. Not required. And if mom starts in service and things get tense she can stop in. If lots of babies show up, someone walks the halls and recruits (dragoons) adults for duty.

    Large lobby outside of sanctuary. PA carried service for years. Now on TV screens. If you need to be there with a baby, toddler, whoever you can be there.

    No rules but some noise is just a part of life with kids. Out of control kids were expected to move to the lobby.

    One pastor mentioned that for years his kids got a bag of Skittles each to eat during services. Worked for him. 🙂

    I worked the parking lot for years. (Our church building was once a hotel so it really wasn’t designed to park cars the way we needed them.) Every space next to the building that wasn’t designated handicapped was reserved for parents with kids. And if those were full we’d work hard to help them out. No questions asked. I think it helped a lot of harried parents.

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  56. iMonk,

    When I said, “We are beyond that in our personal lives” I was speaking about the fact that our kids are beyond on the age that we have to deal with these interesting issues that you’ve raised not that we were somehow “beyond” traditional church. I’m still as much part of the traditional church as anyone else on this blog and I’m sorry that I gave a different impression. We attend just about every service when the church doors are open. So I was certainly not being critical of those who do. Good heavens no. I simply saying that Scripture must limit us, but not tradition.

    Our kids attended Sunday morning church for their entire lives. But in some ways I regret that now. I think there could have been a better way and their image of God would have been even healthier.

    You’re right, the body functioning outside the traditional Sunday-morning –service-centered model has questions of its own.

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  57. Wow. Lots of interesting comments. I remember speaking with my priest a few years ago and lamenting how I felt that sometimes it was so hard to get to church with three kids under five and I never heard the sermon and I didn’t feel anything and blah, blah, blah. And he very gently reminded me that there is grace in “just showing up.” Yeah I missed the sermons. And granted, my priest is an amazing teacher (even with his sermons being only about 20 minutes long). BUT, what I’m at church to do is, for one thing, to offer a sacrifice of praise. And sometimes it really is a sacrifice. But what I’m also there to do is to receive the Body and Blood of Christ and to be a part of His community through the Eucharist. And I was doing that. This gave me a lot of peace and helped me to relax and I was able to enjoy church more.

    I guess my advice is first of all to be training children at home. Children who don’t know how to be quiet at home can’t be expected to magically be quiet at church. We played the “quiet game” when my kids were little – they competed to see who could be quiet the longest. The winner got a mint or a tic-tac. To go along with that, the more kids are able to participate, the better they pay attention. Teaching them prayers, songs, whatever actions are practiced (sign of the cross, bowing, kneeling, raising hands, etc.) helps them be more involved.

    I would agree that doing as much as possible the night before helps amazingly. My husband and I would spend a half-hour before we went to bed Sat. nights packing the baby bag with quiet toys, crayons, diapers, bottles (LOTS of bottles – in the fridge in a soft cooler, ready to be grabbed and carried to the car), etc. I’d even write a list and tape it to the back door. On the knob, where I couldn’t miss it. I still do usually lay out the kids’ clothes, as the older two can get dressed on their own now.

    One last thing I would suggest is that once or twice a year, each parent attend church alone. Even that rarely can be such a balm to the soul. And I agree very much that the attitude of the pastor has a huge impact on the congregation’s reaction to children, but that’s not really advice for how to handle church. It’s more advice on what to look for in a church, I suppose.

    And just for the record, I’m Eastern Orthodox, so I know a thing or two about long, quiet services. 🙂

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  59. AFTER A QUICK SCAN OF THESE RECORD BREAKING COMMENTS THE ONLY ONE THAT REGISTERED WITH ME WAS BOB MYERS …I MUST BE “OLD SCHOOL”……

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  60. Our church has multiple identical services. We go to the early service as a whole family. Have ever since the kids were out of the nursery. Then during the 2nd service, I teach an adult class and the kids attend their “age appropriate” classes. The we are out by 11:15.

    Woohoo!

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  61. Just one more comment about how to make the worship service (not the “church”) more manageable for families with young children…
    Our small (about 50) church encourages young and old to share prayer requests, Scripture insights, praises, etc. during the worship service. My 9-year-old grandson reminded people for 2 weeks of his upcoming birthday. Another child was thankful for cookies brought to their house that week. Children have also shared verses they have memorized.
    It’s not ALL crying children.
    Kat (2)

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  62. No problem, Mr. Kyle. I have a couple friends with Asperger’s kids. It’s an interesting condition to say the least.

    My kids are 11 and 9. We “dropped out of church” about 4 years ago and only recently have gone back (3 months ago). But honestly, I don’t know whether they’ll go to church when they’re grown or not. They’ve had a mix of evangelical/seeker church, home church, and liturgical church and have been taught to embrace the strengths of each. I wonder what sort of spirituality I’m building into them…

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  63. J. Michael Jones:

    While I really appreciate the choice you’ve made, I think it’s safe to say that many, even most, Christian families won’t make that same choice, and for reasons I assume you would respect.

    Obviously, rethink the church is an option. But most of us are still working with the traditional church in some way as an important aspect of our experience of community, and the thread really operates in that area.

    But you have articulated well a different way of approaching the issue, and one that engages many related questions.

    peace

    MS

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  65. JMJ,

    I think is you read my description of why I think kids should be included as much as possible, you’ll see that what I am getting at is not having them be part of an “institution”, but a part of a community.

    It’s not forcing them to listen to a 45 minute exegesis, but learning how to greet/pass the peace with the elderly, the other children and grown-ups. Teaching them that their voices are needed to round out the singing. Letting them hear the needs of the community and prayer requests of the congregation. Hoping they see the heart of the people and of God through consistent exposure to other people, besides their parents, who want to follow Jesus.

    It’s a tall order and hope…I want it for myself and for my children.

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  66. I remember standing beside a railroad track in Kibeira slum, Nairobi. I remember the smell – Refuse, human waste, unwashed bodies. I remember the sounds – a small radio and microphone barely clinging to life while a preacher yelled to the crowd to be heard above the bedlam. Kids were screaming. The radio emitted nothing but amplified distortion. I remember the sights – men an women with their eyes locked onto the preacher, hungry for the Word. Later that week, the kids sang Mambo Sawa Sawa – roughly translated: “Things are getting better. Things are getting better. With Jesus on His throne, things are getting better. Things are getting better.”

