Plenty of sermons have been preached about disciplining children, and why children should sit in the worship service with their parents from birth, but below is a sermon you’ve probably never heard before. Many well meaning parents, with their hearts in the right place (myself included), have headed this advice. Some level of guilt is planted in us that leaving our children in the presence of christian fellowship while we give our attention and respect to the Word of God is somehow passing off our parental responsibilities spoken of in scripture.
But is the purpose of the preaching of God’s word being ignored, while the purpose of the training of children exalted? What do the scriptures say about conduct during the preaching of God’s word?
If you are under the impression that having a nursery is only for selfish and irresponsible parents, I encourage you to open your heart for a moment and your mind to the scriptures. Jeff Noblit, who is Paul Washer’s pastor, gives some insight to this topic in his sermon Why We Encourage Using the Nursery Until Your Children Are Able to Listen With Understanding from Nehemiah 8:1-3, 8 which can be found here.
I think above all, we need to be careful in forcing guilt and blame on other believers for silly things with no scriptural basis. I have yet to find a bible verse that condemns a parent for leaving their child in the presence of another while they attend to other tasks. I think it quite a good idea to suggest that we treat the preaching of God’s word with reverence, so that when a child enters the age of understanding the scriptures, they might be as attentive and respective of the preaching of the word as we have been. How do we allow ourselves to become so distracted during the preaching of the word, and yet expect our very young children to do exactly the opposite?
How do we decide, then, when a child is able to listen with understanding? And if our young children are not able to understand, is that most frequently because the children aren’t ready, or because our teachers are not doing a sufficient job of teaching? My husband’s teaching professor told them that if they can’t teach in such a way that at least the second graders (and up) can understand, they don’t understand their material themselves. (And I can vouch for the fact that this works. When my husband teaches, it is not uncommon for parents to thank him on behalf of their young children, who understood. And yet my husband is one of the rare teachers I’ve heard in my adulthood who can offer “meaty” enough teaching for me as a long-time Christian.) And apart from teaching, even the tiniest ones can worship. How sad to isolate them from corporate worship just because their mental capacity is not yet what ours is. (And, for that matter, does that mean that we withhold this same fellowship from the mentally-retarded, as well?)
No, there is no specific command in Scripture to avoid handing off one’s children to someone else. There didn’t need to be! There is no Scriptural precedent for it, either – the Scriptural precedent is that everyone is present for the reading of the Word and worship (except for those occasional times when only the men were present). The difference in biblical times and now is that then they had HELP. I would love to see other church members helping young moms instead of encouraging them to kick their children out of the service.
Did you listen to the sermon? I think you would understand the point that he made if you did. His point is that the reverence of God’s word can be taken away if there is way too much distraction going on during the sermon. He is NOT saying that we don’t teach our children God’s word or even that we should condemn anyone who brings their children into worship with them. But, there is a state of mind among certain christians these days that we should ALWAYS have our children with us during service or we are doing them a disservice and being lazy in our training of them. I think this is bull.. and so does the preacher of this sermon. And in fact, he makes a valid point with scripture that perhaps we should wait to include them in this very important preaching of the word of God when they can sit still and listen with reverence and understanding. This could be a different age for different individuals, but I know my 3 year old is far from there. He can’t sit still for the worship songs let alone the preaching, and it’s a huge distraction to everyone around us, taking away from God’s word. Even if you don’t agree I really think this is a sermon that has value, something to think about.