Light Duties

What do we do if we're tying to help our children grow into worship, but our church situation isn't ideal? Well, none are ideal. This episode is about what you can do.

Much of the trouble with motherhood comes down to time. Either we don't have enough, we're trying to live three lifetimes at once; or we are adrift… bored…with too many vacant hours. We struggle with proportion and order and finding the right substance to fill the void. Urgency undermines a lot of good. We feel a heavy pressure to solve immediate problems at the expense of slower, apparently postponable priorities. Like motherhood.

Table of Contents here.

Perhaps Christmas would be more enjoyable if we didn't feel we had to do so much? What a relief when we pause to consider that the only duties God calls us to at Christmas are those which hold true all year round.

A while ago, I mentioned the example of a church where it's normal for the kids to be present in corporate worship. We were part of that church when our first baby arrived and I was terrified that my child would grow to be the exception. The process of how one could possibly get kids to sit in church was a mystery to me. This is what 16 years of having kids in church has taught us.

One reason we might keep children separate from what the adults do at church, is that we forget the grandeur of what's going on. Most of what we see is pretty ordinary. The reality is actually far from boring. When we get a glimpse of the unseen, we're better positioned to help our children.

I'm repenting of my neglect of the word, and with it the reality of, worship. Motherhood is ultimately about being a worshipper and raising worshippers, so it's worth using the word, especially on Sunday, when we worship especially.

Some words on worship while you wait for the next articles to be released.

As we consider how to help our children have a meaningful relationship with the local church, it's helpful to hear stories of places that have done it well. This episode is about a church that has had decades of serving children well, without a typical Sunday School.

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.

The question of "how do we be a family in a local church?" is bigger than finding a church with a kids program. We're to help our children learn to love all God's people, not just their peers. Meaningful relationships in church—relationships where we're obeying Jesus' command to love one another—are different from a playdate. When we give time to someone who is not like ourselves, our children learn that Jesus' command to "love one another" is more than just being nice to the people you would have played with anyway.