As we were raising our children, I always felt a bit of tension when it came to their future within the local church. I wanted my children to see their need for the church and to embrace its centrality in their lives. I wanted them to value and prioritize it as an essential part of valuing and prioritizing Christ. As they grew older and began to become independent, I longed for them to put their faith in Jesus and make full participation within his church an essential part of their lives. But I didn’t want to nag or cajole them. I wanted them to do this freely and joyfully and to do it as an outworking of their own convictions rather than a means of mollifying mom and dad.
I’m thankful that our children always enjoyed church and never fought against it. I’m more thankful still that each of them came to Christ when they were young teenagers, then pursued baptism and church membership. As soon as they moved away to attend college, they switched their membership to a local church in Louisville. Interestingly, each of them opted to join a different church, but joyfully, all three chose one that faithfully preaches the gospel.
I recently tried to think back to consider some of the principles we found helpful as we raised children who actually wanted to go to church. Because I am a relentless and unashamed gleaner of the wisdom of others, these were all principles we observed or solicited from other families, then applied to our own. I hope you’ll find them helpful as we did.
Make church a part of your family culture. Every family develops a culture of its own—a collection of habits, patterns, and activities that come to define its unique identity. These can range from vacations (e.g., two weeks at the same holiday spot every summer) to movie nights (e.g., every Saturday night we watch a movie together) to food (e.g., Friday is pizza night). As a family culture develops, parents are wise to make church attendance a part of that culture. It doesn’t need to be explained or defended—this is what you do because this is who you are. It doesn’t need to be considered or debated, because when Sunday comes, you simply go to church. It is a non-negotiable part of your family culture.
Value church enough that it disrupts routine. Some of the hardest times to maintain consistency in church attendance are when children are small and when they depend on an established routine of meals and naps. It can be difficult for parents to disrupt this routine, especially when it means they may pay the price of a cranky infant or grumpy toddler. Many of us have witnessed families drift and even disappear at this stage of life. Yet a good routine should only ever be a faithful servant rather than a demanding master. You may simply need to resign yourself to having a cranky child on Sunday afternoons and a rough start to your week on Monday mornings. But some things, like church, are important enough that they should supersede routine.
Prioritize church over sports, lessons, and activities. Aileen and I have often expressed our gratitude that none of our children were outstandingly athletically gifted. They all enjoyed recreational sports or activities like baseball, soccer, and ballet, but none had skill or interest in advancing through rep or travel leagues. This meant that we never had to count the cost of travel ball, Sunday rehearsals, and other conflicts with church. But even if they had the skill and desire, we had already decided that we would not prioritize sports and activities over the church. I would not wish to be legalistic here and would leave each family to decide how to handle this matter, but as we look back, we think it was important to our family to know that church takes pride of place ahead of sports and activities. If many of us have seen families struggle with fitting church into routine, most likely all of us have seen families downplay church in favor of sports.
Attempt to prioritize church over jobs. While sports and activities are optional for young children, jobs are often a necessity for young adults. All of our children worked at a local grocery store, and they were mostly able to avoid working on Sundays, either by asking to be left off the calendar or by surrendering Sunday shifts to colleagues who were eager for more hours. Sometimes, though, especially before they had seniority, they were faced with the stark choice of working on a Sunday or resigning. In those cases, we decided together that, though Sunday work was not our preference, it may be an acceptable short-term measure until they had gained seniority. For all three, they soon proved themselves to their managers and only missed church on the rarest of occasions. Had their work demanded they work every Sunday, they would have resigned and looked for other jobs. To the best of our ability, we prioritized church over work.
Bring them into the service. I believe there is a place for nursery programs or other activities for younger children that run parallel to the Sunday worship services. In other words, I am not an advocate of Family Integrated Church. The particulars of such programming may vary a great deal based on context and culture, but I see no solid biblical argument that the whole family must be together for the whole service. That said, I think it can be of great practical benefit for the family to generally remain together once children are old enough to sit quietly—or relatively quietly, at least. By first grade, children are expected to know how to sit for extended periods, so that seems like it may be a natural time to wind down childcare so children can remain with their families. We found it a blessing to worship together as a family and to have the children witness our commitment to worship, preaching, the Lord’s Supper, baptism, and so on. When they were young, they often found it boring and had trouble sitting through, but we believe there was a lot of benefit in having them be present to see Christians worship.
It can be of great practical benefit for the family to generally remain together once children are old enough to sit quietly—or relatively quietly, at least.
Be committed to one church, but visit others. Looking back, Aileen and I are thankful that we were members of just one church through almost the entirety of our children’s childhood. This offered them stability and surrounded them with adults they knew, loved, and trusted—adults who valued church as much as their parents did. However, we are also thankful that we visited many other churches, sometimes while on vacation or visiting family, or sometimes just to have different experiences of worship. We think it was helpful to broaden our children’s view of church so they could see that all kinds of people are Christians and all kinds of people believe in the same prioritization of the local church.
Of course, all of this was supplemented by formally teaching them what the Bible says about coming to Christ in repentance and faith and then joining themselves to the local church. Yet because so much of what children learn is “caught” rather than “taught,” we wanted to raise them in such a way that they saw us put these principles into practice and live them out in our family life. By God’s grace, through these means and others, the Lord blessed them with a love for him and a love for his church.
