June 08, 2008
Chris Strevel

The colorful signs announcing children’s summer programs are springing up. With titles like, “Adventure Island” and “The Great Quest,” children are sure to have a variety of fun-filled options. I am appreciative of the concern that churches demonstrate toward their younger members. Our Savior said that the kingdom of heaven belongs to them, and we should do all we can to present the glory and power of that kingdom to their hearts and minds.

Larger questions present themselves. How should we minister to our children? How are their present needs and future opportunities for service best developed? Since the historic Christian faith is presently a cultural minority, it is certain that our children will be influenced by the images, idioms, and styles of the majority culture of secularism, even as we do. As we, therefore, are forced to be counter-cultural in an attempt to preserve integrity, biblical religion, and the seeds we pray God will use to transform culture by his word and Spirit, we will make decisions that will determine the degree to which the broader culture will influence them, and the way in which they live in it. Should we adopt a participative stance? A protective stance? A separatist stance? A live-and-let-live stance? A plethora of options are available to us, and one can find the entire gamut represented in local churches. The only way we can begin to answer these questions and, therefore, evaluate the various options for our children, is to understand our children in the light of Scripture.

The first thing we must recognize is that our children do not belong to us. They belong to God. As such, they are not wards of the state or even wards of the family. They are certainly not specimens for social experimentation and education paradigm fads. To say that our children belong to God is to affirm the Bible’s teaching that they are God’s creative work, his image-bearers, and the recipients of his covenant promises. As such, the only safe and legitimate way to raise children is in accordance with the will of him to whom they belong, and his will is not found in parenting journals and not even in ostensibly Christian parenting books but in Scripture alone. It is certainly not found in personal experience and family tradition. Unfortunately, many of us fall back on the way we were raised, or if we look back upon our youth with disdain, we react too strongly in the opposite direction, determining to correct the failures of our parents.

Since our children belong to God, they must be brought up to think and live in terms of his purpose for their existence. They learn to do this in the home and in the church. With respect to the church over which Jesus reigns uniquely as Head and King, it is the responsibility of parents to seek the best church home that will assist them in raising their children in the covenant. Churches short on teaching, though they may be long on fun, may seem to make serving Jesus quite exciting, but this is unrealistic. While serving the Lord has its deep joy, it also brings with its cross-bearing and sacrifice, lessons that none can learn too young. The best way to prepare them for the realities of adult maturity in the body of Christ is to feed them a consistent diet in the whole counsel of God. At this rich banquet table, they will be exposed to the entire spectrum of emotions, doctrines, and experiences that define and direct living for God in this world. Whatever else we do for them, the preaching of the whole counsel of God is the power of God unto salvation in their young lives.

We cannot begin too young. This does not mean that toddlers should be expected to sit still throughout the length of the worship service and disciplined for squirming a little (or a lot). Training for worship begins in the home, around the family altar. It is sufficient when they are young to watch father and mother sitting still, reading God’s word with interest, and praying. As they grow a little, especially in their language ability and motor skills, longer times of sitting are appropriate. Involve them. Teach them that knowing God’s will is a family project, a participatory opportunity, a marvelous family experience. Family worship need not be lengthy; consistency is vastly more important. When family worship is joined with ongoing love, explanations they can understand, and a winsome example, you will find them in a few years sitting beside you in worship, seeking the Lord with you. Admittedly, this is not utopia, and some children require more effort than others. Use available nurseries if you need to do so. When Nehemiah read the entire Pentateuch to the standing people of God, “those with ability to understand” are singled out. I assume that those of insufficient years or ability to understand were otherwise cared for by their parents and others willing to assist.

Of course, the answer to today’s short attention spans is to make them worse through children’s church. Whether or not a biblical case for children’s church is theoretically possible, in practice it is usually unworthy of the name “church.” Does worship consist of puppet shows, dramatic presentations, and stimulating visuals? Only if we wish to prevent maturation and preclude the development of the mental, spiritual, and emotional abilities that are absolutely necessary to worship God. Children’s church began only a generation ago; the fruits are worship services for adults that are for spiritual infants. Do not misunderstand me. I am not saying that everyone who ever has or does participate in the children’s church movement is infantile. I am saying that such practices make maturity in Christ extremely difficult to achieve. The goal of childhood training is not to create those incapable of digesting solid meat because their youth and teenage years were wasted upon side shows. It is to bring about the passage from “when I was a child I thought like a child” to “but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” The problem with our present church culture is that we are finding it increasingly difficult to put away the childish things. We have adopted our culture’s revolt from maturity, pushing back adult responsibility well into a person’s twenties and thirties, if it comes at all.