    I have a 3-year-old daughter and a 2-year-old son. Do I teach them to sit quietly in church – sure. Do I send them to the nursery when it’s apparent they need to burn off some energy – sure. Will I let noise or stench or ugliness keep me from devouring the Word – not when I remember Kibeira.

    I’m sure the memory has become more idealized with time. I’m certainly still too often too into myself in worship. I guess the point is we are sooo fortunate that we can bring “order” into our worship experience. Let’s not make it a precondition.

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  67. When we arrive at church the pastor’s husband is usually at the front passing out tambourines and drums to the kids. So I guess the don’t have much problem with them making a noise. My youngest usually makes a bee-line for the space at the front so she can dance. Pretty much since she was born she’s had the idea that Church = the place I go to dance. I have no intention of ever trying to change her mind on this. I think this surprised the congregation at this rural Anglican church the first time we visited, but no one complained. Some of the kids go to Sunday school during the sermon, but the pastor makes it very clear each week that they’re welcome to stay, and they all come back to take communion at the end.

    And as to ‘taking our kids to church’, it was my kids, 4 and 8, that finally talked me back into attending after having avoided it for a year. I think they’re probably teaching me more about worship than I’m teaching them.

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  68. Terri I would only ask, what is the church? Is the church a building? A service? Is Jesus only in a traditional church service? I define the chuch as the community of believers and I certainly would never take my children away from the body of Christ. But I’m talking about a very formal, ceremony that most of us refer to as “church.”

    Remember 80% of children brought up being forced to attend the traditional church service, leave the church when they have the freedom to do so. So I don’t think forcing them to go to a service and calling it “The Church” is the answer. I think we need to re-think what church is, and give them a better way to know the Lord honestly and to know the real Church.

    Radagast, I would say the same thing. If you define “church” inside the box of human tradition, a particular service on particular day in a particular buiding, then I see how my statement would be confused. Of course I’m not saying taking the children away from the true church. No, I want them to experience the true church more than ever.

    Also, regarding the math illustration, doesn’t apply in what I am trying to say. I would never say, allow our Children to be dumb because learning is too structured. I’m saying you would never force a 7 year old to sit in a highschool boring calculus class week after week (unless they were really bright), telling them this is what God wants.

    This is often what we do when we force a 7 year old to sit as the pastor trys to do an exegesis of the book of Hebrews for 45 minutes. That’s what teaches children that Chritianity is a farce. Pretend you are listening, pretend that you are happy, pretend you are good.

    We have made sure our kids were taught well, but taught at the level they were. My kids are really bright. We’ve spent hundreds of hours of not only studying scripture, but philosophy, theology, the arts culture etc. I’m not saying let them run loose, but give them age-appropriate teaching.

    Kids, I don’t think, are turned off by Jesus, but by the extraneous things we force them to do, that have nothing to do with Jesus.

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  69. I pastor a small rural church in a county of 1,700 people. Yep, County, not a mega-church. In the first 7 years of my ministry we didn’t have one baby. We prayed and prayed for babies–and God has brought us 3 within a 3 month period. One cries, they all cry–but now that they are going on 2 years old, one talks they all talk–now that is speaking in tongues when they get going. They don’t need an interpruter, they understand each other.

    My point is this: We were a congregation that had no little ones to cry, scream, and carry on when I preached. We prayed for them, God gave them to us, and we will not ask God to take away the gift of those children because of a distraction.

    There are many times during my preaching that all eyes are on a child, and all of a sudden just about everyone in the sancuary starts laughing. It wasn’t long before I realized they were not laughing at my cleverness, but they were laughing at the antics of our babies. Praise the Lord.

    I do not mean to say that there can not be problems–but for me and the church I pastor, we will take the problems as opposed to no children at all.
    fishon

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  70. Kat 1, training children to worship is a progressive process. I think 4 is a little young, and think expectations can be raised after they are attending school all day in 1st grade. My wife had to take them out sometimes, but we didn’t spank unless it was defiance. One thing she wisely did though was to never make the experience of sitting out in the lobby or in the “cry room”, or “family worship training room” more interesting and relaxed than sitting in the sanctuary. We also had a less formal evening service with hymn requests and prayer requests, and a church full of young families training their children to create a culture where the older families acted like grandparents. It was just about the most ideal situation for training young children in all the essential ways.

    My main point, is when do you want the battle? There will be a battle and transition to naturalize children into corporate worship. I prefer the 5-6 year old, or 7-10 year old battles to the 12-13 year old battles where hormones rage, etc. By winning the battle young, we only faced teaching physical self control and shepherding little hearts as to attitude.

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  71. Michael Bell: We’re just not convinced that a partitioned family on Sunday, even partially so, is the model to take. Eventually the kids will learn to sit still, and to listen. Eventually they’ll start to grasp the sermon. It’s a process, but we’re digging in because we feel that children belong in the church service, and know that they won’t always need so much correction for it.

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  72. Haven’t been able to take the Lord’s Supper in months due to child related issues. I can really relate to this story, but I have no suggestions. Being a church-going parent of small children is very hard indeed.

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  74. J. Michael Jones – Yeah, I see what you are saying reflected in a large number of the kids I teach in religious education. Apparently their parents feel the same way you do – which is why most of them don’t go to church. I feel we should apply the same philosophy to math, don’t go to math class and you can make that decision when you get older – except, with nothing to compare it to they choose not to bother.

    Martha – “Whenever I’m tempted to get irritated at those dratted kids, I remember (a) how we behaved at that age (b) something someone once said about how it can’t be a bigger mess than the Feeding of the Five Thousand”

    Love that line of thought – I’ll store that one away 🙂

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  75. Brett S,

    I put those things (not being bratty…etc) in quotes not because I think children should be running wild in the aisles, but because..as the tone of some of these comments show…there is a sense of disapproval that can be felt by parents of young children when their kids are not meeting the approval of others.

