Soccer is not for eating worms, and church is not for eating Cheerios

I have received several e-mails and calls from friends saying they liked my Why We Worship With Our Kids post, but they would prefer a “How” posting. Today I am sharing three "How To" tips for before you head to church,  next week I'll write about what to do when you get there.

#1: Come to Jesus, my friends.

Now friends, we’re going to have a little Come to Jesus moment here. What I am going to say may not be so popular, but it’s what I really believe … so here goes.

Church is not about you. It’s true. Going to church is not an hour off for you. It is not about your peace and quiet. I know you may really desperately want that. You may actually need that. But church would not be that hour. It is actually about God. I know it’s not a popular belief these days, but’s it’s true.

We don’t go to church to pamper ourselves, it is not our day spa with free childcare. We go to worship God community. 

Sometime in the last few decades church has become this place where people want to be entertained and amused. They want their children babysat every time they walk in the door. You hear people saying things like, “I just don’t like the music at that church.” “That church just doesn’t do anything for me.” There is a near riot if childcare is not offered. The pilgrims didn’t say that. Our grandmothers didn’t say that. We need to develop a deep love of worship and the object of that worship. If we want our kids to care about worship, we need to start by personally caring about it. For we can’t lead our kids somewhere we don’t actually go.

We need to come to Jesus my friends. It's a good place to start.

#2:  There is a thin line between Saturday night and Sunday morning.

Those of us who have lived in or loved the” little latitudes”, appreciate a little wisdom from Jimmy Buffet now and then.  Jimmy’s right of course, what happens Saturday night effects Sunday morning.  If you want to make Sunday morning successful, you have to be intentional on Saturday night.  Most of us don’t put our little kids to sleep at 11 pm on Sunday night and expect them to be perky and happy to go to school at 7 am on Monday.   We don’t have sleepovers on Wednesday.  It works the same way on Saturday night. We should be as intentional on Saturday night as we are on school nights.  Here are five ways to prepare on Saturday night for Sunday morning.   

1.       Make sure everyone gets 8-10 hours of sleep.  (plan those sleepover on Friday night)

2.       Tell the kids what the Sunday morning plan is. “We are going to Sunday school at 9, then church, then lunch.”

3.       Lay out church outfits.  If you are raising girls, you know the church outfit selection process is monumental!

4.       Lay out what you need for church… bibles, journals, tithes. 

5.       Have a breakfast plan to make sure everyone gets something to eat before you head out the door. 

#3:  Soccer is not for eating worms and church is not for eating cheerios. 

On Emily’s first ever day of soccer practice.  Her coach sat all the little girls down at a table to talk about why they come to soccer practice.  He had a big bowl of gummy worms.  He asked the girls, “Do we come to soccer practice to eat worms?”  NO!  They screamed.  He spent time talking about other things we don’t come to soccer to do – gymnastics, laying on the grass, eating snacks.  It was brilliant.  The girls never forgot that we go to soccer practice to practice soccer.

Looking around in any church one has to wonder what elementary age children think they come to church for.

 They might just think church is…

·         for eating cheerios

·         for coloring pictures

·         for playing on mom’s phone

·         for reading random books

·         for laying across pews

·         for crawling around on the floor.  

You may desire to have your kids meaningfully participating in worship, but if you head out the door Sunday morning armed with snacks and a library book, you’re sending your kids a pretty strong message of what your expectations of what they’ll be doing in church are.   Instead why not take Saturday night dinner to follow Emily’s coach’s example and throw a handful of gummy worms on the table.  Ask your kids if you’ll need them for church on Sunday.  Start up a conversation about what they are supposed to be doing during church.  They might just surprise you with their wisdom. 

Why We Worship With Our Kids

This was originally published last spring.  As I am co-teaching a class on worship this month, I have been reconsidering how we train up a generation who will love worship.  
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Several years ago I had a conversation about worship with our friend and pastor, Zac.  It challenged the way I look at Sunday worship as a family. 

Zac said, “Worship is the only thing our children will do forever.” 

Forever. 

Worship will be the one and only thing I teach my children that they’ll do forever. 

They will not need to pee in the potty, or do long division, or tie their shoes forever. 

They will do only this one thing. 

Worship.

With all the effort I put into the things that time will wash away, I started to hope I’d get this  one thing right.

Not out of fear that I will have the only kids that show up to heaven who stand when they should sit or raise a hand when they should bow their head.  For that has very little to do with worship doesn’t it.?

No, they will get it right.  Scripture promises us that. 

I need to prepare them for the worship they do before forever starts.

