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TranscriptIntroduction
Good day to you. I’m your host AMBrewster—author, speaker, and biblical family counselor—and I am overjoyed to say that God’s Word, the Bible, has everything you and your family need today to escape sin, have life eternal, and take measurable steps in personal godliness as you are sanctified in the image of the Jesus Christ.
If that doesn’t excite you and fill you with hope, you’re probably looking in the wrong direction. God’s promises are far more potent and trustworthy than your children’s behavior or your failures. Your family history cannot cancel out the Father’s will for your life. So, be encouraged today. Now, today we’re going to talk about a controversial topic, but I pray that you’ll see my approach is going to be biblically informed. I don’t want this to be about my opinions and experiences—those don’t really help except to, perhaps, illustrate a biblical point. But the Scriptures need to be authoritative in our lives. So, as you consider this topic, you may want to dig a little deeper or chase down some related concepts we discuss. To that end, we have free episode notes, a transcript, and related resources available for you in the description of this episode. Anything I reference during the show will be linked for you there. So, now, let’s dive into the big debate that is Your Children & Children’s Church. Topic
The idea of “Children’s Church” as defined by a separate meeting designed for children that runs at the same time as the “Big Church” or “Adult Church” service came into being during the mid to late 1900’s. But the question is “Why?” Was it developed because it was necessary, or maybe just a good idea, did it arise out of a misunderstanding, was it nefarious in nature, or is it truly amoral—neither cancerous nor benign—to each his own?
Everything has a purpose. Everyone does what they do because they ultimately believe what they believe about God, His Word, and mankind. We’re not always consciously aware what we believe about a topic, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a foundational worldview at play. That means that Children’s Church was originally created because the creators believed something about God, His Word, and mankind—specifically, children. And everyone who has chosen to have their children participate or refrain has done so because—whether they realize it or not—they believe something about God, His Word, and children. This—as is everything else in life—is a question of theology. What do we believe about God? Therefore, it’s abundantly dangerous to be uncertain about why we’re doing what we’re doing. What if we’re doing what we’re doing for a really bad reason? What if we’re ill-informed? What if we’ve been deceived by a person, a system, or our own wicked hearts? So, I want to start today by asking you to consider for a moment why do you send your children to the children’s church program? Conversely, for those on the other side of the equation, why do you not send your child to Children’s Church? And I want to provide two friendly admonishments here at the outset. Regardless of which choice you make . . . 1. If your reasoning is cultural, personal, or secular, it’s founded on sand. We must have a biblical reason we do what we do. It doesn’t matter that doctors or teachers or pastors or cultures or influencers said we should . . . we need to know for ourselves what God says. 2. If you genuinely don’t know why because you’ve never considered the alternative and have always done what you’ve always done, your situation is dangerous because it may or may not be rooted in truth. You might be doing the right thing, but you equally might not. You don’t know, and since you don’t know, you’ve not only put yourself into the dangerous position of potentially doing something that doesn’t please the Lord, but even if it is intrinsically a good idea, it’s not being done in faith. Both of these enumerated extremes are dangerous because they each grow out of the same heart issue. They both make ourselves the ultimate authority. Either I get to consciously choose who I listen to, and it’s not God, or I get to instinctually do what feels right to me in the moment, but I’m still not deferring to the Lord to root my decisions in His principles and commands. Now, I completely understand how some feathers might be ruffling, but—listen—I know that humanity does these things because the Bible says so and because this is my temptation as well. It’s so easy to just do what mindlessly feels right or—like a sheep—simply follow the advice of a social media influencer. The Bible tells us we’re blind, foolish, lost, and like sheep without a shepherd. We’re constantly tempted to do what’s right in our own eyes even though it will end in destruction. So, I share all of these introductory comments because I love you and your family, and because we all—including I—need this reminder. Now, if when I asked the previous question about why you keep your child with you in the main service or send them to children’s church, and you have a clear biblical verse, commands, and principles on which you have rooted your decision . . . great! At least you’ve taken the first step to allow God to be the authority who gets to motivate your decisions. May we all be that humble. However, we also need to be accurate in our handling of the Scriptures. Therefore, don’t just give yourself a pass because you have an answer. We need to be sure we’re correctly interpreting and understanding the Scriptures we’re applying to the decision at hand. People have tried to use the Bible to justify slavery . . . so, yeah, having a chapter and verse doesn’t automatically mean you’ve understood and applied that chapter and verse correctly. But before we get any further, I’d like to tell you about the counseling branch of Evermind Ministries. Faithtree Biblical Counseling & Discipleship is our crisis counseling ministry. We strive to open God’s Word with you to find His will concerning your decision-making, relationships, addictions, money questions, parenting, and anything else for which you need biblical help and guidance. However, at this time, we’re having a minor issue with some of our domains, so I would encourage you to send an email to [email protected]. Your request will get to the right people, so there’s no concern there. And now let’s open our Bibles and try to answer this question. We’re going to look at both sides of this topic from the Scriptures. So, we’re going to start with the biblical arguments for keeping your child with you on Sunday, and then we’re going to look at the biblical arguments for sending them to children’s church. 