Update 5: Messy, Late & Happy (Marshall Seagall, Desiring God)
“More than anything else, we want our family to be happy in God — and being fully happy in God requires consistently sitting with the people of God under the word of God”
Update 4: In the wake of Covid, Jen Wilkin wrote the following for Christianity Today - Let the Little Children Come to ‘Big Church’. Here’s a highlight:
“Observant parents who might have assumed “My child won’t really get anything out of the service” learned this was, in fact, profoundly not true. Because there is no replacement for children watching their parents model worship. Because children have a right to witness and learn from the ordinances of the church. Because children are not the church of tomorrow; they are the church of today.”
Matthew Everhard talks just after the 8-minute mark in the video below about how kids being in church is one of the things that marks Reformed/Presbyterian worship services:
Update 3: Paul Levy talk below (March 2021) - he has a blog post with a handout and further resources:
Update 2: Here’s an excerpt from a Joel Beeke article in the Puritan Reformed Journal: ‘Include the Children’
Update: Here’s another helpful article, which deals with some criticisms of this position, written after what follows was posted: Mark Jones - Shall children listen to sermons?
Recently, Stephen preached a couple of sermons about Public Worship. In the second sermon, he focused on the question of whether children should be in worship or not.
As promised in the sermon, below are a number of helpful resources on both the theology and practice of having children in worship from as early an age as possible, as well as a number of related issues. Note that a link isn’t necessarily an endorsement of the author or everything they have written.
Articles
Rich Holdeman (RPCNA) - Where should your children be during worship?
Daniel R. Hyde - Training children in worship
R. Scott Clark - The mystery of children’s church
Jeremy Walker - Attendance of children in public worship
John & Noël Piper - The family: together in God’s presence
John Piper - Should children sit through big church? (audio below)
Chad Bird - The church doesn’t need children’s church
Micah Anglo / Carl Trueman - How skipping church affects your children
Erik Raymond - Helping children benefit from the sermon
Scott Brown - Why You Ought to Have Your Children With You in Church
Ben Zornes - Corralling the kids as an act of worship
Christina Embree - Church is boring
Nick Batzig - Five reasons to keep the kids in
Tricia Gillespie - Teach kids to sit still
David Robertson - Children, the family and the church
Nicholas Davis - Let the little children come into big church
Neil Stewart - Remember, remember
Jason Helopoulos - 10 Reasons to Include Children in Corporate Worship
Books
Robbie Castleman - Parenting in the Pew
Daniel R. Hyde - The Nursery of the Holy Spirit
Jason Helopoulos - Let the Children worship
Previous sermons
Stephen has previously touched on this topic in sermons on Mark 10:13-16 - once at a baptism the week we started our current crèche (where he explained the intention that children would need it for as short a time as possible), and once as part of a series on Mark’s gospel.
Both times he quoted Gordon Keddie, formerly the RPCS minister in Wishaw and now in America, who said:
‘One of the huge errors in Scotland been the banishment of children from church life until they were in their teens. At which time they rightly said if you didn't need us till now, you won't need us from here on’.
Audio
James Torrens (Highland International Presbyterian Church) gave two very helpful talks at the IPC British Presbytery in September 2018. They are available to listen to on the IPC website.
Video