LAST WEEK A PHOTO of six children of various ages sitting and using electronic tablets during what appeared to be a church service was posted on Facebook. The words accompanying the photo were: “Is this your Church? We cannot expect the youth to have a God consciousness if we allow them to be unconscious in His present.”
At face value, the photo looked bad and immediately one could start to develop a sense of disappointment with the parents for allowing the tablet use to take place. When I saw the picture, I neither agreed nor disagreed but sought to look at it objectively and form a context from which to share my thoughts.
When we were young, we were under strict orders. Going to church was like a day in a military parade. To be quite honest, as a child I hated church but loved Sunday school and youth service. Church service felt like torture since all you basically did was sit down and be miserable for three to four hours.
Some parents would allow their children to colour and draw on paper or even do word searches so as not to be restless or drop to sleep during the service. Today, the colouring books, paper and word searches are now electronic devices.
Let’s be honest with ourselves – the sermons in church services are well above our young children. Preachers don’t generally preach for children or youth unless it is a special service. Depending on the church you go to, the content of the message isn’t age appropriate. Sadly, some preachers even fail in presenting the gospel in a way adults can understand.
We don’t expect our children to sit and watch a parliamentary Budget debate or a documentary on the global economic crisis, because it isn’t age appropriate or being delivered in a way they can understand. Why then do we expect something different during a sermon?
Children and youth learn and understand better by asking questions or seeking clarification of what they are being taught, but Sunday service doesn’t facilitate this natural need to ask questions. I have no evidence for this, but I am sure most adult Christians’ lives weren’t transformed when we were “children”. Many of us had that transformation as we matured in our teen and adolescent years and for some of us our adult years.
Children’s church/Sunday school and youth service are critical to the development of our young ones. The church has to evolve as society evolves or it will lose its reach. The values must remain but our methods must change.
Ask parents of little children how much of the service they actually hear. At my former church, I played guitar and every Sunday while going home, my wife would say: “Sometimes I don’t even know why I come to church because I don’t hear the sermon or participate.” It was only when I stopped playing with the band and sat with her and the children that I understood how stressful it was dealing with children during church. People without kids will never understand that struggle.
I am not saying to give your children electronic devices to take to church but understand that parents will find ways to keep their children settled while in a church or funeral service, or a wedding ceremony or graduation.
At school and at home children receive short breaks during activities because of their attention span and a need to move and just be kids. They do this every single day, but we expect them on Sundays to sit on a hard bench, sometimes in a hot church, wearing sometimes uncomfortable clothing for three to four hours, even longer, and listen to something they have no interest in or can relate to. We adults even browse our devices when the pastor is rambling, bluffing or just not interesting.
I am one who is in favour of churches that are able to have children’s church and youth church running simultaneously with morning service. As I look for a new church to attend, this is one thing I am looking for, especially the children’s church for my little ones. Church isn’t only for my wife and me but also for my children; the same way we gain, they should as well. I know this isn’t possible for all churches for various reasons, space being one and personnel being another, but it should be something churches think about going forward.
Corey Worrell, a former Commonwealth Youth Ambassador, is director of C2J Foundation Inc., a project-based NGO focusing on social development. email: coreyworrell@gmail.com