1. Biblical Reasons for Your Children to Participate in Corporate Worship with the Adults This first point is—admittedly—an argument from silence, but I believe it’s still fundamentally valuable because of the biblical realities. A. Nowhere in Scripture are we given the impression that children need something different than adults. Not only is there no children’s version of the Bible, nor was there a letter written specifically so that kids could conceive of the biblical truth being communicated, but there is also only one faith and one baptism and one salvation. In addition, all of the commands in Scripture that apply generally to mankind just as equally apply to our children. So, no, the Bible doesn’t actually say that kids don’t need something special in order to be evangelized and discipled, but the Bible also doesn’t provide them anything different. On the contrary, it makes the claim that they have everything they need for life and godliness in the knowledge of Christ. Lastly, the Bible doesn’t describe age-segregated worship in the early church. Acts 2:42-47 and Hebrews 10:24-25 depict believers (with no definable age restrictions) gathering together for teaching, fellowship, and worship. Though it doesn’t inherently prescribe it, if all the born again Christians were part of that process, this at least illustrates a model of intergenerational corporate worship. B. Parents have the responsibility to train their children spiritually. Among other passages, Deuteronomy 6:6-7 and Ephesians 6:4 emphasize that parents are primarily responsible for teaching their children about God and His commandments. Now, I can hear the pushback on this point. “Isn’t having them sit under the preaching of the pastor the same as having them sit under the teaching of a teacher?” Well, some have argued that outsourcing spiritual instruction to a children’s church program might dilute this God-given role, especially if the program’s teaching lacks depth or parental oversight. It’s true that we parents would be wise to invite others into the evangelism and discipleship of our kids, but too often Sunday School teachers, Children’s Church workers, and Christian school teachers become the sole source of spiritual teaching in the child’s life. We hand them over, we don’t really know what’s being taught, and we’re not really adding much to it throughout the week. Instead of laying a solid foundation on which others come in and build a little bit, piece-by-piece, here and there . . . it’s others who are doing the bulk of the work, and we parents are looking forward to hanging some pictures in the completed building. The benefit of keeping the children with you is that you know exactly what they’re being taught and can premeditatedly and intentionally tie that in to the spiritual teaching you’re already doing in their lives. Now, that’s not to say that the people handling children’s church are doing a bad job, but sometimes they really are. Romans 12:2 warns against being conformed to the world, and the sad reality is that some children’s church programs incorporate entertainment-heavy or culturally driven methods that parents believe could distract from biblical truth or mimic worldly values. So, this point hinges more on the the parent’s responsibility to not only be doing the bulk of spiritual education, but also to know exactly what other teaching is being done so they can keep those teachers accountable and integrate good teaching into the education that’s happening at home. That process is much easier to facilitate and inspect when the whole family is together. C. Unity of the Church Body Passages like I Corinthians 12:12-27 describe the church as one body, where all members—regardless of age—contribute to worship and community. Separating children during services could result in fragmenting this unity, preventing the children from experiencing corporate worship with the whole congregation. Now, I think I’m being generous when I say this process “could result in fragmentation.” The research is in, and the reality is that it categorically has fragmented the body of Christ. Older saints are not vibrantly interacting with the children; middle-aged adults have no real one-another relationship with the teens. We’re all segmented into increasingly smaller age ranges and find ourselves only ministering to that very small sliver of the local body. Corporate worship allows everyone the opportunity to minister to and with everyone else—even if it’s only singing to one another. It shouldn’t be only that, but at least that can take place when we’re all together and singing. And finally . . . D. Exposure to Mature Worship Psalm 145:4 and Matthew 19:14 suggest that children should be included in the corporate worship of God alongside adults. Keeping children in the main service exposes them to richer theology, hymns, and sermons, fostering a deeper understanding of faith rather than simplified lessons. I’ll talk about this a bit more in my closing thoughts, but much of what passes for children’s church curriculum is being produced with an evolutionary mindset at its roots. Now, I’m not suggesting that any of these lessons are teaching evolution, in fact, they’re likely all teaching creationism, but the educational philosophy that is the foundation of our modern academic system is rooted in an evolutionary worldview. I did an episode a little while ago called The Truth and Lies of Developmental Stages. In that episode we grappled with the biblical and historical realities that children do not require simplified and dumbed down material. Our Expectational Education Series opens God’s Word, the history of mankind, and modern science to prove that children were designed by God to rise to the level of the expectations in their lives. When we give them little, they mature little. When we equip them to grow in leaps and bounds . . . they quite often do. Now, if the children’s church program is exposing them to all the same rich teaching, hymnology, and multigenerational relationships, why does it have to be separate? And we know that’s precisely the opposite reason Children’s Church was created. It was created in part because of the belief that children don’t belong in the service with the adults; they need different programming. Now, let’s pivot and consider . . . 