On Taking Small Children to Church

At Mere Orthodoxy, Joshua Heaven has written a beautiful piece on taking small children to church. If you are, or have been, that parent, you know how stressful it is. But when church is done with a Christian imagination, and children are invited into that story, so much grace comes of it. This piece is a beautiful reminder and well worth your time. Read the whole thing here.

There’s so much good stuff in this article, but here’s a sampling:

Jesus physically touched them, invoked God’s blessing upon them, knew them, and they knew him. Accordingly, while corporate worship should not become disorderly or unruly, it is entirely appropriate for the sanctuary to be filled with the coos, cries, and manifold sounds made by little children. Such sounds are not merely made by “the next generation” or “the future” of the church; today, right now, the kingdom of God belongs even to them, and the sounds they make are the sound of God creating little Christians through the preaching of the Word of God, prayer, the sacraments, and all that the church does together. What are we robbing ourselves of, if our children grow up never having held a hymnal alongside us, never having knelt next to us at the altar rail to receive communion, never having beheld the profound sight of the primary authority in their lives—their own parents—kneeling before God, confessing their sins, and asking for forgiveness? Bringing one’s children to public worship is far from a panacea for disciplining young people, but it is surely indispensable, as perhaps the primary means by which God might sow his Word into little hearts that can bear fruit now or in time to come.