    It only takes a glance, sigh, or eye-roll for young mothers and fathers to be made to feel completely incompetent and unwelcome when their kids are acting like….well, kids.

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  76. Bob,

    Pretty tough words. Do you have children? If they are grown, do they still attend church?

    What about my situation? My oldest son, age 5, has a form of autism called Asperger’s Syndrom. He is on the high functioning side of things, and does pretty well in the service now,(he has a burgeoning interest in theology-if you know anything about Asperger’s you know that it can become “interesting” very quickly when the subject comes up.) But early on, especially after the birth of our second one, it became really tough to wrangle the Kyle family circus on Sunday mornings. It had absolutely nothing with “really not wanting to go to church.” Sometimes we were unable to “get it together” to go to church after an all nighter with a crying baby, and the other one in a rage.
    Add to that my 50 hour a week job, and my wife working part time on my days off so we could keep a roof over our heads and food on the table. There are thousands of people in similar situations, who like me, appear to lack the kind of discipline you encourage.

    j michael jones,
    dude, I’m sorry that was your experience, and no doubt the experience of many others. However it is not universal. What “other people think” and “how we appear” in church has about zero bearing in my life, and in the lives of most of our friends.(This is probably somewhat to our detriment.) I know lots of people raised in the church for whom those issues that you dealt with have never come in to play.

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  77. By the way, contrary to what you may be thinking, people love to see whole families in Church worshipping together. There are a very few who may complain about the distraction, but on the whole most know that the children are our up and coming Christians, our next generation.

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  78. We just made it a habit – every Sunday our children go to Church. When they were younger we made some allowances – like if they got loud we would take them out until they quieted down. The younger ones would see how the older ones acted and would eventually come around. We would have some coloring material for those four and under but once they turned six they were (and are) expected to participate. I find it powerful and humbling that we are able to worship together. As for getting ready – we allow ourselves a lot of time – the older kids are expected to help the younger kids and some of the older kids participate in the Church service as helpers some of the time. We have seven children and we are able to make this work because the kids know that on Sunday this is what we do, not sometimes, but all the time. My wife and I have seven and it can be a lot of fun.

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  79. “my wife had all five of our children trained to sit through worship by age 4,”

    I just gotta ask how? Did she have to take them out and beat them into submission or is there another way? (I’m being serious!)

    My 3 year old son wiggles and talks – loud.

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  80. Interesting that our generation is deterred from attending worship because of the burdens of raising young children. Our parents and grandparents had it so easy. That’s why they never thought once about not going to corporate worship on Sunday morning. Guess we’re just made of tougher stuff, and we’re more committed to Christ…. (o.k. sarcasm over, but I think our generation is wimpy and lazy like none other)

    Since I was busy pastoring, my wife had all five of our children trained to sit through worship by age 4, and even participate in the singing and even get something out of it. She busted her rear doing it, and sacrificed tons, but now, we worship as a family and our kids view it as one of the absolute if not THE best hour of the week. It’s work parents, it will drive you nuts, you’ll want to pull your hair out and shackle your kids, but it’s always been that way. I’m in a culture where parents have their kids signed up for ballet, fencing, karate, violin lessons and gymnastics. They are sacrificing up to their necks for everything except the soul of their children, and then they expect worship to be easy and natural.

    Where’s that easy button that Jesus promised me for everything worthwhile?

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  81. I will never forget the Easter Sunday morning when we are at a Charismatic Episcopal church in Georgia. It was a small church with children in for the whole mass, and there were more than a couple babies and toddlers making noise during the homily. The Bishop was really passionate about his homily and wasn’t phased by the noisy youngsters, but you could feel the tension rising as the kids would not be quiet. Eventually, the Bishop stopped practically mid sentence and said something like “Don’t be bothered by them. Let them laugh and cry, it’s ok. They’re not going to interrupt anything.” Everyone sighed a sigh of relief and could return to focusing on the homily rather than on worrying about people being upset. I thought to myself, after being raised in a church with a “nursery-children’s church-youth group” separatist system that finally, someone welcomed the little children and clearly instructed “Don’t be bothered.”

    All that to say that I believe what is really needed is a change of attitude towards the children in the service. Welcome them, accept their presence as a blessing there as much as anywhere else, and don’t be so easily offended when they act like children. It wouldn’t be an easy change, but I think it would benefit the church as a whole to include them and not act like they’re just some hindrance to the ‘work of the spirit.’ Trust me, if the Holy Spirit is ‘moving’, they won’t get in his way.

    (My quotation marks aren’t sarcastic, just denoting the evangelical lingo.)

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  82. I have 4 young kids. We usually go to the 11am most highly attended mass at the parish. [Full choir, full cry room, full pews (except for 1st row), and full back wall]. Catechism/Sunday school if offered for 4-5 year olds. Nursery is available, but it’s usually easier to take the littlest to mass to avoid screams of being left behind. Of course this usually results in my wife heading off to the cry room around the 2nd reading. We have the added blessing of a Saturday evening mass being predominantly attended by the mature crowd; so my wife’s parents quite often will visit and sit with the 2 youngest grandkids on Sunday mornings.

    My advice: I try to take the kids (without mom) to the 5:30pm Tuesday mass (almost empty church) as often as I can. The stark contrast/silence compared to Sunday mornings is good for me, and the kids adapt to the silence almost instantly. When the retired priest is there we get the bonus of the most solid 3 minute homilies you’ve heard in your life, and by 5:59pm it’s off to McDonalds or Chik-Fil-A.

    I expect my children to “behave”, act “respectfully”, and “not be bratty” whether they are in a church or not, but they also know I love them even when they don’t behave. Without lots of Grace and a constant struggle with patience on my part I know it’s impossible. My heart really goes out to single mothers and mothers whose husbands don’t do their jobs very well.

    Imonk is right! We gotta spend TIME and be there for our kids. Leading them to church is an important, but small amount of that time.

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  83. We do not attend church right now. Partly because my toddler son should not be around large groups of people with his health condition and partly because my husband and I are not sure where we’re at in terms of what we believe right now.

