Parenting in the Pew

One of the great joys of going to church for the past few years has been the experience of having my children sit with me and my wife. Right now we have three children (6yrs, 4yrs, and 1 1/2yrs) who sit with us during the service. Of course all three are at different stages and take diffent kinds of attention. For instance my oldest loves to write so that makes it easy. After our time of singing I hand out a piece of paper and a pen and simply tell him to write down the words that he hears. My middle child does well through the singing time and usually through about half the sermon which is half of a 45-60 minute sermon. The youngest of course does well through the singing and sometimes falls asleep during the sermon or as of late she decides it is time to scream so she can exit stage left.

My wife and I feel a great need for our family to learn to worship together so finding out what we could do to help in the process was necessary. Of course all of this post deals with my responsiblity as a Father and Husband and is not intended to supplant the work of God.



One helpful resource that we have both read is Parenting in the Pew by Robbie Castleman. There were many helpful points that have left a lasting impact on how we address the issue of what to do with our kids during the church service. The first big question is what is the point of having our children sit with us? One overarching answer that is given is that our children need to learn to pay attention to the service. We are not just trying to get them to sit quietly by distracting them with other things. Everything we do needs to have the goal of our children paying attention to what is being taught. They will also have the opportunity to see how mom and dad worship which gives them an example to model. Of course quite often one of the children will not act quite the way we want them to. They are of course all under the age of 6. One way we address this with our youngest is that when we take her out of the service she is not allowed to run around and play. She will sit with either myself or my wife and listen through the speaker to what is being said. Over time she will learn that there is no advantage to making a fuss to get out.

It is my belief that anyone who has children should read Parenting in the Pew. There are many other things that we learned from the book but I dont have the time to write them here. Ultimately we must rely on God to change the hearts of all our kids however it is our responsibility to make the correct choices for our children. This book has great insight and some wonderful applicable ideas to help us train our children to love worship.

With this post I have now doubled my number of posts compared to the last two years.