When I was in high school, I often had an exchange with my mom that went like this:
Me: "I think a person can be a Christian even if they don't go to church."
My mom: "That's ridiculous."
It turns out, what was ridiculous was the discussion itself. It was the wrong question.
The question isn't whether a person can be a Christian and thrive spiritually apart from a church; the question is whether the church can thrive without the participation of believers. The answer is an emphatic NO.
When we insist on church attendance for kids, we are demonstrating to them the importance of committing to something bigger than themselves. We are requiring them to abandon consumerist attitudes about church and asking them to give up some of themselves in order to become part of a body. Sometimes people need church; but always the church body needs people.
This notion of "joining" or committing to a church has become watered down in our modern culture of convenience. We treat church like a shopping mall - one-stop shopping for my family's needs, and open at convenient times, too. A church doesn't have to get very big before there develops a sense of "inside" and "outside". The "insiders" are involved in everything, are known, and make the church go. The "outsiders" are consumers. The show will go on, with or without them. The shame is that as churches grow and the amount of work taken on (or taken over) by paid staff increases, people feel less necessary.
Let me stop here and say that the perception that some people are more needed than others in churches is just that, a perception, and it is false. Most churches I know are begging for volunteers to share the ministry. It's a perennial problem. But beyond that, there are ministry frontiers in every workplace, school, and neighborhood in America that the Church, because of inherent institutional limitations, is unable to touch. What would be the impact on a society if every Jesus-believing adult decided to devote 5 hours a week to a ministry cause they felt called to and were gifted in and equipped for? Don't even get me started. The church is a force as well as a phenomenon. I think we forget that: in a church, you have gathered, every week, a group of people called and commissioned by the God of the universe to be impactful on the world they inhabit. How can we be passive or indifferent about that?
If it's your desire that your child be a world-changer and take seriously the mission of God's church, and I hope you do, then you must instill in your child an ethic about church in which they feel compelled to take part because they are necessary, special, and valued.
Necessary? How many kids feel necessary in church? How many view their place in the church as actors, rather than spectators. We (children's ministry professionals) are reaping what we've sown here. We have concocted such a great show, and every week we have to top ourselves, and kids quickly understand their role is to sit back and be wowed. Or, look at the way we teach. The material is so easy, so facile, few kids are ever challenged to think in church and therefore, few of them are affected beyond Monday by what they encountered that weekend. Or, we use incentives and prizes to get them to do things they aren't inclined to do, and in so doing send a strong message that, yes, we also recognize the thing itself has little value of its own.
This weekend David Batstone spoke in main service about uniting vocation (your calling) and profession (how you make a living). I pray that your son or daughter will find a calling in the church, that at least some of them will be led to full-time ministry careers in churches or on the mission field, but I don't know when that will happen. I do know that if they receive the call, it will likely be because they have been immersed in a culture of others serving God - in other words, the church - and that they are unlikely to ever feel called if they never caught that vision.
All of this is preface to the sixth quality shared by kids who thrive spiritually, and that is that they are part of a church where they've had a positive experience, they've identified and affiliated with it, and they are eager to assume God's role for them. We can't, after all, expect kids to identify with church and be loyal to it if their church experience has been negative. My advice to parents is do whatever it takes to make the experience a great one. Drive to events. Host things in your home. Serve with your child. Ask them which service is their favorite. You do not want to enter the teenage years struggling over whether or not they "have" to attend church. The parents I've seen who've been successful on this front have been firm: as long as you live in our house, church attendance is a non-negotiable. Within that dictum there is some flexibility. Some require attendance on weekends plus one other activity. Some will tailor the family's schedule to make alternate services work. Regardless, if it's the weekend, the family is in church.
What if your kid doesn't like your church? That's a tough one. Kids come up with lots of reasons for not wanting to go - it's boring, I don't know anybody, the music is bad, the teacher doesn't like me - and I have witnessed some real battles of the will right outside our classroom over whether or not a kid will stay. We all want to be able to go to church as a family, even if everyone splits up once they get there. So first, I would try diplomatically to resolve whatever is the issue that is causing your child to have a negative experience. If this can't be resolved, or if the child still insists (and particularly so for middle and high school students) I would counsel a long-term perspective. Realize that if a child expresses a positive feeling about any church, even if it's not yours, that's a good sign that they are assuming ownership of their faith. In other words, I would require that your kid is active in a church somewhere.
I was wrong about a lot of things when I was a teenager, and church was one of them. People not only need churches to grow spiritually strong, but strong churches need people.
Factor #6: A Positive Church Experience
Key Question: Does my child feel an identification with and an allegiance to his or her age group's ministry at their church?
Info, articles, and thoughts for parents of kids at North Coast Calvary Chapel.
