Thanks to Mrs Lloyd for directing me to Mrs Wilson's blog post on little ones in church.
http://femina.reformedblogs.com/2008/07/24/little-ones-in-church/#more-418
I would love to see all our children with us in church for the whole service and admitted to the Lord's Table, but I think we might be a generation away from that as a congregation. Who knows. How would you move a church in that direction? Do you have experience of doing it in a church where others don't? It would be great if we could manage it with our little Jono. I don't really want to see him exiled or excommunicated.
Mrs Wilson's post should also be read in conjunction with Pastor Wilson's post on children in worship, which as I remember argues something like that whilst it is not a sin for the church to gather without the children and there are times when age specific teaching / addressing male heads of households / those who can understand etc. might be appropriate, as a norm the kids should we welcomed and included.
The Sunday School movement in the UK is a fairly recent invention and rather a mixed blessing in my view.
Mrs Wilson's post also shows the value of large families and long term settled ministries it seems to me. If, say, by the grace of God we had 4 kids who each had 4 kids, and the grandchildren and parents came to church, we would have a pretty sizable congregation. And if we had 4 other families like that in our church...
Thursday, July 31, 2008
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3 comments:
Taking children out of the worship of God is hardly the biblical thing to do.
Well, I tend to agree, but most of our churches do so, do they not?
Doug Wilson does point to some texts which show that children were not always included in worship. I wouldn't say its a sin for the children to be sent out to Sunday school during the morning service, even though I don't think its ideal.
Of course, when Robert Raikes (Marian's great-great-ancestor) pioneered the Sunday school, it was later on a Sunday, to teach the faith, and indeed a general education, to street children who would never have been in church anyway, and didn't clash with the Lord's Service.
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