Preparing Your Kids and Youth to Be in Church | Or Preparing Church for Your Kids and Youth

Family time together can be really great, whether it is going on a holiday or just a trip to the beach or the movies. But how do you feel about having the whole family in church? It can seem pretty stressful. From the stress felt by having your five-year-old making too much noise to the awkwardness of knowing that someone is sitting behind your thirteen-year-old son who hasn't washed his hair for three months, the thought of having all ages in church together can be a highly anxious moment for some.

Here are a few ideas that you might be able to use as we come together for church this Easter.

1. Read the passage together as a family and bring your own bible.

Most of us deeply desire to spend time in God's word together as a family. Still, so often, with the busyness of life, our own feelings of not being good enough, or just simply being forgetful, we don't get around to it. As Easter approaches, it is the perfect time to pick up a bible and start reading with the family. Why not take a bible that belongs to one of your children and get them to read the passage to you? Then, get them to bring their own bible with them to church, whether it is a journaling bible that they can write in or just a regular bible that they can follow along in. Don't be surprised if they start flicking through their bible and begin reading other passages during the sermon; what a blessing it is to see them sitting next to you in church reading the bible!

2. Pray and give thanks that the people of God are a diverse bunch.

From the baby crying in the cry room to the overworked parents who are in danger of falling asleep during prayer time, our churches are made up of all sorts of people. Purely by the function of their age, children and teenagers are more likely to be distracted and a little noisier during a one-hour-plus church service. Tim Beilharz, from Anglican Youthworks, says, "When you hear a child make noise, pause and thank God that there are children in your church. As another friend quipped to me recently, noise-less churches are dying churches." Spend some time praying as a family, thanking God for some members of our church family by name, especially those who are different to you.

3. Remember and talk about what church is for.

As the people of God, church is where we gather around Christ in the Spirit to sit under his word and serve and build up one another. Of course, central to that is the idea that we are sitting under the word of God and hearing his living word with clarity. It is also a place where we fellowship with God while also with each other. Broughton Knox, a former Principal of Moore College, writes, "This local church is the necessary expression of the heavenly reality. We are all together in one place because we all share the one Spirit. It is indeed the fellowship of the Spirit." Church is more than an intellectual activity; it is a glimpse of a heavenly reality, a celebration where the people of God, young, old and everything in between, share a real unity and a real hope.

I am really excited to get together for Easter as a church, celebrating our diversity while at the same time being thankful for our unity, as we have just been learning from 1 Corinthians: "Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good." (12:7) and that includes our children and youth too.

1. DB Knox, 'The Biblical Concept of Fellowship', in Explorations 2: Church, Worship and the Local Congregation, ed. BG Webb, Lancer, Sydney, 1987, as chapter 9 in D. Broughton Knox Selected Works: Volume II: Church and Ministry, p. 80.