CHILDREN IN CHURCH: Stuck on my fridge are two of my favorite pictures, both from All Saints’ Day 2010, the day that my younger son Nicholas was baptized at Good Shepherd. One is from the Baptism; the other is from Communion. In the latter photo my older son Liam is alone at the Communion Rail, kneeling and waiting to receive Communion. He is alone because he simply came up to the rail before everyone else (he even ignored the ushers!), knelt down and waited for Communion to be given to him. Liam has been receiving Communion since he was baptized and apparently no one is going to get in his way when it comes to Communion. I love the photo because it gets to the heart of what I believe Sunday morning is all about: all Christians, adults and children, should feel that nothing is hindering us from being involved in the service and we should always feel that our very presence in church is not only appreciated but essential.
For those readers who can’t be at Good Shepherd every Sunday, you might not know that there are many, many children and families at Good Shepherd – getting a group photo of them all for the newsletter has proven difficult so I hope that some facts will serve as an illustration. At Sunday School Graduation we gave out certificates recognizing the completion of Sunday School to over 20 children. We had two baptisms last Sunday. We will have another baptism this Sunday. We will have 8 young people confirmed when Bishop Sisk makes his Visitation. Our nursery regularly has between 4 and 10 children in it. This past month alone I can recall two times when we had about 40 children present in church at 10:00 AM: the first was Mother’s Day, the Sixth Sunday after Easter, May 9, when there were 94 total in church at 10:00 AM; the second was Pentecost, Sunday, May 23, when there were 106 people at the 10:00 AM Holy Eucharist.
I am thrilled that my children and my family are included among the many children and families at Good Shepherd. I hope that these children and families experience Sunday as a time when they are not just at church but a time when they are the church. Ideally Christian worship is active, not passive. Christians tend not to speak about the Holy Spirit as something that passes through them and keeps on going, but rather as something that fills them. The presence of the Spirit is no different at the Holy Eucharist. You and I (no matter our age) are filled with the Spirit, participate as members of the Body of Christ and actively partake in the risen Lord Jesus’ Body and Blood. On a good day, the parish church does everything that it can to facilitate this activity: One of my jobs as rector is to make it as easy as possible for everyone in the room to worship and have fun.
One of the first things I did when I arrived last autumn was introduce service bulletins with every word, piece of music, hymn and rubric in them. I call them all-inclusive bulletins for two reasons. The first is that they include everything we are saying or singing or doing in the service. The second is that they allow everyone in the room to be included. A comment that I have heard over and over about the service bulletins came from parents who appreciate that they can finally take part in the service and keep an eye on their children without switching between leaflets, inserts and books. I hope that those parents felt included in a way they hadn’t felt before, and I recommend going one step further: make sure all the children have bulletins too.
Children like to make noise and they like to sing. Our offertory anthem last Sunday consisted of about 20 children singing songs. After witnessing some of the rehearsals, it appeared to me that the challenge was less motivating the children to sing than reining in the volume of the singing. A few weeks ago I noticed that the acolyte next to me had a bulletin in her hand and was singing loudly. Most Sundays I hear improvised descants on “Holy, holy, holy” sung by some of the children. The children at Good Shepherd already know many of the tunes we sing each week and the ones they don’t know are pretty easy to learn, and they know or are learning how to read. The all-inclusive bulletin is designed to make it really easy for everyone, including children, to pray, sing, and take part in the service. There are enough bulletins to give on to the children too; if they end up being used as coloring book, that’s great too!
I don’t want to experience Good Shepherd without the presence and participation of children, and thankfully, I haven’t had to. That doesn’t mean church has to be chaotic or a circus: we offer childcare every single Sunday of the year for those parents who want it (my one-year-old and three-and-half-year-old are in childcare during most of the service each Sunday, and they come in for Communion); our Sunday School meets during the Liturgy of the Word most Sundays, and the children come into church for Holy Communion; when I now that all of the children will be in church for the entire service I try to shorten readings as much as possible and preach a much shorter homily, and I do my best to make sure the hymns we sing all have tunes from the “greatest hits” section of the hymnal. I hope that everyone understands that the Body of Christ has no age limit, and the worship of the church, on a good day, makes that fact a reality.
You are never too old or too young to be baptized. All baptized persons, including children, are full members of the Body of Christ and are invited to participate in every aspect of the service and receive Communion. Everyone can have a bulletin: if we run out, we’ll make more. A great place for children to see, hear and participate is the front pews of the church.
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Why I Love Good Shepherd #7
“WHY I LOVE GOOD SHEPHERD” (June 2010)
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