A new generation are asking the most important questions

This Easter will be particularly joyous for Christians in Scotland with churches having only just returned to worship after a further three months of lockdown restrictions. And yet it won’t be a case of ‘as you were’ before coronavirus hit.

While many will be ecstatic to be back, some will be apprehensive – and others may not come back at all. A leaked Church of England report suggested that a fifth of worshippers may not return post-Covid. North of the border, there will be similar concerns.

Others however will be watching on optimistically to see if the undoubted rise in spiritual interest there’s been during the pandemic will translate into people returning to church after decades – or starting to come for the first time. 

In a recent New York Times opinion piece, the writer Leigh Stein spoke for many millennials when she admitted: ‘I have hardly prayed to God since I was a teenager, but the pandemic has cracked open inside me a profound yearning for reverence, humility and awe’.

In her article, entitled ‘The Empty Religions of Instagram’, Stein argues that while 22% of millennials (those like myself born between 1980 and 1995) would describe themselves as having no religion, they have simply swapped traditional religion for new moral authorities – namely, social media influencers. Televangelists like Billy Graham have been swapped for Instavangelists like Glennon Doyle and Gwyneth Paltrow, but ‘we’re still drawn to spiritual counsel’, such as ‘It’s ok not to be ok’.

However, writing as a ‘leading feminist’ (Washington Post), she says ‘the women we’ve chosen as our moral leaders aren’t challenging us to ask the fundamental questions that leaders of faith have been wrestling with for thousands of years: Why are we here? Why do we suffer? What should we believe in beyond the limits of our puny selfhood?’.

In fact, once we start asking those questions, the answers might surprise us. I was struck recently by a poignant interview that comedian Eddie Izzard did with the Guardian in 2017. Entitled ‘Everything I do in life is trying to get my mother back’, the following paragraph really stood out: 

“I have a very strong sense that we are only on this planet for a short length of time,” he says. “And that is only growing. Religious people might think it goes on after death. My feeling is that if that is the case it would be nice if just one person came back and let us know it was all fine, all confirmed. Of all the billions of people who have died, if just one of them could come through the clouds and say, you know, ‘It’s me Jeanine, it’s brilliant…’”

Izzard’s words struck me because at the very centre of Christianity is the claim that of all the billions of people who have died, one did come back. In fact, in the words of the Apostle Paul it is of ‘first importance…that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day’ (1 Corinthians 15:3-4).

In the past year, we’ve been surrounded by death as never before in most of our lifetimes. And according to the materialist worldview, that is it. The end. Finito. And yet when we stand around the body of a loved one, everything in us screams no – that can’t be the end! Furthermore, we’re asked to believe that on an objective level, the death of a human being is no more tragic than the death of an animal.

Stein notes, ‘The whole economy of Instagram is based on our thinking about our selves, posting about our selves, working on our selves’. But deep down, we know that we’re made for something bigger than ourselves.

In fact, Stein puts her finger on it when she says: ‘There is a chasm between the vast scope of our needs and what influencers can provide. We’re looking for guidance in the wrong places. Instead of helping us to engage with our most important questions, our screens might be distracting us from them. Maybe we actually need to go to something like church?’

The challenge for churches is: what will people hear when they come? A recent survey said that 25% of British Christians don’t believe in the resurrection – unsurprisingly when it’s routinely denied or ‘spiritualised’ from the pulpit.

A new generation are asking questions they’ve never asked before. Are we equipped to give them the answers they so desperately need?

Published in the Stranraer & Wigtownshire Free Press, 1st April 2021

Include the Children (Joel Beeke)

As churches return to worship following the coronavirus pandemic, many churches which once offered alternative activities for children during the service are no longer able to do so. But as a recent Gospel Coalition article by a mother of five boys argues, that may be no bad thing.

The presence of small children in the worship service is one of the things which Robert Godfrey highlights in his book: An Unexpected Journey: Discovering Reformed Christianity.

Having previously posted a list of resources on children in church, below is a section of an article on Children in the Church by Joel Beeke (along with a couple of videos on related topics):

‘Children should attend public worship with their parents to experience the corporate life of the body of Christ. They should learn how to worship by watching others worship. Don’t discourage mothers from bringing young children into worship (Luke 18:15–16). The prophet Joel included “the children, and those that suck the breasts” in the call to sacred assembly (Joel 2:16). Encourage families to bring their children to worship. You might reserve a section in the back or in the balcony for families with very young children. If they need an early exit, this can be done without distracting or disturbing other worshippers.

