Children's Church: Pros & Cons

Thank you all for this great discussion!

We have gone back and forth between allowing our children to attend the children’s ministry and having them stay with us. I honestly think they enjoy both. My conviction has been to keep them with us the entire time, and my husband didn’t mind either way. After prayer and discussion, we have decided to continue keeping them with us indefinitely. I read Sonya’s post on the Intentional Parents site to him, and he completely agreed with everything. Coupled with all your posts, we are certain in our decision; so thank you very much for all your insight.

We attend the Saturday evening service at our church. When we pulled into our driveway after church, I noticed that I hadn’t checked the mail that day. There was a large envelope addressed to my ds7 in the mailbox. Enclosed was a “Quiet Time Book” along with a letter congratulating my son on choosing to become a Christian during a church-wide revival-type event that was held at the beginning of January. I was stunned!! We had no idea our son had even thought about praying to receive Christ, much less than he had done it! I told my husband that this would not do. I couldn’t stand it that my son could have had questions and not known how to ask them, or that the way we found out about this (over a month later) was in a letter addressed to him! {We allowed our kids to attend the children’s portion of the event because we knew we were going to be in the sanctuary for over 2 hours and didn’t feel it was fair to make them sit through that.}

We plan on having a gentle discussion with the children’s minister at our church to let her know that we feel it is not appropriate for parents to find out about such an important decision through a letter. I realize that might be necessary for an unchurched child who came with a friend or something, but my husband is on staff at this church! Anyway, that incident has sealed the deal for both of us regarding where our children need to be during church, and that is most certainly with us.

After discussing it with our son, we believe that he was not really ready to make a decision for Christ. He didn’t understand what he had done, and told us he is not ready to be water-baptized. Until he understands, we don’t want to push the issue or cause him to question anything, unless he is bringing his questions about Jesus to us.

So, I just wanted to say thanks for the great discussion and to let you know what we have decided since I’m the one who posted the question in the first place.

Love this group,

Lindsey