Many seasons of life present us with difficult situations. Caring for elderly parents, battling chronic illness, entering or ending a career—such circumstances all present unique challenges, and they can make church attendance and fellowship with the body of Christ difficult to achieve. Mothering young children is another season that can present a challenge as we strive toward spiritual growth and community with a local body of believers.
Young mothers often find themselves either managing their own children in the pew during service or caring for a group of children as a nursery or children’s ministry volunteer. We can easily become discouraged by the prospect of another Sunday morning of toddler tantrums, missed naps, or nursery volunteer shortages. The big church on the other side of town with a booming kids program (and an hour of peaceful “worship” for mom) can start to look very attractive. I have three words of encouragement for the mom who is wondering if it is even worth all the trouble this Sunday morning.
(1) Your kids need you to go.
Your kids need you to be at church with them, even (and especially) if the church does not offer a kids program. I have written before about the centrality of story as a primary means of character formation in children. But stories are not just in books. In this podcast episode, author N. D. Wilson encourages us to step back and see our own character in the arc of God’s story and to use the knowledge of that Author to inform how we make our own character decisions.
Your life is a story that your child is reading, vividly illustrated and piercing straight to the heart. You are the first hero they know, and your words and actions are telling him or her what heroes are like: Are they courageous or cowardly? Do they persevere or give up? Do they worship God or themselves? Are they disobedient or properly submissive? Your weekly faithfulness builds a pattern of thinking and behaving in your children, even if your time in church feels less than “spiritual.”
Your faithful church attendance does not guarantee that your children will also be faithful, and it cannot make up for unfaithfulness in Bible teaching at home. However, your faithful church attendance does provide an invaluable scaffolding that the Holy Spirit can use to build upon. Charlotte Mason, in a discussion on instilling good habits in children, remarks that “thought runs into the rut which has been, so to speak, worn for it by constant repetition.”[1] Let the repetition be the weekly hymns, prayers, and preaching of your local congregation.
(2) Your church needs you to go.
Other moms need the solidarity of your presence. I remember the first wedding I attended as a new mom. It sounded to me like every grunt and sniffle my two-month-old made echoed through the aisles at an ear-shattering volume. When I finally decided I should make my way out the back, I met my new tribe: five or six other moms lined the back wall, bouncing babies and parsing out puffs to antsy toddlers. Nothing is so encouraging as knowing that you are not alone. Your presence—yes, your noisy presence—can be very uplifting to the mom across the aisle who might have been tempted to think she was the only one struggling.
But it is not just other moms—the older people in your congregation need you there, too. They need the presence of a younger person to whom they can pass the torch so that they are not tempted to let the flame flicker out as each day draws closer to Heaven’s rest. Your presence reminds them of the work yet to be done and encourages them that the work is not in vain. Your presence connects the hands of elderly saints to the hands of your children, enabling the chain of faithful witness to continue.
In addition to the elderly, other kids need your presence. Whether their parents attend church or not, kids need relationships with other faithful adults in order to build a strong web of Christian community from which to learn and grow. Have you ever played “KerPlunk”? Pulling out your family’s “straw” this Sunday removes a vital piece of your church family. Your faithfulness could provide the steady adult input that some child is missing. Your presence, with your children, can be one step toward the greater goal of intergenerational worship and discipleship.
(3) You need you to go.
Finally, whether you feel like you “get anything out of it” or not, you need to go out of your own neediness. The Bible commands us not to forsake meeting together (Heb. 10:25), and all of God’s laws are for our good (Dt. 10:12–13, Ps. 25:8–10). We must obey in faith, even if growth in faithfulness does not quickly display the types of results we might be looking for. You may not be able to take notes on the sermon; you may have to keep one eye open during the corporate prayer; you might miss the last verse of your favorite hymn. But God is not thwarted by your toddler or nursling. His will for you is your sanctification (1 Thess. 4:3), and His Spirit works extraordinary things through very ordinary means.
Your time with children under your care will come to an end, but if you are a redeemed child of God, your standing as a member of Christ’s body will not. Your friends and family—even those little ones for whom you are pouring your life out—may “despise, forsake you,”[2] but “the Lord will take [you] in” (Ps. 27:10). Your presence—seemingly against all odds some Sundays!—is a triumphant recognition of that fact, and a bold declaration of where your loyalties lie. Submit to God in faith and “at the right time, he will lift you up” (1 Pet. 5:6, NLT).
Getting Practical
Adjust your expectations.
“Disappointment is the difference between our expectations and our reality.”[3] Realize that not every church is equipped with the personnel to provide childcare for every service, and yet God may still desire your continued presence in such a congregation. On the one hand, most small children can sit still and be reasonably quiet for a few minutes with regular practice. On the other hand, even a well-trained, well-behaved child can do only so much; sitting in service with your children will never feel as easy as sitting without them—and that does not mean it is a worse experience. It is just harder. Assess whether your expectations are too high or too low, and adjust as needed.
Prepare.
Set aside some special quiet toys that are just for church—this strategy can expand the amount of time your toddler can remain reasonably quiet. Practice whispering at home. A wrap, sling, or baby carrier can help a younger baby get that precious morning nap in while enabling you to stay in service. If you are able to inquire ahead of time about the songs and Scripture that are planned, go ahead and sing and read them during the week so that your young kids can participate more easily, and you can focus your own mind more quickly.
Ask for help.
When you have shown faithful effort in bringing yourself and your kids to church week after week, I think you will find that people are more than happy to give you a “break” every now and then, even if your church does not have a regular kids program or nursery volunteers. Even if they do not initiate, many people are willing to hold the baby while you take the big kid to the restroom, help you find a quiet place to nurse, or guard the other end of the pew for you if you just ask. When we help each other care for children in the service, we communicate to visitors and other families that church services, though not kid-centered, are kid-friendly. We welcome children as Christ did (Mt. 19:14).
Conclusion
I have mistakenly attended church in the past with the expectation that I will leave the service more “centered,” focused, or spiritual. I am thankful for the times when God speaks to me in a special way through a particular Sunday service. However, if I keep up that type of expectation, I will be sorely disappointed and discouraged from bringing my children to service. It will tempt me to think they should always be shuttled off to their own age-specific “services” so that I can get some peace and quiet.
Instead, if I realize that the same Spirit that raised Christ from the dead is at work in me both to will and to do for His good pleasure (Rom. 8:11, Phil. 2:13), then my circumstances no longer determine how “spiritual” I can be. In the power of the Spirit, I can bring rowdy kids to church and still be a faithful worshipper—in fact, it may be that if you have children, you cannot actually be a faithful worshipper without bringing them.
Perhaps God is more pleased by my imperfect efforts to guide my family through the worship service than by my ability to pay perfect attention when my kids are in the care of someone else. Let us spur one another on to love and good deeds this week by encouraging ourselves, our kids, or our young moms to obey God’s command of cooperate worship this Sunday.
[1] Charlotte Mason, Home Education, 114–15; https://www.amblesideonline.org/CM/vol1complete.html; accessed October 26, 2021; Internet.
[2] Joseph Medlicott Scriven, “What a Friend We Have in Jesus,” 1855.
[3] Source unknown.
November 11, 2021
Great article Rebekah!
November 15, 2021
Thank you for reading, Dr. Moody!