What I have discovered as a father of five children under the age of 13 is that children have an enormous capacity for repetition. My little 4-year old would have us read him the same book seventy times seven. Chesterton opined about this when he wrote that “Children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead.” I have nearly died many times, and my sweet wife is on her third resurrection.
Children like to do things again which means that for churches to invest in them, a congregational liturgy needs to keep in mind the repetitive nature of the faith. Israel’s history teaches us that repetitive faith is passed down to our children and our children’s children (Deut. 6).
Our children are not in need of novelty; they are not in need of more entertainment, they are in need of a substantive faith that pushes them further in their stories. It is okay for a 2-year-old to be singing “Holy, Holy, Holy” because God is holy and that child needs to sing truth even if he does not grasp the majestic purity of God’s wonder and grace. But again, do any of us truly grasp it?
When I hear a little one singing along to “Holy, Holy, Holy,” I am experiencing as a pastor and the same for parishioners, something sublime. Out of the mouth of babes and infants (Psalm 8:2), that child is declaring the deep praises of God. Why should he only need to express minimal truths outside the assembly and why should the assembly of grown-ups have that luxury alone? What makes the older disciples any more capable of expressing praises to God than the little ones? After all, Jesus rebuked his own disciples for operating on that basis (Mat. 18-19).
The third argument often used against the keeping of children in worship is that we need a more specific didactic focus for our children. In essence, keeping kids in worship with parents is a waste of time since they will get nothing or little out of it. “They are, after all, children, and lack the capacity to grasp the language of a worship service.” Therefore, there is a need for a more child-appropriate classroom setting. This is likely the more common argument and one based on concern for the learning process of children.
I will stress once again what has been stated before. The worship service is not a classroom; it is an experience in God’s story that runs through the Gospel narrative. Any worship service that reserves the Gospel story only for the sermon is missing the opportunity to accentuate God’s proclamation throughout. This leads to another common problem: we have often made the worship service into a competition in note-taking. However important the task of taking notes may be (and it can be helpful, especially for older kids), we need to be cautious not to equate taking notes or listening to a sermon as the worship service itself. I am all in favor of Christian education classes before or after worship where more in-depth training can take place, but here we are talking about the mandated act of worship which is not an act of mind only, but soul and body.
If worship becomes a classroom, it’s no wonder that we have allergic reactions to the idea that children should sit with us from beginning to end. The little children I know quickly embrace the repetitive nature of the Gloria Patri or the Doxology or the Sanctus or the Three-Fold Amen or throw in another aspect of church rhythms. They don’t complain, but they will often say, “Do it again!”
It is true that the difficulties increase if you are part of a congregation where the structure of worship changes from week to week, but it can be done because in every service there are repetitive elements, and those can be stressed and memorized easily.
The concern for instruction at the level of little children is only a concern if one views worship as secondary to the shaping of our children’s minds. But God has said again and again that worship is formational and there is no greater formative time in the life of a human than when he is small. We want our habits formed by rituals/habits no matter how complex initially, and the worship service provides not just ordinary rituals/habits, but holy formative acts that change and mold us into better humanity in Jesus Christ and our children should partake of this joy with us.