The Scriptures teach us to view the assemblies of the church as gatherings of the household of faith. God’s children are called to be brothers to each other. When Moses commanded that the law be read publicly every seven years, he said, “Gather the people together, men, and women, and children, and thy stranger that is within thy gates, that they may hear, and that they may learn, and fear the Lord your God, and observe to do all the words of this law” (Deut. 31:12). When the Israelites celebrated the feasts of the Lord, the law required them to come to the sanctuary as “households,” including sons and daughters and even servants (Deut. 12:7, 12). (Cf. Josh. 8:35; 2 Chron. 20:13; Joel 2:16).

Children were also present in the synagogues where Christ taught (Matt. 18:2; 19:13–15). Paul assumed that children would be present when his letters were read in the churches, and he even addressed the children directly (Eph. 6:1–3; Col. 3:20). Jeremy Walker writes, “The constant presumption of Scripture is the children were present in the worship of the people of God.” Don’t separate children, teenagers, and adults into different worship compartments; bring them together as members of one family, and encourage them to sit together as families so that parents can make good use of the situation to train their children in godliness.

Including the children will influence how ministers of the Word prepare for public worship. When you offer public prayer in the worship service, include the children. Pray specifically for children and young people. Intercede for God to grant them Spirit-worked submission to their parents, regeneration, faith, repentance, and spiritual growth. If a child is sick, pray for him by name. Encourage them to sing by making frequent use of songs the children already know and love—and encourage parents, in teaching the children at home, to give priority to the songs used in the worship of the church.

In preaching, labor to speak with plainness and simplicity, but also with color and vitality, in the way of a good storyteller, to interest even your youngest hearers in the sermon. If it is necessary to speak “over their heads,” stop and address the children directly, giving them explanations or applications at the level of their own understanding. Nothing is more off-putting than to have a preacher tag a statement with “boys and girls,” and then, go on to say things that no boy or girl could understand or care about. Likewise, with regard to the length of the service, think of the children, and take care not to prolong sermons or prayers to the point that they cease to edify and only become a trial to be endured.’

Where the Reformed Church in Scotland falls short

In our morning services, we’re currently working our way through Christ’s letters to the seven churches in Revelation. One of the classic commentaries on Revelation was written by the Scottish Covenanter James Durham and first published shortly after his death at the age of 36.

Of all the seven letters, Durham said that the letter to the church in Ephesus (Revelation 2:1-7) was the one that was most relevant to the Covenanted Church in Scotland, and called on his readers to ‘look upon this epistle as if Christ were writing a letter to Scotland’.

He says that Christ’s problem with the Reformed Church in Scotland in his day wouldn’t have been because of their lack of orthodoxy or zeal or outward worship - but a lack of love for God manifested in a lack of love for one another:

‘Wonder not why God quarrels with Scotland; we need not say it is for corruption in doctrine or discipline, nor for our zealous going about it; that was not his quarrel with Ephesus…Neither is it his quarrel with us, but as it was his quarrel with Ephesus, that she was fallen from her first love, so it is with us.

…Our Lord Jesus would never have quarrelled [with] Ephesus nor us for zeal and faithfulness. But…there is a declining love, especially love to God and love to one another, which may be seen in our walking uncharitably and untenderly. A defection in the manner of performing duties; our fasts have not been from a right principle, our censures not in love to the souls of the people; much roughness and untenderness in drawing them forth.

…Therefore look upon this epistle as if Christ were writing a letter to Scotland; and in his letter saying, “for as much purity and zeal as you have, yet you are fallen from your first love; much of your love, warmness and tenderness is away”’.

He says elsewhere that the church in Ephesus was zealous for the external worship of God, but had failed to live out the ‘one anothers’:

‘Though there was zeal in the external Worship of God: yet there was great defect of that love, sympathy and affection of one of them, with and to another, that should be; this being ordinary, that love inflamed toward God, and love one to another, go together: and therefore as it importeth they had fallen from their former warm impressions of love to God, so also from their kindly affection one to another, and had fallen in part to be more in sacrifice, and externals of Worship, than in Mercy and love one to another’.

Durham comments later on that it was likely that the outward state of their church was admired because of purity of their outward worship and the vigour of their discipline, as it is ‘too ordinary for men to think too much of external forms’.

He concludes: ‘Nothing has more influence in procuring judgement than coldness in love to God and others’.

Dignity but no life!

Last Lord’s Day evening, Stephen preached on 2 Samuel 6:12-23 under the theme ‘Dignity but no life’. For a sermon on the same passage which particularly applies it to the church in Scotland today, as well as the history of the RPCS in the twentieth century, we highly recommend this sermon preached in the Airdrie congregation by Carla’s father, Rev. Andrew Quigley, in 2011:

You can listen to the audio of the above sermon here.

For some more background on the transformation that the Airdrie congregation saw - and that by God’s grace we are working to see in Stranraer - see this article: Can a church turn around?

Children in church

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