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  85. Kurt,

    What you described didn’t sound that much like workship. Why not do as we did, have them in for part of the service, and then take them to the nursery for the sermon part. Means they get to be part of the service, but not have to sit through a talk that they are not going to understand, and are going to prevent you from understanding.

    It just seemed that there are better options than what you described.

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  86. Here is what we do (far from perfect and I will read through the other comments for ideas):

    We give parents choices during service time – Sunday school happens during our regular services for Nursery through 6th grade, parents may bring kids into the sanctuary (we have coloring pages available), or they can sit in the coffee shop where the whole service is televised. We also have a nursing moms room and a separate cry room. Once a month during our mid week service we take the chairs out of the sanctuary and have a big potluck and the kids are all brought into the sanctuary – I teach a short (15-20min) sermon, then we have discussion questions on the overheads and people discuss the passage at their table.

    I don’t know how to fix the getting to church issues, but would love some ideas about how to make our average service more family friendly. I have a friend whose church makes sure what is taught in the sanctuary is also taught in childrens ministry and each family gets to take discussion questions home, that way everyone is on the same page. That is a great idea if you are very organized (which I am not).

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  87. j michael jones, I have to disagree. Maybe those reasons do enter in some people’s minds, but I don’t believe that’s what most people are going for.

    We,my husband and I, want our children with us as part of the service in order to let them know that they are a part of the church.

    Having children in the service sends a message that they are as much a part of the church community as any other age group.
    They should see people of all ages praying. They should see new believers being baptized. They should have the opportunity to sing and worship.

    They should be incorporated as much as possible, because the church serves as a place of worship for them as much as it does for others. They should be welcomed as Jesus welcomed them.

    The disciples wanted to get the children away from Jesus so that he could do the “important” things in his ministry, but Jesus was having none of that attitude.

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  88. To counter-second Patrick:

    The idea that we need to teach kids that it’s theirs is to be aplauded. Anything participatory for the kids is to be commended.

    I remember visiting both a Luthern and an Anglican church where the pastor would call all the kids up for a 5-minute or so special kid’s sermon. I got the impression that the Luthern church did this weekly, while the Anglican one did it monthly. EVERY child that went up to sit at the pastor’s feet was beaming and seemed really excited to get to go up to the altar area. Both of those times gave me a picture of Jesus saying “Let the little children come to me.”

    Also, I like the way that in the Anglican/Episcopal tradition, communion is for anyone, even though there are “first” communion classes. As a little kid visiting my grandparents’ Episcopal church, I loved getting to take communion.

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  89. Going back a fair bit with these memories, but speaking as a Catholic, attending church with small children expected to sit quietly there for 45-60 minutes and not do anything, say anything, fidget, or disturb anyone – not going to happen.

    My brothers climbed on, under, over, and through the pews. My sister and I, one Sunday, took the ‘congregation may kneel or stand at this point’ bit in the missalette a little too literally, stood up (while everyone else was kneeling), looked around, and loudly asked our mother why everyone was kneeling?

    Never mind the having to sit two of us on one side of her and two of us on the other because otherwise there would be elbowing one another in the ribs, pinching, and who knows what all going on 🙂

    And yeah, I’ve sat through Masses with screaming babies, kids running up to the sanctuary and squirming their way through the altar rails, and all the other fun activities very young children engage in. There’s a fine line between asking parents to control Junior (if he or she is making a nuisance of him or herself), and making church an unwelcome place. I don’t like the idea of a special place to isolate the kids; if they don’t participate as part of the whole congregation, how will they ever learn? Whenever I’m tempted to get irritated at those dratted kids, I remember (a) how we behaved at that age (b) something someone once said about how it can’t be a bigger mess than the Feeding of the Five Thousand 😉

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  90. Eclectic Christian: Yes, there is a nursery provided, but we feel that we should be in worship as a family. And, like I said, we sit in the training chapel, which is an enclosed area in the sanctuary that receives the sound through speakers and has a large window to see the service, but keeps kidnoises inside. It isn’t a mandatory thing by any means, but our kids are noisy and wiggly.

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  91. We are beyond this phase in our personal lives (now that our kids are older), but I certainly do have many opinions, but too short of space to express here.

    First I must ask, why do we take little ones (when I say little here it could mean anyone under the age of 16) to a church service in the first place? I mean, what’s the real-honest reason? We may say that it is to bring them up in a Christian home, teach them about God, and teach them to worship God or others. But I will share, very candidly what I think the true reasons at least why I was taken to worship service as a child and why we took our young children to church:

    1) So that we will look like we are being good Christian parents in the eyes of our peers, neighbors, community.

    2) Penitence. Going to church, we are taught, makes God like us better. It will also make up for some of the bad things we’ve done during the week.

    Here’s what we think our small ones are getting out of the service:

    1) God is amazing. I want to follow him all my life.
    2) Church people are really wonderful people. I want to be just like them.

    Here’s what the little ones are really learning:

    1) God is really weird. It makes Him happy for us to come and sit for an hour and a half and to listen to something that I can’t understand at all. If I make any noise, which by nature I really want to do, means that I suck as a human being.

    2) Church people, including my mom and dad, are very different inside the church than at home. So God really likes it when I act differently in church, smiling and speaking only positive things.

    So Michael asked a specific question, what is the solution? If one is willing to think entirely outside the traditional Church box, (but entirely within scripture) there are many great options.

    For one, sleep in on Sunday morning, then get up, cook your kids a great breakfast, then have an hour wrestling time. Follow this by an hour of direction attention from you as you read books, tell stories or just sit in their closet with them, or in a tent, or in a tree house . . . and talk! Hmm. What does that teach them about God?

    Okay, what then what do we do about real church? Meet with your Christian friends at a coffee shop, bar, in your living room . . . okay, or in a Church building if you want and then share from the heart with each other, where you are in your life, marriage etc.. Encourage one another. Pray together. Have a qualified person, (pastor, teacher) teach from the word. Sing some songs if you like. In the mean time, let the kids do what they want to do. They may want to come and watch, or stay home with a babysitter. But they should not be forced to dress up, sit still and fake it. That’s a bad precedence.

