Why should children worship with adults?

This topic is drawing a good bit of search engine interest, so let’s address it.

2×2, comprised of members of Redeemer Lutheran Church, East Falls, has visited 42 Lutheran churches in the last 18 months. (We have been able to do this because our denomination locked our congregation out of our church and stripped us of any status or voice in the ELCA as it claimed our property and endowment funds.)

We found the status of children and youth in worship to be shocking.

In most of the churches we visited, the number of children present was few to none, with even weaker statistics for youth.

Most churches are fashioning the worship experience for adults only and dismiss children very early in the service.

This was new to 2×2 because children were always very much a part of our worship and were part of our growth spurt in 2006 and 2007.

We’ve been reading another congregation’s chronicle of their growth which parallels the Redeemer experience.

We are going to compare some major points from this book with our experience over a series of posts.

The first is the experience with children in worship. The book is Scattering Seeds: Cultivating Church Vitality by Stephen Chapin Garner and Jerry Thornell of the United Church of Christ in Norwell, Massachusetts.

When this church began to rethink its ministry, children worshiped separately from adults.

2×2 Ambassadors discovered that this structure has become popular in Lutheran churches in the Philadelphia area as well. This goes against Lutheran philosophy which values the concept of corporate worship being the expression of all the gathered people of God.

We suspect that this key concept of Lutheranism has been abandoned for trendy reasons.

Parents want children to have Sunday School training but do not want to attend education offerings for adults. Answer: teach the kids while the parents worship. Kill two birds with one short hour of church commitment.

The long-term drawbacks of this practice are many:

1. Children first encounter worship at an age when it will all seem foreign.
2. Children will get the idea that worship is for other people.
3. If there is a gap in children’s education from the young elementary years and adolescents, teenagers will be entering church at a time in their lives when they are most critical of institutions and adults around them.
4. The adults who teach the children never get to worship.
5. The adults leading worship are distanced from their congregation’s educational offerings.
6. Adults attending worship do not participate in learning and are less likely to grow in faith and church commitment.
7. The worshiping body continues to be designed around the preferences of adults and fails to mature and change with input from younger members. It therefore becomes more archaic, which might not be noticed by your congregants, but will be noticed by visitors or children attempting to become involved at a later age.

The Scattering Seeds church decided to change this and stopped offering classes during worship. They encouraged families to worship together.

Pastor Garner tells of his congregation’s initial resistance. The parents complained that it was a strain to get the family out the door on the one day of the week when they wanted to enjoy leisure. (He also notes that one of the biggest complainers had no trouble rolling the kids out at 5 am for hockey practice on Sunday mornings.)

Another reason: parents want to leave religious nurturing of their children to others. Martin Luther would be rolling over in his grave! He taught that religious instruction is the primary responsibility of parents and wrote his catechism to help them.

Still another reason is that many adults are uncomfortable with religious education. They view their confirmation as graduation from religious learning.

The Scattering Seeds church is still working at this, reporting mixed results with significant early successes.

• Worship was a bit more chaotic at first as children got used to participating. After about a month, families with children had settled in. Children knew what was expected and adults developed a tolerance for the occasional fussy child.
• Their biggest success was that youth were soon part of worship. As children matured they felt comfortable taking on new roles in worship and continued to attend after their confirmation.
• The most difficult hurdle, they report, was accustoming adults to the idea that they, too, should participate in religious education.

2×2 had discovered many of the same things. Our children often outnumbered adults in worship and were comfortable in many leadership roles. It was not unusual for children to volunteer and let adults know they were ready for more responsibility.

Adults met for worship during the week. At first it was the ladies of the church but men were beginning to stop by and participate as well.

Scattering Seeds reports that their new mantra, Education for All and Worship for All, is making a difference in their church growth and has even resulted in higher giving.

It’s worth exploring!