2. Biblical Reasons for Your Children to Attend Children’s Church *Long Pause* Listen, my friends, there are absolutely no biblical reasons for children to attend children’s church. There are many secular reasons that are thrown around, and there are some really bad interpretations and applications of certain bible verses, but there are categorically no biblical commands or principles that would lead us to believe that children should have their own separate program. And I want to prove these claims I’ve just made. First, let’s have fun with AI for a moment. I know that the Bible doesn’t have any commands or principles that would encourage me to send my kids out of the corporate worship of God’s people, but I wanted to see what claims were being made by other people. So, I Googled “biblical reasons for children to attend children's church instead of the adult service.” Now, Google’s AI wanted to have the first opinion, so I read what it had to say. Here was its first point, “Age-appropriate teaching.” And how did it biblically justify that children need teaching that is age-appropriate? Well, it suggested that “Deuteronomy 6:6-7 calls for parents to diligently teach God’s words to their children,” but then it concludes, “suggesting the need for tailored approaches.” Thank you, AI. While, you’re at it, please create an image where you forget how many fingers a human has. It’s second justification of it’s point that kids need age-appropriate teaching came from Ephesians 6:4 where it makes the argument that this verse “instructs fathers not to exasperate their children but to bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord,” from which it infers, “implying a need for age-appropriate methods.” This, my friends, is a beautiful picture of eisegesis. Eisegesis is the reading into the Scriptures our own ideas, biases, assumptions, and beliefs instead of drawing out the meaning God intended. If you want to have a biblical understanding of what it means not to provoke your children to wrath, please listen to our episode entitled Provocative Parenting. It will be linked for you in the description of today’s episode. But—of course—I didn’t want Google’s AI to represent the other side of the argument. So, my second observation is that on Google’s first page, there appeared to be only one article that actually tried to make an argument for children’s church. In fact, that article was called “6 Reasons Why Children Should NOT be in the Adult Worship Service.” That title excited me because I was really interested in if they found some biblical truth I had missed. But before I clicked on it, I did think it was telling that all the other articles were about why children should not be in the service. Now, that’s not what I asked Google to give me, but that’s the best it could do. Anyway, here are Relevant Children’s Ministries’ 6 reasons children should NOT be in the adult service. Their first argument . . . which is generally the first argument made for this position . . . is “Children need age-appropriate worship.” But what is their biblical argumentation? There was none. There were no verses, passages, principles, or even biblical examples of this point. Instead, they argue “In other scenarios, we wouldn't put children in an environment that's not age-appropriate. Think about it. There's a reason why children are not in college classrooms. It's not what they need or are ready for at that stage in life. Children have unique spiritual needs that can't be met in an adult worship service. That's why it's vital to create environments where they can worship, learn and interact on their age level.” Now, those of you who know me and my family will recognize the silliness of the college class comparison, but I hope you also identified that they made a categorical statement that “children have unique spiritual needs that can't be met in an adult worship service,” and just expected us to accept it with absolutely no evidence. In fact, their argumentation is actually worse than that. They go on to say, “The Word of God is equally inspired, but it's not equally applicable. A 7-year-old doesn't need to know how the Beast of Revelation applies to his or her life. A 5-year-old doesn't need to learn from the life of David that you shouldn't commit adultery. Instead, they need strategic, child-focused teaching that will give them a solid, Biblical foundation to build their lives upon.” This, my friends, is not biblically accurate. In fact, the fact of the matter is that God did inspire His Word to teach, reprove, correct, and train all His people regardless of their age. That means that He definitely wants anyone who can read to know about David and Bathsheba and the Beast. And then they add insult to injury with some of their following points. Their second point is that “Children distract those around them.” Once again, there is no wiggle-room in this statement. It’s a foregone conclusion. Now, yes, some parents allow their kids to be a distraction, and we’ll talk about that briefly, but not everyone’s kids are a distraction. In fact, I’ve known of very young children who were less distracting than some of the pastors in the church. Now, I really don’t want to waste any more time on their remaining arguments because not a single one is biblical or beneficial. It’s all rooted in stereotypes, bad logic, and secular evolutionary thought. So, instead, allow me to read a portion of a helpful article. There is book entitled “Let the Little Children Come,” which does a beautiful job of covering all the glorious biblical truth that needs to be considered in this conversation. But in an article entitled “Why We Let the Little Ones Come to the Service” written by the books author, Scott Aniol, he provides this very important reflection. “Some of the rationale for taking children from worship is a secularist education philosophy. Rejecting the philosophy of education prior to him, Horace Mann argued for the systematization of education in which students were grouped into peer groups of similar ages and locked into fixed learning