#31. When the Church Loves Children
Part of our role as Christian mums is to help our children into everyday love for Jesus’ people. It is much easier for our children to learn to love the church when the church loves them. When a church talks about, talks to, and treats children as a blessing, it isn’t such a stretch of the imagination to think that kids would learn to love it back. Our cultural baggage is against us in this. We often need the plain reminder to think highly of children.
Let me tell you about the first church which taught me this lesson. It was over twenty years ago, during my university years in the Inner-West of Sydney (think Sydney Olympics and Nokia 5110s). The old church building, complete with sagging stone steps and a dormant pipe organ, was right next door to the student accommodation where I lived. The Sunday evening service mostly attracted tertiary students who had moved to the city from other places. It was a church which, on the outside, wasn’t designed for families. It didn’t seem to have much for the kids.
The couples who took responsibility for this evening congregation were in their early years of being parents. Most of the kids belonged to them. They had deliberately committed to this local church so they could serve the (childless) young people who ended up there. There was no creche or kids program--not because that was a particular conviction the church held, but because the context hadn’t produced one at that time. So, the babies and toddlers were part of all the things we did as a church community: the Sunday service, the weekly meal afterwards (and occasionally helping to prepare and clean up that meal), mid-week Bible study, hospitality in homes. They were present in the service when we fed on God’s word and when we ate risotto afterwards. They were part of the formal gatherings and the everyday fellowship. They contributed to the conversations, learning to talk and listen as we learned to talk to and listen to them.
Being part of that church must have been costly for the parents. It took effort to have their kids there, in the hardest hours of a toddler’s day. It would have been far easier for them to go to church somewhere else, where a creche would take the little ones off their hands so they could concentrate on the Bible and adult conversation. It would have been easy for those parents, and the church itself, to decide that children are a hindrance.
The thing which made this a good church for children (and in turn, for all of us) was a culture that welcomed them. Our leaders often told us that children are people, they are precious and that they matter as much as the grown ups. There were many times when unhelpful attitudes to the children were gently corrected. The way these parents responded to their children taught us all how to respond to them. It wasn’t just the kids who benefitted from the commitment to welcome children.
We were in a city, a stage of life and educational institutions which were coaching us to think that children are an annoyance to be avoided, delayed or aborted; a burden to be acquired in minimal doses further down the track of adulthood, only when one feels the need to satisfy some maternal urge, at which time they should have as little impact as possible on one’s career and lifestyle. We needed a counter-narrative and these parents provided it. And because the kids were around, this blessing couldn’t be romanticised, we were up close enough to see the complications. We saw some of the strain which comes with welcoming very young and dependent persons. We saw that blessing is sometimes difficult, but it is a blessing all the same.
When our church read Jesus’ words in Mark 9 and 10, his commands had more immediacy, because the kids were right there. A few of Jesus’ big statements about children are in the space of those two chapters:
‘And they came to Capernaum. And when he was in the house he asked them, “What were you discussing on the way?” But they kept silent, for on the way they had argued with one another about who was the greatest. And he sat down and called the twelve. And he said to them, “If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all.” And he took a child and put him in the midst of them, and taking him in his arms, he said to them, “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me, receives not me but him who sent me.” (Mark 9:33-37)
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“Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea”. (Mark 9:42)
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…they were bringing children to him that he might touch them, and the disciples rebuked them. But when Jesus saw it, he was indignant and said to them, “Let the children come to me; do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.” And he took them in his arms and blessed them, laying his hands on them. (Mark 10:13-16)
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“But many who are first will be last, and the last first.” ‘ (Mark 10:31)
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We couldn’t have received children in Jesus’ name if they weren’t there. We wouldn’t have had to think about how we typically cause children to sin, how we often despise them, how we hinder them and trip them up. We realised that when we groaned about the kids’ interruptions, we were below the standard Jesus sets for his people. Being with kids meant us flighty young adults had to slow down and wait for the weaker members at the very stage of life when we prized speed and impulse. These children were reminders that not everyone can fend for themselves; that love involves some very ordinary things, like body fluids and disintegrated teething rusks. We had a living picture of how we needed to receive God’s kingdom: in weak, dependent, humble, trusting delight—not like theoretical children, but like the children sitting across the table. When the kids were with us, we were less likely to think that God’s kingdom grows by measurable, utilitarian, outcomes-driven efficiency. The kids made church life more cumbersome, and that was very good for all of us. After all, we’re a people who believe the first will be last and the last will be first, which is about as inefficient and non-strategic as you can get.
These parents were not just doing things differently, but explaining why and suggesting ways we could help. This meant the effort of caring for these children became a shared effort (it’s easier to have your children in church when there are several people who know and love your kids and who are learning how to be helpful!). That season in that church was one where children were loved, because people in church were shown how to love them. So, apart from being good for the young adults, the young adults were learning what was good for the children. God’s good gifts often achieve more than one thing at a time. The culture of welcoming children taught us how to do better at Jesus’ command to ‘love one another’. Recognising the blessing of children changed us into a church which got better at blessing them.
The specifics will vary in different places, but the demeanour of welcome, the commitment to treat children as people who are a blessing, is essential. Most of us aren’t positioned to lead the narrative for a whole church, but we can start by agreeing with God, that children are a blessing, valuable people who are good to have around. We can work out how our own attitude to and words about children are consistent--or inconsistent--with what Jesus commands. As we get better at loving kids, it might catch on more widely and we’ll have more churches that love kids, churches which kids are learning to love.
