Monday, January 22, 2007

Take Your Kids to Church

Many of you know that recently we made a change in churches. Which by the way, one of the hardest things to do. I have much to say about the church of America, but will save that for a future post. This post is dedicated to my thoughts about bringing children to church.

To be certain, a strength of our previous church was it's children's/youth ministry. In fact, the woman who was responsible for the leadership of this ministry was sought after by a mega church in California, where she eventually felt God was calling her. I think it's difficult for a church to develop a strong children's ministry. Difficult as it may be, I understand that research shows it's also one of the few key elements of a successful church. Of course, that makes sense. If people feel secure leaving their children for an hour or so, they'll keep coming back. Thus, a consistent group of attenders (please recognize that I am not suggesting that just because people keep coming back, that a church is "successful" or even "healthy")

We've recently attended a different church and I have found myself considering the worth of continuing to go to the effort week after week of bringing the kids to church. In the couple of times that we have attended we have been floored at the amount of Spirit-filled worship that we have witnessed as well as the types of messages that have absolutely overflowed with Truth! Forget about dancing around issues or watering down the Gospel for the sake of relatability or outreach. Honestly, Truth is Truth! That has been a huge positive point for us! However, we have had to have both Anna and Alissa in the service with us. Of course, as you can imagine, this does compromise the magnitude of the service overall for us. It has been refreshing that we are not the only ones who have their kids with them.

Okay, that being said, I have been inspired with these thoughts and the following conclusion. I thought back to when Andrew was a baby and the girls were not around yet. I brought Andrew into church during the worship time nearly every week. We were very intentional about this. We really believed in the value of having Andrew grow up seeing how to worship in the Spirit and to grow up experiencing that freedom to worship. As our lives evolved and our family grew it was easy for that value to slip away, but once again, when faced with this dilemma, it was brought into the forefront of my mind. As I sat there trying to keep Anna quiet and Eric was trying to do the same with Alissa, I thought, "Uggh, what's the point of even coming to church if we have to devote ourselves to the kids while we're here?" And quickly, it occurred to me--divinely, I suppose-- that indeed it is important for our children to understand that going to church is a value that we place a lot of importance on. And especially for the girls to witness this kind of Spirit filled worship themselves.

So, my conclusion is this: Of course sometimes it's hard to take your kids to church. And sometimes it's just easier not to do it. I'm not suggesting by any means that anyone should cross over into legalism and never skip church or feel that it is indeed appropriate to stay home occassionally, but I am suggesting that as a general rule, even if it's hard, it's better to instill the value and the discipline of going to church in our children starting at a young age.

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