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“As the ark of the Lord came into the city of David, Michal daughter of Saul looked out of the window and saw King David leaping and dancing before the Lord, and she despised him in her heart.” - 2 Samuel 6:16

David’s wife, Michal, thought David’s display of unbridled joy and dancing was behavior unbecoming that of a king. 

Many times, we are brought up to believe that there are certain behaviors and actions that simply “don’t belong,” especially in places of worship. That we should be at all times what we consider respectful and we, too, sometimes respond to the David’s in our midst the same way Michal responded. She was, after all, the daughter of a king and had been brought up to know what proper “kingly” behavior looked like, and that certainly wasn’t it!

So which behavior is proper in church? Unbridled joy and dancing? Or proper quiet, reserved respect?

Well, both. It’s a tension because there’s a time and a place for both types of worship.

Sometimes, however, especially when it comes to the children in our churches, we respond more like Michal. We want our children to learn to be quiet and respectful, rather than dancing around with exuberant joy because it can be distracting to those who prefer a seemingly more “reverent” worship. For the record, Michal was reacting out of her experience. What she thought was proper and right. We do the same thing - we speak out of our experiences and what we believe is proper and right.

The problem is we’ve watched over the years as young families have disappeared from the church in large numbers. A lot of it started with my generation (Gen X) which found ourselves bored and distrustful of the church institution as a whole, and felt as though we weren’t valued or needed, so we left. I know, I left for a decade because I didn’t feel like I belonged…and was bored with worship.

Since becoming a pastor, I have heard throughout my almost sixteen years of ordained ministry, “We need to bring families and children back.”

The wider church has tried hard to address this issue, of why young people simply aren’t in church like they once used to be. We had a whole class in seminary called “young adult ministry” trying to figure out what makes church more “palatable” and enticing to younger generations. In particular, what attracts younger families with children. After all, the children aren’t merely the future of the church—they ARE the church in the here and now. 

So when I hear from some that the children are too noisy or doing too much dancing and running around, I have to say: I’m so grateful we have children in our church to raise this issue!! It means we have children and families—and I’m guessing we have them for a reason. I can send you to many a Lutheran church where you will not find any children in worship at all, and the average age will be well above fifty or sixty years old.

While I’ve never had children myself, I know what a struggle it is for young parents to keep their kids quiet and occupied throughout an entire service. Many families just don’t bother and leave. It’s just too much trouble and they feel shamed when reprimanded that they aren’t doing enough to keep their children “under control.” Maybe they come back when the children are older…but most do not. 

In trying to meet the needs of families, the wider Church tried things like Children’s Church that takes children out of worship so the adults can worship in peace. The problem? When the children age out of that, they don’t feel like they belong anywhere in the church and quickly disengage. 

We provide a nursery with worship streaming in it...but for some, they rationalize that if they're just going to watch worship on a TV, they might as well stay home.

Keeping children in worship is something I strive to do for the good of the families and for the worshiping community as a whole. If children are raised to feel like they belong in worship and aren’t just there as some sort of “duty,” to be seen, but not heard, they’re more likely to remain engaged the older they get. 

When we developed our order of worship, I worked in conjunction with our band to make sure we placed music throughout the service and designed our worship so that it kept our children engaged. With music at the beginning, moving around sharing the peace, then more music, which flows into communion, music again during the offering, followed by the Children’s time; this way our children are actively involved in our worship in the first half of the service.  They have chances to sing, dance, and participate in worship! The only time they really need to be quiet is during scripture readings, the sermon, and prayers. Our worship order is intentionally designed to give our little ones opportunities to be active participants in worship and to move their bodies throughout the service.

Our children dancing has been a practice here at Crossroad for some time, the “mosh pit” as I believe it is unofficially referred to. In fact, if you look at our band, one of the members is a product of being allowed to dance up front during the music and helped foster his love for music to the point he now plays every Sunday.

At least one of our families has told me that the reason they attend here regularly now is because when they saw that the children were allowed to be expressive during worship—she knew she’d found the church for her and her family. 

We are apparently somewhat unique in this, as I hear from my colleagues who are young clergy families who have children: everyone wants children in worship, they just don’t want the children to be children in worship.

I want to foster a church environment where it’s okay for children to be children. To not only be seen, but heard. To feel welcome and that it’s okay for them to be…children. 

All that said, we do understand that simply running wild is not okay and is not only distracting to others, but can in fact be dangerous, so we have talked with families to remind them that dancing is great! But running needs to be curbed.

One of my goals as well is to create a “pray and play” activity area in the back of the sanctuary where children will be allowed to play quietly with quiet toys, or sit at tables and color, etc, during the times of worship when we expect quiet time for prayers, scripture reading, and the sermon. I’m hopeful we can implement this within the next year as I’m working with our education team on how to make this happen. Our Vice-President, Liane Clark, has been putting together an Amazon “wish list” of items to help create that area. You can click on this link to view that wish list and if you feel so inclined to purchase some of the items, we can work toward making this vision a reality! https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/1E2BBLXHFQXTZ?ref_=wl_share

We don’t have easy solutions to every issue that arises in the church, and nothing we do is going to be perfect and  make everyone happy or meet everyone's preferances, but I hope together we move forward in understanding and remember: there’s grace for that.