Children in Worship – should they be allowed?

While reading the book Christian Worship by Franklin M. Segler I came across a chapter dealing with children in worship services. If nothing else this chapter has brought to my attention a few concerns about how churches handle children in worship.

There are a large number of churches that have what is called Children’s Church on Sunday mornings. More often than not this is not in addition to, but instead of the regular worship service. The children actually go to a separate room to have their own service away from the adults. I began to ask myself the question, what purpose does this actually serve? Does it have a positive or negative effect on our children? I would like to clarify that I am talking about older children, around 1st grade and up. The ultimate question that I am dealing with is whether or not it is better for children to be in the worship service with adults or for them to be in their own service apart from everyone else.

In order to fully understand this I would have to ask each individual church what their purpose for children’s church is. For instance if the purpose of children’s church is an attempt to separate the children from the worship service for the convenience of the adults then I would have to say that it is a horrible practice and a mistake. However, if a church has this program in order to help the children grow spiritually in worship and in a relationship with God then we should consider the question of which one actually helps the child grow more, regular worship service or children’s church.

I believe that worship should be something that everyone experiences in a church, whether they are children, teenagers, or adults. Could it be that our worship services are designed to facilitate the thinking of adults only ultimately neglecting the needs of both children and teens? Shouldn’t our worship services be designed specifically to lead the family in worship and not the individual? Yet it seems as if we are splitting the family up by pulling children out, segregating the youth (offering nothing for them) and speaking only to the adults. Sunday school is an age graded program designed specifically to reach certain age groups. Corporate worship should be designed to reach all age groups as we all come together for celebration and worship. Should worship ever be an exclusive act? If not then shouldn’t we be doing all that we can to ensure our worship services represent and reach at least some aspect of all of its members, children, youth, young adults, median adults, and older adults?

Children’s Church – The bad side:

When we separate children from the rest of the congregation they are aware that they are in pseudo-church while real church is going on somewhere else. They recognize that the service they are in is not actually church and they are in no way learning how to act in a worship service.

It is a known fact that children learn by example. In fact they learn more by example than they do by hearing words, therefore, in the corporate worship services the children will be learning by watching what everyone else does. As their parents sing, take notes, and participate in the service the children are in the process of learning. Watching baptisms, the Lord’s supper, drama’s, things on the screen, these are all visual aspects of the service that will invoke learning in the child. They will learn not only how to act but how to worship even if the content of worship is not fully understood. I dare say this is something they do not often get in children’s church. However the negative side to this is that if a parent talks of the importance of worship and then doesn’t sing hymns the lesson is lost, unfortunately we face the risk of bad examples.

Children are more likely to perceive their world through their senses than adults. Hearing, seeing, touching, smelling, tasting could all invoke a learning experience in a child. The simple act of holding a hymnal or pointing to the words as you sing together as a family could be a powerful learning experience.

Children’s church does place children in an environment where they are with other children. It allows the teacher to design everything specifically for them to help them to learn. Wait a minute! That sounds just like Sunday school. Except for the fact that it is a large class with more kids, more distraction, and a larger need for control. In corporate worship the children are with their parents, and not necessarily in a large group distracting each other.

My other concern deals with the family. As a church, if you say that one of your values is the family and yet you never do anything to help the family or bring them together then I am not sure if the family is really a value that you hold dear. It may be a false assumption! If you separate the family in Sunday school, corporate worship, and Wednesday nights, and if you never have a time where the family is actually together then how can you say you support strong families? Are we not separating them instead? Even during meals you find that children set with children, youth set with youth, and adults set with adults, which represents exactly how they are segregated at every other service the church offers.

Children’s Church – The good side:

As I said before, children’s church does offer an environment where kids can be together with some of their own age group. They can interact, ask question, and have some fun at the same time. It is certainly a time that they can have a meaningful bible study and experience growth.

Children’s church can also help to aid the kids in specific learning capacities. You can teach them about aspects of the worship service, things that we celebrate and do. Though they won’t see it in action and they do not get to participate in it as they would in “big church” they will have some knowledge of it. Just remember, kids learn more by example than they do by hearing it! You can teach them about hymns, baptism, the Lords supper, and other aspects of the service. You can show them videos and do things to hit all of their senses in order that they may learn. There are things you can do outside of the worship service that are certainly beneficial.

There are other times when the needs of children would be best served in a separate worship service as well. If your church has a large amount of children who come without their parents with no previous worship participation experience then it would be better to have them in children’s church. But you could gradually get them into the regular worship service by enlisting adults to serve as church parents.

My Conclusion:

It seems to me like all of the benefits that children get with children’s church could be given to them through Sunday school or other times that children meet together, but the stuff they are missing in the corporate worship service cannot be replaced! It would be better for them to be in worship and experience children’s church at a separate time than for them to completely miss the service and then suddenly when they are in 6th grade be forced into corporate worship with not much previous experience.

There are many different ways that we can reach children in a worship service. Giving out children worship packets, having things in the bulletin specifically for them or things on the screen. You could have children join the service every other week or have them come in for the worship and dismiss before the message. There are several different ways to do this. We have the ability to design our services in such a way that reaches everyone instead of designing them for adults only and boring everyone else to death. I certainly do not hold all of the answers and I would like your opinion on the subject as well. I would however like to see our churches today teaching our children family values by actually letting them be with their family. An inconvenience? Maybe. An experience that could change their life forever? Certainly. Is it worth it? Defiantly!