    I’ve written much more (and candidly) about my upbringing as a child in the Bible belt here: http://evangelicalinthewilderness.blogspot.com/2008/11/my-manuscript-chapter-nineteen.html

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  92. As a pastor I had to let my wife look after three kids under five while I was up the front.
    The worst thing for me was watching people look across at my wife disapprovingly while I was trying to preach. If adults cannot cope with some minor kid noise there is something wrong with them – not the kids. They talk about kids being easily distracted…
    How can kids learn to ‘behave’ in church without practicing?
    One of the deacons wrote a letter to the church complaining about the noise of the children and the poor parenting. Since my family was the only family in the church at the time it wasn’t hard to guess who he was talking about. Later I found out that one of his children was so disruptive (climbing under pews etc) the church started a program just to get him out.
    If churches cannot cope with children in services, how can we call ourselves the family of God?

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  93. Tips from Catholic church, seconding Obed:

    If your kids are somehow involved in the church even as minimally as passing around the collection plates, they’re going to find the whole thing more interesting. I was an altar boy for awhile when I was 9 and 10, and for a brief, shining time, Mass was like 50% less sleep-inducing. Let ’em pass out fliers. Let ’em play in the field for an hour before Mass. Teach them that the building is theirs and they might embrace it.

    I once got my ASS BEAT by mom because she thought I was rude to the priest when I was like 4 years old. Don’t do that to your kids. I didn’t even know what she was talking about while she was flipping out. Still mad about that one.

    1 hour Mass > 2 hours worship.

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  94. Well, Plain churches always have children–lots and lots of children–and services are long (2-3 hours), and I’ve never seen one that didn’t have the children in the service for the whole service.

    The key is training children, at home, to sit still, be quiet, and so forth, starting when they’re 6-8 months old. And yes, I know it’s a lot of work, as we have 2 under-two’s at the moment.

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  96. First comment to the “other” Kat. You are to be applauded for your commitment to raising your child in a Christian home. Too many parents fail to set a standard of family worship of any kind. You are instilling some good patterns for your son to follow.
    Then to WebMonk… You said “I think the biggest component is the attitude of the church/pastor/leaders toward kids.”
    I think that is so true. The congregation tends to follow the attitudes of those in leadership. Our church is pretty small, and we don’t have a regular nursery scheduled, so families bring their little ones of all ages. The nursery tends to be used for nursing infants or “time outs” for those who have lost their ability to sit.
    We have kids with handicaps, babies, attention deficits…just like the rest of the world. They need to be loved and accepted by the whole body of Christ, not just those trained to keep them quiet in the nursery. Our kids interact well with the adults because the adults choose to value them. And isn’t that what Christ did?

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  97. Jon wrote “…it can be difficult to get the whole family dressed and ready for any AM engagement…”

    I hope this isn’t taken as simple/dismissive of the issue, but in some areas (large megachurch problems not withstanding), Saturday night services are common (and not just ones that go for the college-pomo crowd). I was a part of a service like this once and it attracted many young families.

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  98. Attending a church which expects children to “behave”, act “respectfully”, and “not be bratty” when you have young children, is like visiting a well-off single friend whose house is populated with expensive objet d’arts and knick knacks.

    You spend all your time worrying that your children are going to ruin your friend’s house, accidentally break something, or annoy your childless friend. It becomes an exhausting visit that you don’t want to make too often.

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  99. Church sucks these days.

    I don’t really mean that, but sometimes it feels that way. We’ve got a three year old and a two year old (NFP worked for us?) and we sit with them in the “training chapel” during the service.

    This means that church consists of endless reminders, warnings, trips to the potty, more warnings, responses to requests for attention and the occasional trip outside for a spanking when things come to a head.

    Our pastor preaches for 45-55 minutes. I think I usually catch about 10-15 minutes worth of it during the service. I should be downloading the mp3s and listening later, but I’m sinful and stuff, so I haven’t yet.

    On the occasional sunday when the kids are not with us, or if they’re home sick and only one of us makes it to church, the difference is amazing. Worship feels like worship again. The sermon makes sense. Church becomes something to be enjoyed as opposed to endured.

    The thing of it is…I don’t know what a “better way” would be. Hopefully they will eventually learn to be quieter and more attentive during church and we can leave the little closed in training chapel. It’s rough, but we keep telling ourselves it is finite, and is the right thing to do.

    In the meantime though…oi. 😉

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  100. I’ve got a few memories growing up in (catholic) church that may be relevant.

    1. I remember being about 3 or 4 years old going to mass with my mother but not the rest of my family. She allowed me to bring one toy (a He-Man action figure). I played with it quietly on the kneelers while the service went on.

    2. I remember being about 5 and my folks helped with the music at our church. My siblings were 3 and 1 at this time. The baby went to the nursery while my brother and I sat with my parents in the musicians’ section. They expected us to behave and we did. I’m thinking the service was probably a 45-60 minute mass, also.

    3. I remember around the same age visiting my grandparents’ episcopal church. BEFORE service, there was a very fun kid’s program for the summer. My brother and I would spend the service with the adults, though. I think my sister was in the nursery (1 or 2 years old).

    4. I remember being about 6 or 7 when it was my mother’s turn in the nursery. My dad was away on a trip or something, so she took my siblings and I in with her. The nursery had a window to the sanctuary and the audio piped in.

    5. When we got older, say 3rd & 5th grades, respectively, my brother and I served as acolytes. This was one of my favorite periods as far as church was concerned during my childhood. I understand that nowadays both girls and boys may be acolytes in all the liturgical denominations here in the States.

    All of that to say, I think it can take creativity, but church+kids isn’t impossible. That said, the 2-3 hour service in some denominations (or non-denominations) may make that more difficult. Also, my mom had a wicked pinch that she would subtly use when we were misbehaving during church. It insured we were as respectful and quiet as young children can be.

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  101. Think our church has it worked out pretty well. Everyone is in for the first 20mins or so of the service (worship and something aimed at the kids) then the kids go off to their ministries. We have a creche for babies up to the age of 3 (although there is never a problem with nursing mothers of newborns keeping them in for the whole service – and nursing them if necessary) – 3 to 5 year olds have their group, primary school age kids have their groups and the older kids (up to age 18) have a bible study group. None of these groups are obligatory though, and if for some reason a family wanted to keep their kids in for the whole service (although we are long sermon (at least 45mins) folks) there would be no problem, as long as the kids behaved in a reasonable manner.