There are those who are better equipped to talk about the why’s and how’s of worship (Zac’s blog would be a good place to start).  But I know this... through worship my girls will encounter the object of that worship.  The One who was and is and will be worthy of their worship, forever.

We’ve changed what Sunday morning looks like.  Pete and I have stopped thinking of Sunday morning as our time off.  Our time to drop the kids off in an age appropriate program and take on the big adult business of worship without them.  Those 10 words Zac shared with me turned Sunday morning into the most important parenting hour of the week.  Not because worship only happens in the confines of Sunday morning service, but because it should actually happen there. 

We have been through an extended time of church shopping.  God has yet to show us where our church home will be here in Raleigh.  A fact that weekly tears at my heart and leaves me feeling homeless.  But God has used this time to sharpen Pete and I, for there isn’t a comfortable children’s program to lean on, there is just the four of us.

Recently we walked in to a church full of strangers.  Emily and Sarah were approached by a helpful volunteer to go a watch a Veggie Tale movie during the service.  Without hesitation, they both declined.  I watched Emmie clutch her “church purse” a little closer when she said it, as if she was guarding it’s precious cargo. 

She was, in fact, guarding something precious.

We took our seats and Emmie unpacked her things. She took out her church journal. She found her pencil. With Pete’s help she looked in the order of worship and found the passages that would be read and marked them with an offering envelope. She settled back in her seat just before the first song began. With classic Emmie exasperation she looked at me and said, “why would I go watch a Veggie Tale movie?”

She was here to Worship. 


If you are looking for a place to start on this journey.  I highly recommed this book.  It was where we started.

Maybe Modesty Isn't All It's Cracked Up To Be

Well, I am just going to come out and say something that a woman working in a Southern Baptist Church probably shouldn't say...

"I'm not sure modesty is all it's cracked up to be."

There, I said it.  You see, I am concerned with the overwhelming amount of attention spent in the church training girls between the age of 8 and 18 about how to dress.   We have classes,  bible studies, and fashion shows to teach girls how to dress in the right way.  How to look cute and modest, fashionable and conservative all at the same time.  While it is with the good intentions of teaching girls not to look like harlots, or believe they can only be beautiful if they dress like a porn star, the subtle underlying message I fear we are teaching these girls is that it actually matters what you wear.

The church is helping drive an obsession with valuing the external. 

Where are the classes on figuring out your gifting?  Where are the classes teaching these girls about their sisters around the world who are slaves... factory slaves, sex slaves... actual slaves?  Where are the classes teaching these girls Acts 1:8, and James 1:22, and Proverbs 31: 20?  Where are the classes that teach these girls that the Church is God's plan and they make up half of it!

Sadly, they just don't exist...

Where and when in the church are we raising up an army?  You see, we need one.  The world desperately needs an army of women who are willing to do more than attend a bible study, and as my friend puts it, "skid in to Heaven."  We desperately need a generation greater than mine.  A generation that gets off the couch and says, "Wait, all this wealth, all this education, all this abundance in my life... it's actually not just for me to sit back and enjoy!"

That's why I think maybe we need to take another look at modesty.  Every psychologist and mother alike will tell you a girl dresses like a hoochie to get attention.  Why?  Because she wants to be valued. Valued by the men around her.  Valued by a boy who will stare at her, take her out, pick her as his own.  She dresses like a whore because she's been taught her value is to be decorative.

That's where the church needs to come in...

We need to teach our girls that there was a man whose name was Jesus.  He saw them before they even were, and He picked them.  He picked each one of us girls as his own.  He loved and cherished us so much He gave his very life for us.  We can not be more valued by any man on earth than we already are by Jesus.  And after dying for us, He valued us SO MUCH that He gave us a purpose for our time here on earth.... and it wasn't to be decorative.  

He charged us with bringing His message to the ends of the earth... (Act 1:8)

He charged us with loving one another as ourselves ... (Mark 12:31)

Through Him we are created to teach, serve, contribute, and lead.  (Romans 12:5-8)  

I  have never met a young woman who knew her value in God, and felt a calling on her life, who dressed immodestly.  I guarantee you Katie Davis's mom does not have to keep on her about not wearing sheer shirts and mini skirts.  That girl knows her value.  We need 100,000 Katie Davises to rise up.  Our world is fallen and the needs are great.  We are losing the church in America.  We can not raise up another generation of modest girls whose church training focused on cute accessories and skirt lengths-.  What we need is radical girls.  We desperately need a generation of outlandish, spectacular, remarkable women who know their true worth and the impact they can make on this world.  Once we raise that generation up, modesty will be a non-issue in the church, and the church might just not be lost after all.