paces. Later, Granville Stanley Hall, a Darwinian evolutionist who also had a significant impact on the dominant education philosophy of the day, taught that children evolve from a primitive stage to a more enlightened stage, mirroring the evolutionary stages of humankind, and thus children must be educated apart from their parents lest their development be hindered. This philosophy was applied by the father of modern public education, John Dewey, who further argued that parents were incapable of educating their own children. Therefore, the public school, not the home, was considered ultimately responsible for the instruction of the next generation. “It wasn’t too long before Christians began to accept and adopt this underlying philosophy of education. While Christians initially rejected the Darwinian foundation of this philosophy, they nevertheless bought into the idea that experts were better equipped to educate children than their parents. Even worse, this philosophy began to make its way into churches as well, impacting philosophy and practice of the discipleship of children. “The growth of the public education system, with its graded structure of peer groups, further exacerbated the shift in church education philosophy; since children and youth were accustomed to spending most of their time in peer groups, away from their parents and most other adults (except the “expert” teachers), they no longer wanted to be a part of intergenerational church gatherings. The fact that savvy entrepreneurs deliberately created sales markets based on increasingly fragmented age and social demographics only increased divisions between generations within churches. “It was in this environment, both within the church and without, from which programs grew like modern Sunday Schools—church education hours for children often substituting for regular spiritual discipleship in the home—and children’s church—a meeting for children during the regular ‘adult’ service. Some churches have even created gatherings and substitute services for teenagers, not expecting integration into the larger body until after graduation from high school, if even then.” 3. Concluding Thoughts Children’s Church was developed and implemented in the mid-to-late 1900’s, but its development and implementation were not informed by the Bible—or even historical analysis. For thousands of years of human existence, children worshipped with their parents. This was true in the temple worship as well as in Israel’s synagogs. It was the case in churches for literally thousands of years until some deluded men suggested that Darwin’s findings meant that it was dangerous for our kids be taught grown-up truth. Consider Deuteronomy 31:12-13, “Assemble the people, the men and the women and little ones and the sojourner who is within your gates, so that they may hear and so that they may learn and fear Yahweh your God and be careful to do all the words of this law. 13 And their children, who have not known, will hear and learn to fear Yahweh your God, all the days you live on the land which you are about to cross the Jordan to possess.” Also consider that in Paul’s letters to the church, he included instruction for the children. They had to be there to hear it, and he didn’t send a dumbed-down, age-appropriate version for them. And it was Jesus Himself who said, “Let the little children come.” I encourage you to read Scott’s full article as well as his book if you’re interested in the many more passages that illustrate intergenerational corporate worship and provide principles for navigating the situation. And it’s here I want to make a few observations and end. In order for the corporate worship of God’s local body of believers to benefit everyone there, certain things need to be in place. A. Everyone must come with a heart to be taught, reproved, corrected, and trained. That includes the children. B. Parents need to be intentionally and premeditatedly prepared to guide their kids through the service in order to help them glean the most from it. Part of that will include . . . First, Parents need to help their kids learn self-control. I’m not suggesting that kids need to sit with their hands folded the whole time, but the Bible says that children are foolish, selfish, and lack self-control. They need to be taught how to mature out of that behavior. Sitting quietly in church can be a vital part of that process. And don’t come at me with the kids-need-to-be-kids propaganda. That statement is both theologically and historically inaccurate. When God did speak directly to the kids in His Word, what did He repeatedly tell them? Obey your parents to My honor and glory. Our modern society is where it is today in part because we allowed kids to be the foolish, sinful, unregenerate little people they are. We didn’t expose them to the truth of the Word, we didn’t pave the way for their maturity, and we’re paying the price with infantile adults walking around. Second, Parents need to help their children understand the purpose and importance of the service and the various elements. Our kids aren’t inherently going to understand why we have to pray and sing and listen to that guy talk and read the Bible and put money in the plate. God gave us to our kids so they can learn why we do what we do. And third, Parents needs to layer what’s being learned at church onto the foundation of spiritual truth they’re already teaching at home. And then . . . C. Christians of all ages need to invest in the lives of Christians of all ages. Pastors equip us to do the work of the ministry which is speaking truth in love to each other so that we call grow in unity and in subjection to Christ. And God intends all of us to do that with all of us. Conclusion
Now, in conclusion-conclusion, we have another resource that may be helpful for you when it comes to the importance of your family assembling with God’s people. It’s a series called Your Family Needs to Go to Church, and you can find the link—along with all the others—in the description.
And, with that, we’re done. So, please share this episode with your friends, and never hesitate to email us at [email protected] or leave a voicemail at (828) 423-0894. On our next episode we’re going to talk about Show & Tell Parenting and why it’s so important. I’ll see you then.
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