    I’m not sure of the value of keeping kids in for your standard 90 to 120min long Baptist service. With the best preacher in the world, it’s going to be hard to preach something meaningful to adults that is also going to keep a 5 year old amused… but…. I do agree that there is a point where segregating the kids from the adults is counter productive – how do those kids adjust from having ministry aimed solely at them to becoming part of a congregation where they are only one section of the ages represented.

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  102. Going to church, whether you are Jon & Kate Gosselin (parents of twins and sextuplets who take all their kids to church each week… but don’t think I’m elevating them too highly, they also sold their family’s life to TV executives at Discovery Health… sorry, I digress.) Whether you’re a parent of young children or a single person, going to church is a choice and there will ALWAYS be excuses not to go. If it is worth the sacrifice to you (however great that sacrifice may be) you will do it. If it is not, you won’t. It is a priority in my family, so we go every week with our kids (ages 3 and 1).

    As far as what churches can do to accommodate families, I agree with all the suggestions others have made. I particularly agree with Rob, that if we are truly pro-life the bare minimum that we can do as a church is LOVE young children and their parents. iMonk, I still think about that Russell Moore “single issue evangelical” sermon on almost a daily basis (you posted it before the election). Babies crying in church may just be the sound of ‘change we can believe in.’

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  103. My wife and I have three kids age 5 years, 7years and 6 weeks. In the weeks since our youngest was born I have:

    1) Taken the baby to church alone to be blessed at the communion rail while mom caught up on some much needed sleep (The two oldest were with their Father, I am a step dad).
    2) Walked to church with my son (the seven years old) later to be joined by my wife and the two youngest children who were running late (they just made it to the communion rail in time).
    3) Worshiped with my wife and Baby (kids at there dads*).
    4) Dragged my crying daughter to church by my self while my wife stayed home with our sick son and the baby (my daughter cheered up as soon as she saw what a neat craft they were doing in Sunday school -paper plate angels).
    5) Managed to get all five us to church on time (well during the opening hymn anyway)

    My point is that we are relatively relaxed about it. Since we are no longer under the law. We try to do our best but we don’t beat our self’s up if we miss the odd Sunday (although when we do my wife and I usually make up for it by attending a mid week mass at ether at our home parish or at the Cathedral downtown).

    *I does bother however that when two oldest are with there father he doesn’t take them to church but instead presides over an informal “home church service” in his living room but what can you do? (The man work for a Para-church organization maybe he thinks he gets enough organized religion during the week).

    God Bless

    Steve in Toronto

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  104. As far as kids behaving well, I think it is a pretty good indicator of how you run your home. If kids don’t sit at the table to eat, can’t sit still to read or work puzzles or games, don’t have the patience to stand in line at the store or keep their hands to themselves when you’re shopping and these behaviors aren’t expected of them in these places, why do parents think they will magically be able to adopt these behaviors in church?

    If you can’t control your kids in church, I’d suspect you can’t control your kids other places as well.

    Harsh words, I know, but is there a grain of truth to them?

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  105. I don’t have kids, so I’m pretty much going off my own experience.

    The church I went to as a child had four services on Sunday: three worship services (featuring music and message and communion) at 8, 11, and 2:30; and one Sunday School service at 9:30. The children’s service was during the Sunday School service. Children went to their classes, parents went to theirs, and that’s where we had age-appropriate instruction. Then children and parents together went to the worship services. There was a nursery for squalling infants, but otherwise the kids were in the service.

    I never found the pastor difficult to understand. I may have been a bright kid, but I expect it’s more likely that the pastor never wrote his sermons over the head of anyone.

    Yeah, it was a hassle to get us kids up and dressed for church, especially since Dad never attended nor helped prepare us, so Mom was essentially a single parent. It especially didn’t help that Mom fed us donuts and the Sunday School fed us pastries; I regularly got uncontrollably hyperactive and was paddled every Sunday until Mom realized that sugar and me don’t mix. But crazed children and difficult husbands aside, there was never any question about whether we’d go to church. Not from us, not from Mom. Church is what Christians did. The contrast of my atheist Dad made that mighty clear. So it didn’t matter what difficulties might get in the way—we were going. (And if we were late for Sunday School, so what.)

    I’m not a fan of the segregated service. It seems more a convenience for parents than any concern that the children are getting age-appropriate instruction. It’s why the Gen-X church movement started—the kids wanted to bring non-traditional youth group stuff to the adult service, and weren’t allowed, and started their own churches as a result, and now their parents go to those churches because the music is awesome… and sometimes the messages are actually exegeted adequately. But the segregated services continue, and the Gen-Z church is learning that it’s perfectly okay to have a worship service that has videos in lieu of music teams, and VeggieTales in lieu of religious instruction.

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  106. Our kids grew up in the Evangelical church. It was no problem making it to church even when our first was on an apnea monitor and had to be with us in service. I think people who find heading to church “stressful” really just don’t want to go to church. Getting everyone out of the house to go on vacation or school or to Grandma’s should be equal sources of stress. Getting out of the house is called living. It is your desire to reach the destination that makes it easy or stressful.

    Once at church the kids were regularly put into the germ factory called Children’s Church and after a couple weeks we’d be staying home because someone came down with a cold.

    At the Evangelical church I couldn’t imagine subjecting the kids to the 40-50 minutes of blah-blah-blah (to them). Worship would be o.k. but the sermon would be a real test of their patience.

    We now attend a Lutheran church and my kids (albeit older now) and the worship with us even though there is Children’s church available. But the blah-blah-blah runs more like 15-20 minutes and the liturgy provides ample means for them to sing, read, respond, stand, sit, etc. to occupy their time. We do the Lectionary readings at home before and after the service so they are familiar with what will be read/exposited which helps them pay attention as well.

