My presentation on ‘Connecting the Faith with Children’ at the ministers’ conference seemed to go well. There was some creative feedback, and some encouraging comments from individuals afterwards.
However, I had used the issue of children and communion to illustrate a wider principle. That is, we must fully involve our children in the worship experience/event, rather than remove (reject?) them from it in order to teach them about it so that when they are deemed old enough to access it they will understand what is going on. But the group got so bogged down in the specific issue (children and communion) that we forgot about the underlying principle and automatically reverted to the separatist default position I was attempting to demolish.
How do other churches / denominations handle the children and communion question? Does it work in an all age context? Or do we reserve the sacrament for adult worship? I’d be interested to hear from others. Thanks.
My own position is that the higher your understanding of the eucharist the less exclusive you can be. If all we are doing when we share bread and wine is ‘remembering’ what Jesus did, then we can make our club as exclusive as we want. But if, at the table of the Lord, we meet with the risen Christ (the real presence) then we surely cannot turn anyone away?
The other stumbling block with this group of Baptist ministers (I suspect) will be an unwillingness to move away from expository preaching. In other words, we need a Sunday School because otherwise the children will be bored. Your comments on that would also be warmly received. Thanks again.
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2 comments:
The presentation was good. I agree with you that the problem will come when trying to move us out of our current mindset. The next difficulty will then arise, that even if we ministers can see the way forward will churches, who tend to lag even further behind, be able to even imagine a possibility of change. I look forward to giving the questionnaire to my main children’s worker because it is asking questions that I have wanted to tackle for a while.
Thanks Marcus for another great observation and reflection. Agree with all you say and yes I think there are a number of supposed 'safety nets' that are yet to be torn through in order for Jesus's sacrifice to be accessible to all.
I think the issue of safety nets is something that is very much entrenched in our church subculture. Safety nets such as the sermon sandwich, separate sunday school, members only meetings, even our own church buildings!! It all helps to create a chrsitian world that is safe - detatched from the reality -
Jesus spent most of his time on the streets - we spend most of our time behind closed doors.
I think the Rev Jev is not entriely correct regarding ministers and the rest of the church - there are many 'punters' that long for churches to be tipped up and shaken and sometimes its the ministers that are not listening or too afraid to rock the boat!!!
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