from the mom
We were kicked out of church last Sunday.
Yes, I know. What could we possibly do to merit that? Eating loudly? Talking noisily? A bad word or two?
No. We have children under the age of 4. And they are not welcome in the main sanctuary at this particular church where we were visiting while out of town last week.
Now I have made my peace with nurseries and children's church. For other people's children. I understand what it is to want to actually be able to hear an entire teaching and be able to discuss it on the drive home. Occasionally I will ask M "Ok, I heard...but I don't what he said after that. Did you get it?"
But more important to me than making it through an entire sermon is that my children be present for worship, be present for teaching, be present for the sacraments. They are just as much the Body as I am and I desire that they quickly come to know that their joyful noise is valued at the throne of the Father.
We are fortunate. Ben grew up in church with us and he does very well sitting through the service. He likes to thumb through our Bibles (and now his own) and the Psalter. He is a quiet child by nature. We know the road may be a little rockier with Kyri, but we are set to go there. (At this point, she likes to flirt with the boys in the back row....Heaven, help us!)
My personal philosophy goes deep to believe that if you shuffle children off so you can worship in peace and church becomes "entertainment" to them, they are more likely to shuffle off entirely in their teens or 20s to more self-indulging pursuits. But I'm ok with parents making their own decisions on this one.
I'm really not ok with a pastor setting a rule that does not allow my children to worship in community. I was told that because some children are disruptive and they don't want to discriminate, all children were required to either be in children's services or in a room called "The Family Room."
So we went to The Family Room. And it was quite nice. It was set up with nice chairs, a TV monitor with the service, Bibles, and a divider with a nursing mother's lounge on the other side. But my children are part of a bigger family--The Family of God. And when we go to church, we celebrate that larger family. And churches who forget that conveniently ignore that when the disciples attempted to segregate the children off when Jesus was teaching, he rebuked them. He told them to "Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 19:14). I think that's pretty clear.
6 comments:
I do, of course, agree with you. (And envy you a quiet child for at least the duration of the church service--getting D2 to stop talking for five minutes straight has so far proved unachievable.)
I find the expression of the reason not to particularly intriguing though--some are disruptive and we can't discriminate. What does this say about the church's willingness to confront and deal with problems, if you can't even say to someone, "Your child made too much noise today, would you mind sitting with them in the back until they can learn to be quiet?"
I'm about halfway on this subject. My kids stay with us for the first part of the service, then go out for the sermon/prayers/Creed, then come back in for the Eucharist. And then I'm so tired that I usually let them go back out after that. It's been a long battle, but considering the size (or lack thereof) of our church, we haven't had much alternative. I'd have taken full advantage of a nursery or a Family Room, and I'm actually glad I didn't have that option.
About a year ago, we did get word that Stuart was being too disruptive (someone mentioned it to the pastor, who passed it on to us). It was rather embarrassing, but in the long run very valuable to be "discriminated" against. We also still sit in the back. :)
(Of course, when they "go out," I usually go out with them because I AM the nursery staff!)
It's amazing what they absorb even while crawling under pews and stuffing envelopes with crayons.
-- SJ
I feel so strongly on both sides of this issue! When naughty children scream so loudly in service that I have difficulty hearing or focusing on the sermon, I think, 'Why don't those indifferent parents REMOVE them already??' But then I do think that you have to learn somewhere, somehow, and that it is a VERY important lesson for even very young children to learn.
I am reading Farmer Boy aloud to Michael right now and am amazed at how incredibly well-behaved and well-disciplined children were back then - they were expected to sit perfectly still for a two-hour service, without swinging their feet or moving their face, and they did it! Children were not genetically different back then - the expectations were simply higher. I would certainly want a church that is welcoming and supportive of the family as a whole, and welcomed its supporting role in this training endeavor.
On the other hand, we attend a church where the sermon is televised and broadcast, and since the occasional screaming child can really disrupt the recording, parents of young children are requested to sit elsewhere during the sermon. There are monitors set up in nice rooms and we have sat there on occasion when Jane has a runny nose and can't be put in the nursery, and I enjoyed the chance to make her sit quietly. She could do it, too.
At our church, the Pastor routinely calls out mothers with disruptive babies in the middle of his sermon, asking that they take their children out. I am so afraid that that will happen to me, that I end up staying in the foyer with CJ through the whole service. Chris didn't like sitting by himself so he would sit back there with me. We couldn't focus on the sermon because we were so worried what others would think if our baby made a peep, that we began to figure it wasn't worth going to church anymore at all! The past few Sundays we have been going to a local church that has been more forgiving on the subject, and it has been a relief. My parents always made us sit through the whole sermon, no leg swinging, etc., and so I hope to teach CJ the same.
I completely agree with you, Rachelle. I'm not intending to turn this into a theological discussion here, but I think that, at the fundamental level, the sentiment you faced at that church reflects a dispensational theology vs. covenantal theology. I would be shocked if a covenantal church had a practice of excluding children from the worship service, simply because of covenantalism's view of how children of believers fit within the larger Body of Christ. I'm not saying that all dispensational churches would necessarily have to exclude children from the service; I'm just saying that such a practice would not surprise me in a dispensational church, given the implications of their theology.
I am firmly in your camp on this issue! I want J2 to learn what we learn and know what we know. He will learn best by following the example of his parents. And, after all, it is the parent's job to train up their children in the way that they should go. We attend church as a FAMILY.
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