“The church needs a similar, doxological education. We need to expect kids to participate, to sit (reasonably) still for a little while (and love them graciously when they can’t), to stumble through the words and sing the notes as best as they are able.”

I recently ran across this article by Tim Wright called “Sunday Schooling Our Kids out of Church.”

I don’t agree with everything he says, but he has done a great service in pointing out the Sunday School problem.

Over the past few decades, in a largely futile attempt to re-engage the growing segment of non-church attenders, churches have shifted toward a model of separating parents and children on Sunday mornings. Usually, this model advertises a one-hour commitment, sending the adults to a worship service with contemporary music and a self-help, teaching-style sermon, and corralling the kids in Sunday School, where they sing hyperactive “kid-friendly” music to a recorded track, do hands-on activities, and listen to a quick lesson on their own learning level. After an hour of separation, everyone goes home and gets on with their lives.

Of course, there are many other factors at work, which Wright acknowledges, but we’re not doing ourselves any favors.

Call to Include Children in Corporate Worship

I first heard this proposed in one of my own circles a number of years ago. We as a staff were deciding how to best reach young families, or what leadership called a lazy and unmotivated segment of our congregation. As we talked, it became apparent that the majority opinion in the room was that we should aim to hook families into coming for only one hour on Sunday morning.  During the discussion, a colleague inadvertently tipped his hand:

“Do we really think that the best thing for kids is to have them singing hymns from the 18th century? I don’t think so.”

I cringed. Everyone else on staff bought it. Ministry there was never the same for me.

I know he really didn’t the grasp the full reach of what he was saying. I know he had good intentions. But it’s a broken model. It hasn’t built up a generation of renewed interest in church attendance. In fact, it’s had the opposite effect, and it’s one of the ways that the church has been alienating  young adults for the past 20 or 30 years.

Well, that and the whole politicized gospel of the “religious right,” but that’s another story for another day.

Now, kids are leaving the church faster than ever before.

But why? We tried to engage them on their own level. We didn’t stick them in pews between Mom and Dad and make them sit still. We didn’t force them to participate in the stuff they just couldn’t possible relate to, like liturgy, hymns, long Scripture readings, and that sort of thing. We put together cool music videos, lots of media, we let them shout and dance their little hearts out, we overstimulated them in Jesus’ name! We let them just be kids!

As Wright answers (and correctly, I think), it’s because once they graduated from the programs targeted toward them, there was no connection to the greater life of the church, especially the strange thing the church does together on Sunday mornings that it calls “worship.” Though much effort and expense had been expended to making them into little Christians, nobody had taught them how to be grown-up, churched Christians. And, while it’s certainly possible to be “saved” and not belong to a local congregation, we can’t thrive in isolation. We need one another, and a diverse blend at that. It’s for our own good.

Stanley Hauerwas puts it this way:

“Being a Christian should just scare the hell out of us. It’s like on Sunday we need to rush together for protection. “Oh, I’m not crazy.” That we believe that God was in Christ reconciling the world is craziness. It’s going to make your life really weird. And you just need to get together on Sunday to be pulled back into the reality of God’s kingdom.”

Even if we believe this ourselves, if we’re not training this kind of earnestness into our children, they won’t get it. And there won’t be much point in going to church.

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