Better apart? Why all age services might not be helping anyone

Here's a question: all-age services. Let's be honest – how many of us, adults or children, actually enjoy them? How many of us, on the other hand, take a sneaky Sunday off or sit through them with gritted teeth, wishing we had?

The trouble is that many of us feel terribly guilty about children in church, and worry about whether we're treating them right. They are the Church of the present, not the Church of the future, after all, we say, thinking we are being awfully original. Surely we should be integrating them more with rest of us? Isn't it a bit patronising, sending them off to a back room while we get on with the serious business in the 'real' church? Let's do everything together!

The consequence is that we end up with a half-hearted compromise that satisfies no-one. The children are bored by the bits that go over their heads; the adults are embarrassed by all those action songs and colouring in. Everyone feels vaguely dissatisfied, and no-one has entered whole-heartedly into the worship of God. Read more

I am not convinced that segregating children in their own  service is the answer. What tends to happen is that the songs, format, and worship style in the children's service differs from that of the adult service, the children develop a preference for the songs, format, and worship style of their service, and when it comes time for them to make the transition to the adult service, they have difficulty in adapting to the change. If they attend a church as adults, its songs, format, and worship style will be similar to the children's service that they attended when they are younger. The children also do not get to be around believers other than the leaders of the children's services. They are not exposed to the whole community of faith forming the church whose children's service they attend.

What one new church plant in which I was involved did was have younger children go to their own children's Word portion of the service after the opening worship time and then return at the offertory and participate in the Table portion of the service with their parents and older siblings. The children's Word portion of the service consisted of a Scripture lesson and activities designed to help the children assimilate and integrated what they had heard. The Scripture lesson was presented with the help of visual aids.

When I was involved in planning the worship music of another church plant, the planning team, which consisted of our music leader and myself, made a point of choosing songs and hymns in which children could participate--songs and hymns with refrains or repetitive lyrics and easy-to-understand and easy-to-remember wording. Young children can absorb much more than we realize. One youngster at the same church not only knew the people's parts of the service by heart, she also could repeat the eucharistic prayer from memory. She would pray along with the vicar during the consecration of the eucharistic elements until a busybody stopped her. 

Photo: Diocese of Portsmouth