Then, I remember John. “I have written to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the wicked one.” The biblical writers are honest about the challenges facing youth. They do not idolize youth, as if this is man’s purest period. Leave him to himself, some people say, and all will be well. This is Rousseau’s philosophy, the poison fountain from which adolescent impurity and stubbornness spring, but it is certainly not Christian. Our heavenly Father presupposes that children need strong meat as much as adults. Their digestive abilities must, therefore, be developed, and as quickly as possible. The steps we take along the way must facilitate their ability to handle strong meat so that they can overcome the wicked one. The only certain and divinely prescribed way to accomplish this is through careful, loving instruction in the home and early introduction into the worship of God’s people, so that the enthroned Savior can feed his little lambs upon the heavenly manna that alone brings spiritual growth and ability to see through his deceptive schemes. We are not ignorant of his devices; or are we?

Keeping children childish as long as possible is one of his best schemes. It will make them easy prey for his wiles. It will forestall maturity until the bitter lessons of sin are learned by hard experience rather than through the consistent, careful warnings of parents and teachers. The children of professing Christian parents are adopting relativism; according to the Nehemiah Institute, which tests Christian worldview aptitude by administering tests to tens of thousands of Christian young people, less than ten percent have a consistently Christian worldview, even when they attend ostensibly Christian schools for the majority of their education. Sixty percent affirm that no one can know anything for sure. Over half say that they would have sexual relations if they were “sure they were in love and likely to marry the person.” Less than half retain their faith during and after college. These sorrowful statistics are the fruits of a pabulum diet: excitement, more excitement, and little exposure to the whole counsel of God. We simply cannot overcome the wicked one with fun and games, visuals and outings. Our children are in a battle for their souls, and unless we are extremely careful, wise, doggedly committed to Scripture, wearing out heaven with our prayers, and utterly dependent upon God’s promise of grace, we can play right into the devices of the wicked one. He loves it when we convince ourselves that we really are not in a battle, that serving Jesus is always fun, and that if something is a little challenging, it must not worth the time or attention.

It never ceases to amaze me the things children learn from sermons. I am not thinking here of my own children, toward whom I must repent for my many failures as a father, but of other children. They show me their notes; they were listening. One young boy recently asked me, “Pastor Strevel, if Jesus will give the kingdom over to his Father and be in subjection to him, does that means he is less than God?” I did not tell him that his question has given ample work to theologians for two millennia. I endeavored to answer him. Not every child is as precocious, but is this really precocity? It is more likely the dynamic combination of consistent parental instruction, prayers for our children, and hearing God’s word preached from an early age. Covenant children have a vital interest in God’s covenant, and if they are to be interested in it, we must give them a steady diet of God’s word -- from every angle, holding nothing back, showing them the glories and blessings God has prepared for them and revealed to them in his word.

I have adopted this parenting paradigm: parenting is by faith alone, in the word of God alone, trusting in Jesus Christ alone, and seeking God alone for the salvation and growth of my children. I am wretchedly inconsistent as a parent. Part of the victory is to recognize this and to trust God’s word. If they are misbehaving, I must continue to trust God’s word. If they are a little noisy in church, I accept this, for worship is not a museum of austere tradition and private reflection but an active assembly of multi-generational, corporately engaged, exuberant worshippers. I do not assume that something is wrong or that I am doing something wrong simply because the results are not as I expected. I must trust the power of God’s word and the certainty of his promises. It alone is the power Satan cannot defeat, the foundation he cannot undermine, the worldview that exposes his beautiful lies. And this is my ultimate concern about children and church. They live by God’s word alone just as I do. They need it. When they are young, they need it in snippets, but true snippets, not watered down, covered with so much sight and sound that the word of God is choked out and kingdom living is obscured by too many distractions. This is the only way they will overcome the wicked one. It is the only way children will become men and women, in whom the word of God dwells, who truly live as heirs of God’s covenant promises.

Admittedly, having children in church early presents its problem. My wife has often said that she did not hear a complete sermon for years. Fathers must step in, at church and at home. Sunday afternoons cannot be better spent than by discussing the worship and sermon. Fathers, Sunday afternoon sports have undone more sermons than practically any other attack of Satan. Review. Be personal. Share with your wife and children the ways the Lord worked in your heart when you met with him in Mount Zion. Bring it home to the little ones with practical lessons and examples from daily life. Most children are enraptured when their parents talk with them about important things. The likely reason they stop listening as teenagers is either because the way you have talked with them was unappealing, mean-spirited, accusatory, or because you did not establish the principle early on of serious, meaningful interchange from their earliest days.

Children belong in church, in the holy assembly of the saints, where God meets with his people in the holy mountain. This is not because we are attempting to be Luddites, anti-progress, and anti-children. It is because we must be anti-immaturity, pro-Scripture, and pro-victory. The Lord Jesus loves his little ones. When the disciples wanted to shuffle them away from Jesus, he rebuked them strongly. He knew they needed his touch, his word, and his power. These things are ours in the assembly of the saints, the worship of God’s people, and nowhere else.