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  107. This quote comes from a Christianity Today interview with Eugene Peterson, entitled, “Spirituality for All the Wrong Reasons”:

    http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/article_print.html?id=34310

    “In church last Sunday, there was a couple in front of us with two bratty kids. Two pews behind us there was another couple with their two bratty kids making a lot of noise. This is mostly an older congregation. So these people are set in their ways. Their kids have been gone a long time. And so it wasn’t a very nice service; it was just not very good worship. But afterwards I saw half a dozen of these elderly people come up and put their arms around the mother, touch the kids, sympathize with her.

    “…Now, where is the “joy” in that church? …But there’s a lot of joy. There’s an abundant life going, but it’s not abundant in the way a non-Christian would think. I think there’s a lot more going on in churches like this; they’re just totally anticultural. They’re full of joy and faithfulness and obedience and care. But you sure wouldn’t know it by reading the literature of church growth, would you?”

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  108. “Going to church” is very difficult for families with young children. The stress of getting everyone up, dressed, fed, in the car and on the road is difficult, even for two parents and especially if they have more than one child. The result can be both comic and tragic.

    As the parent of a 2-year-old and a 5-year-old, I’ll agree that the above is difficult — but, then again, it can be difficult to get the whole family dressed and ready for any AM engagement. I don’t think it’s a good enough reason to avoid joining your fellow believers in corporate worship.

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  109. I’ve experienced the single-parent-taking-four-children-to-church thing when my husband didn’t attend church with us for several years. It wasn’t easy, but it was doable. It meant doing as much as possible the night before: laying out everyone’s clothes and shoes, packing the diaper bag and snacks, laying out my clothes, bathing all the kids, setting the breakfast table, and planning on a simple breakfast (toasted gluten-free waffles are easy, quick, and the kids eat them really fast as they’re a Sunday morning treat only).

    It was both easier and harder taking the kids to their own segregated classes in our evangelical church: nursery for the baby, toddlers, Kindergarten, and Grade 2-3 for my oldest. Then I’d have to check back to make sure the baby wasn’t crying in the nursery, that the kids were being given their gluten-free snacks and not something they couldn’t have, etc. It was nice to be able to worship and pay attention to the sermon and to attend Sunday School classes with no interruptions. But at the same time, I missed being with my kids, worshiping with them. But our pastor at that time would ask any mother with a baby who made the slightest sound to leave the sanctuary from the pulpit.

    There was a ladies’ lounge as part of the ladies’ restroom where we could hear the sermon from the chairs and sofas while we cared for our nursing infants, but again we were segregated from the rest of the church. I missed out on Communion for almost five years because they didn’t offer childcare in the evening services (the only time Communion was offered, and then only monthly), and my babies and little kids were not perfectly silent, so I had take them to the lounge and watch everyone take Communion. When I was finally able to take Communion at a Wednesday night Bible study, I cried for joy while receiving it (even though it was symbolic).

    At our evangelical church now (yes, we’re still at the same church — 15 years now) they allow the kids in Grades 1-5 come up and worship with the rest of the church up until the sermon in the second service — so they get to sing the praise songs and take part in weekly Communion at least. The kids above fifth grade stay in the service for the entire time, although they often sit with friends rather than in family groups. Our kids, however, sit with us. 🙂

    In the Anglican Church I attend on Fridays, all the kids take part in the worship time. It’s a significantly shorter time than the evangelical church — shorter by half an hour at least. I’d have to say that if I had little ones, I would not attend the Anglican services without some sort of childcare for the under-KIndergarten set because I’d be shaking in fear in case they made a noise in church — still a fear remaining from our former pastor’s treatment of moms with little ones. But I enjoy taking all of my kids now that they’re older, and I really enjoy worshiping together as a family.

    Susanne
    San Diego, CA

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  110. PPPPPP helps things on my side – planning the clothes out the night before is absolutely vital once a child gets old enough to pull on clothes.

    As far as the churches go, the details will change about how things are handled, but the core is the attitude. Terri’s point 4 above is exactly right. Being a guy, I don’t particularly care if my (or my kids) clothes match, and when I’m alone to church for whatever reason, I get a bit of good-natured ribbing from a couple of the mothers. But when my wife is with me and we come in with a child wearing jeans and a t-shirt, our church never even hints at disapproval.

    I REALLY appreciate that when a hectic Sunday comes along.

    I’m happy with how our church works (and doesn’t) with children, but even if I weren’t, I would still feel like I had a wonderful church for my kids just based on the love, welcome, and lack of disapproval from the congregation and pastor.

    Be it a great infants and small kids room, or a family service, or a Sunday School program, or whatever – I think the biggest component is the attitude of the church/pastor/leaders toward kids.

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  111. As a single mom of a 3 year old, going to church on Sunday is the one thing I do for me, not my child. I don’t think of it as a hassle, although, I suppose if I wanted to look at it that way I could. It’s just something we do together. My entire week is spent trying to make him happy and doing things to keep him entertained. On Sundays, I go to church to worship God. He goes to Sunday school. It’s more for me than for him. He gets up every weekend anyway. I have to get him dressed anyway. Instead of watch cartoons and lounging around the house on Sunday mornings, he goes to Sunday school to learn about Jesus. He seems to enjoy it.

    I always give him a choice. Go to Mass with me, or Sunday school. Yes – a Catholic church with Sunday school, and the children read bible stories. He always comes out talking about the bible, the story they read and a craft he has made. 2 weeks ago he learned that Jesus can walk on water. And he made a little boat. He loved it. The week before he read a bible story about giants and swords (David and Goliath I think) and he made a paper sling shot. Last week, he got an advent calendar.

    My mom used to drag 5 kids to church every Sunday. We didn’t have a choice. I was jealous of the non-catholic kids and always wanted to go to Sunday school. I’m glad my son has that option.

    Sunday school is 3 Sundays a month and on the fourth, everyone attends Mass as a family. When we go to Mass together, we usually end up spending most of it in the foyer. But that’s ok. As he gets older, he lasts a little longer.

    By the time he receives his first Communion, he won’t attend a special program anymore. He will go to Mass with me. When he is older, he can choose where he wants to go to church or whether he wants to go to church. But in my house, Sundays always start with God because I am a christian. And because I am a Catholic, they start at Mass. And I’m raising my child that way as well.

