This post is a response to this blog post entitled On children's participation in the liturgy
I can see where you're coming from and I celebrate every opportunity at true all age liturgy - it's possibly the hardest thing to pull off. But .....
Please do not think that all churches offer mere babysitting when the kids are out of church.
Our situation is that the kids come straight into Sunday school and we take them back into Church for the eucharistic. We have extremely high quality children's work with a band of skilled and passionate volunteers delivering it. We design our Sunday school in the same waysas the liturgy for the service is designed.
We welcome
we affirm our faith
we confess our sins and we recognise that we are forgiven
we hear the word of God just as the adults do
we enter into understanding this word and then we respond together
we pray and we sing and we are ready for the eucharistic when we come back in
not all churches babysit the kids
many, like ours, feed the kids with love and truth and explore with them every Sunday.
Further thoughts:
Personally I'd rather be with the kids than with the adults. I learn and connect through debate and exploration. I don't do well listening to a sermon or sitting quietly. I need to be able to talk and move and think and debate and feel; exactly the way we offer to the kids. Many adults involved in children's work are the same and I'm pretty sure it's why the end up on Sunday school leadership - it's where they prefer to be.
So don't ever think that the kids are missing out; perhaps think about what you might be missing out on by sitting with the adults in church.
A lovely post, and excellent response to the other guy who quite frankly seems to initially come across as neither liking church nor children. I really need to explore some other churches because so far I haven't found anywhere that really knows what to do with 2 year old!
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