Worship with Children Is Quality Family Time
The need for worship is innate. The sense that we are part of something bigger than ourselves dates to Adam and Eve.
Children have this sense of wonder which is at the core of spirituality. Everything in life is big and powerful. The adults in their lives must teach them to encounter and embrace their sense of wonder. An alternative is to allow them to grow into adulthood living in fear and confusion about all things beyond their control.
Secular culture is geared to avoiding this, filling every waking minute with some form of self-gratifying, self-improving or money-making activity. Such activities have value, no doubt, but it is easy to be swept up in the “importance” of all this activity.
If a child’s natural sense of awe is not nurtured from their earliest years, it will be replaced in their youth with “busy-ness” that is easier to process emotionally. The easy temptation is to replace what is difficult to understand with activities in which rewards are tangible and immediate. There are so many activities to choose from. You win the soccer game and feel good; you lose and feel bad and direct your attention to winning next time. There is always that hope of bringing home a trophy.
Religion is more complex — but then so is life!
Often it takes a catastrophe — personal or national — to bring us to our knees. If our children have no experience in seeking spiritual help, they will be lost when crises occur.
In our Ambassador visits we have been surprised at the number of churches that dismiss children from worship before the scriptures are read (a large majority). One pastor announced that the children may now leave to attend age-appropriate activities. With the very few number of tweens and teens we encounter in church, we wonder if this approach is helpful in building Christian community.
When we dismiss children from worship, we are teaching them to expect the focus to be on them. At what age should that stop? Furthermore, worship becomes “something adults do.” Why do we treat worship as if it were an R-rated movie?
We also wonder how this practice affects the worshiping community as adults forsake worship to tend to the children. One church we visited emptied by half ten minutes into the service. A good number of mothers followed the children out of the sanctuary.
Worship has no age requirements.
There is something very special about time spent in worship with your children. It can be frustrating at first, as they squirm and fuss, but children soon learn that worship is time when the focus is not on them. They come to first accept this and later to participate. For this transition to take place, they must be present!
Parents should value the chance to sit with their children, perhaps with one in their laps and an arm across the shoulders of another. The opportunity for chldren to hear their parents voices raised in song, to see their fathers and mothers kneeling in silent prayer, or to hear the words of confession or prayer coming from their lips is invaluable to their own spiritual development. They will observe at first, just as a baby observes from its crib. But the day comes very quickly when they join in singing, prayer and understanding. Children in worship are learning to know their parents in a way they will encounter nowhere else. They are coming to know the family and presence of God.
Worship is exactly what so many parents seek — quality family time.