    Before I returned to the Catholic church, the non-denominational church I was attending started to do a lot of lectures on sex and other kinds of sermons showing how culturally relevant the bible was. I decided that I wouldn’t be comfortable in that kind of worship environment when my son was a teenager. That’s why I am back at the Catholic church. I felt that it was a bit more pg rated and family friendly.

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  112. “Any worshiper who gets upset when a baby starts crying should be smacked on the head. “

    Suppose the Lord is speaking something to that person through a message, and the crying baby drowns out the Lord’s speaking. Should he not be frustrated?

    I have two kids, so I understand this kind of situation. But I’ve seen many parents who let their children get away with all types of things (crying, whining, distracting behavior), and who are completely oblivious to how this affects other people sitting around them. Of course everyone should be patient and compassionate if a baby starts to cry, or if a young child starts acting inappropriately. But if a parent just sits there as if he or she has no responsibility to take care of the child and remove the distraction, then perhaps a gentle word (not a smack upside the head) is in order.

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  113. we have an almost-three-year-old and a four-month-old. my duties require me to be at the church 90 minutes before service, so i go solo. my wife brings the littlins. the toddler room “babysits” our son while my wife holds (and sometimes even, gasp, nurses the baby). it works well, although i definitely wish the three-year-old had some sort of lesson. he will soon, as next year he’ll actually have a sunday school class.

    midweek, we and another family hire a babysitter for a couple hours so that we can worship together as a small group “house church”. that’s where it’s at. meal, praise, prayer, message.

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  114. My wife and I have a (nearly) three year old daughter so we’re right in the middle of this situation. I think it is important to make the effort to get to church. Kids learn the family habits pretty quickly and this needs to be one of them. On the other hand being a parent can be exhausting sometimes so we don’t beat ourselves up on those occasions when we are simply too tired to go.

    It is crucial that the church makes it clear that they welcome families with small children in the worship service and that they understand that kids can’t be expected to be perfectly silent for 90 minutes. Any worshiper who gets upset when a baby starts crying should be smacked on the head. And parents shouldn’t feel like they have to rush right out of the sanctuary the moment their kid starts crying.

    Parents of young children need to adjust their expectations of church. They have the rest of their lives to be involved in activities – now is not the time. And church leaders shouldn’t pressure them into anything because they’re already busy enough as it is.

    If a family is determined to worship together (which I think is a good thing) then they’re simply not going to be able to pay attention as much as they’d like. That’s okay. The Spirit works through the Word even when you’re standing in the narthex.

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  115. I think it is certainly possible for families to remain active in church, especially Sundays. We attend 7:30 am Mass as a family (two boys less than 3 years old). No Catholic Church I have ever attended has ever had a nursery. Catholics seem to be big on the spiritual application of the “forbid them not to come to me” verse. One later Mass takes the children away for…something…during the readings and homily, but they’re back for the Eucharist. I don’t think I would ever let my children go to that. I’d be too afraid of what trendy heresy they would pick up.

    In any case, now that we have been doing it for a few years, Mass feels “wrong” without the kids. Yeah, that means that many times we miss a reading, a homily, the Eucharist, or all of the above, but it’s a sacrifice we are willing to make to ensure we are all together. One advantage, in this respect, of being Catholic is that we are in and out in 50 minutes. And sure, I am sure we irritate some of the older folks around us (the 7:30 Mass is famous for its share of the older set), but we don’t feel too guilty. We are supposed to be a pro-life and pro-family church, and that should, at a bare minimum, mean welcoming families into our midst, whatever sacrifices that may entail.

    The good thing about 7:30 too is that we wake the kids up at 7:00, throw on their clothes, give them a quick snack, and we are still there in plenty of time. Big breakfast when we get home, and a full day to hang as a clan. So yeah, it’s possible.

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  116. Ways churches can accomodate young families:

    1. have “cry rooms”, or set apart areas for parents to be with their very small children, as part of the sanctuary.

    2. nursery for toddlers and pre-k children works well, simply because they can’t sit still for an hour and a half.

    3. keep grade school children in during the worship/baptism/communion part of a worship service, offering a children’s moment for them as part of the service, or having a children’s church up through 2nd grade during the sermon.

    4. have leadership with an ability to ignore crying babies and appreciate children in the service. One of the reasons young parents struggle with having children in the worship service has less to do with their kids, than the sense that others are annoyed by having kids, and all their behaviors, interfere with church. If children are met with understanding looks and smiles, instead of disapproving glances, it takes the pressure off of the parents.

    just some thoughts

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  117. Here are a few things that I have seen work pretty well:
    1. Don’t stress about “Sunday” clothes. I realize that this is part of church culture, but we are blessed to go to a church that doesn’t care if my kids are wearing jeans or if their clothes don’t match. When they were younger, allowing them to choose their own clothes was a risk, but it was one we were willing to take to lower the Sunday am stress level.

    2. I really appreciate a healthy children’s ministry that teaches kids, not just babysits. For a number of years, my daughter was mostly just entertained in kids’ church, but we didn’t worry too much about it because we do lots of Bible teaching at home. My son (3 years younger) is now in Children’s Church and gets a lot more teaching and memorization these days. I like having the kids with me during the singing part of church, but it is nice that they can learn at their own level while my husband and I listen to the sermon.

    3. Our church has a “cafe” where families with young children can sit around tables and watch the service through the glass wall or on TVs with the audio piped in. The advantage is that little kids can run around (within reason, we hope) without distracting the rest of the worshippers.

    4. Once a month, our church has a “family service” where nursery is the only children’s program available. Families can sit together in the sanctuary, in the cafe, or down in the children’s wing (where the service is broadcast on the TV screen).

    This stuff has helped our family and church, but the biggest reason that Sunday mornings are less stressful around here is that my kids are getting older and don’t need my help so much. The biggest thing we can do as a church, I think, is to get rid of the Sunday Service as performance mentality. Wearing certain clothes or looking a certain way is not what is important. Families and churches need to find what works for them – not just do it the same way it’s always been done. Just my 2 cents!
    Catherine

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