A conversation recently overheard centered round the role of children in worship, with various models and anecdotes rehearsed: children leading in various roles in ‘big church’; children gathering at the font or chancel step or altar so as to feel more included in the proceedings; separate services or parts of services for different age groups; separate services for ‘families’ (meaning children with their parents). One of the interlocutors recounted a situation in his past in which certain persons had expressed a desire for a ‘more reverential’ service; the rector had offered to conduct a separate service for them but insisted that there must also (or first) be a ‘family service’ where parents and children felt welcome.
I confess that all this kind of thing – parents or children not feeling welcome, families having to be ‘taught how to worship together’ at a service separate from the main one, children of even elementary-school age being shunted off to some separate activity – baffles and saddens me. I acknowledge that as someone without children I am on thin ice talking about children and parents at all, but I at least was a child once, and I know that I was capable from the age of five or six of attending ‘big church’, even though my parents both sang in the choir and I sat with other families, and even though there was no particular accommodation made for children of that age. Only preschoolers attended a separate ‘extended session’ of Sunday school (and infants and toddlers the nursery, I suppose).
Did I enjoy, or understand, much of the service as a first-grader? Probably not: I’m sure I drew lots of pictures and no doubt had to be shushed for talking to my playmates from time to time. Nevertheless I’m also quite sure I sang all the hymns and knew to at least adopt the posture of prayer at the appropriate times, and as I grew up grew into participating more fully. And I think I was able to do these things because we prayed and read the Scriptures (and other things) and sang (and ate dinner together, even when other grownups were there) at home – and also because there was robust extraliturgical formation (Sunday school, children’s choirs, and other groups) at church for children, and also simply the shared expectation that children would be present, would show respect, and would participate as they were able in worship.
Though I don’t think anyone should expect a first-grader (or a newcomer) to be able to follow, understand, or participate fully at first, the liturgy should never be such that children and their parents (or anyone else) might not feel welcome. Very little should ever be happening that is so precious as to be susceptible of derailment by some amount of natural movement or sound; any sense of ‘reverence’ that precludes actual humans coming and going from time to time as needed, or whispering the occasional question about what’s going on, or, say, nursing, is entirely misconceived.
For the liturgy (especially sacramental liturgy), though it ought not carry the oft-imposed burden of the entire assembly singing or saying the bulk of the rite, should robustly engage the whole body – mind, heart, soul, senses – and the whole Body. Two of the most Spirit-filled services I can recall over the course of my career did precisely this: an Easter Vigil involving a fairly ragged procession of the entire congregation, rich telling of the Church’s orally shaped great stories, candles and water, chant and bells, and most of all a sense of highly stylized yet unfussy and unhurried action; and a Choral Evensong led by the children’s choir, featuring chant and incense, processions and organ, bowing and candles – both of which also included, and gained power from, a number of families with even fairly small children present, sitting in laps, lying in pews, moving around, and dripping wax on things.
Thinking of these liturgies in turn reminds me of a period during my years of singing a weekly choral service, which was attended by a mother and her very young son, who was kitted in pajamas and bolstered by a teddy bear nearly as big as himself, and who would fall asleep next to her or on her lap, to the strains of chant and Renaissance polyphony and the scent of incense hanging in the air. The child, the choir, and the whole congregation were enriched by this great gift.
‘Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them,’ said Our Lord, ‘for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs.’ We ignore this command to their, and our, great disadvantage.