I've been thinking. (Whenever I tell Tim that, he says, "Again?!")
We missed church two Sundays in a row (once because our movers were moving our stuff in and once because we were on our way back from a weekend trip to Maryland), but we finally got to start our church hunt this past Saturday. There is an Episcopal church not too far from us that I was interested in trying, and a couple of churches that Tim had found and liked the sound of, so we decided to start with the closest one and go to the Episcopal church. We were a little unnerved to pull into the parking lot ten minutes before the service was due to start and see only two cars. I suggested hopefully that maybe a lot of the congregation walked. At about that moment a woman dressed in church clothes (this is definitely a dress-up-for-church kind of community!) did come walking into the parking lot, and when asked, assured us that there would be a church service happening at the appointed time, and walked us into the building and introduced us to the people who would be leading the service. The pastor--excuse me, priest--was on vacation, so it was to be a "service of prayer" rather than a "eucharistic service." We sat in the second pew, only to find when the rest of the congregation trickled in that nobody sits further up than the middle. The congregation that day consisted of us, a woman who (I think) used to attend there but now lives in Florida, a family with two high-school-age children who were also there for the first time, and something on the order of seven church members, whose average age I suspect was over 70. There was (obviously) no children's program. I had brought Esther a puzzle book, but had not remembered her notepad and not thought to bring food, usually the most reliable method for keeping her quiet in a formal setting. The service itself was lovely, lots of responsive readings and scripture passages punctuated with hymns. The "homily" was short, but I got as much out of it as I have many longer ones. Esther got really into the readings, earnestly studying her bulletin and "reading" along with us in nonsense syllables. She also enthusiastically "sang" the hymns. For one of them, the music stopped and she kept going for a few beats, then suddenly realized that no-one else was singing and ceased abruptly. It was very cute! At the end, though, there was a long series of "collects" (short prayers) which were read one after the other by a reader and did not involve congregational moving or vocalizing. I missed most of these because Esther was squirming (as in, opening and closing the kneeler, wandering from one end of the pew to the other, and dropping down on her tummy and heading for the aisle), and then whining audibly when I sat her in my lap. I have mixed feelings about having Esther in a church service with me. On the one hand, I want her to experience church. Whenever I'm in a church I feel a sense of being home, and I want that for her. On the other hand, I worry that I run the risk of introducing church as a place where she gets in trouble for being who God made her to be. But I can't simply let her behave as she normally would, because others would be distracted. No-one complained on Sunday (in fact, one person complimented me afterwards on her good behavior!), but Tim and I talked later about how we really want to be part of a church that is in some way geared for children. (It would also be really nice to be part of a church where some people aren't of European descent.) We asked Esther over dinner what she had thought about church and she said she liked it. We asked what she liked about it and she promptly answered, "I liked the God." If we only knew what experience was described with that statement!
So after going to church, I was already thinking about children's church vs. children being in the adult service. Our former church a couple of years ago went through a whole visioning process about the role of children and youth within the body, and one of the key values that came out of that was wanting children to feel, especially at important times in the church calendar like Christmas and Easter, that spirituality was not just a grown-up thing, but something that everybody does. And segregating ages, while it does allow for more targeted teaching content and styles, can also lead to children viewing adult worship as a) incomprehensible and weird, b) boring and irrelevant, or c) an elite club that you have to earn membership into. From my own experience, I've attended all-ages worship services since about Esther's age. Many of those times most of the service went over my head, particularly since it was often in a language I didn't understand. But I did witness people of all ages valuing God and honoring God in different ways. And these ways went deeper than the platitudes (God wants us to be helpers. God wants us to obey our parents.) that are "the point" of many a Sunday-school lesson. Not that the above statements aren't true and important, but being able to recite "the point" and give an example of it from a Bible story never went as deep for me as watching adults I respected actually helping others, or actually wrestling with what it means to submit to authority. I'm sure most of my spiritual formation happened through spending time with my parents, and most of the rest through watching and being with other adults who had deep relationships with God. Very little if any came from Sunday school. (And honestly, in cases where children are deeply influenced by Sunday school, I suspect it has more to do with their relationship with the teacher than it does with the curriculum.) The curricula that I've taught in the past have more to do with being able to repeat dos and don'ts and Bible story plots than they do with learning to wrestle with God, and God's word, and our complex lives, without the guarantee of coming up with a pat answer over the course of an hour.
Meanwhile, a friend forwarded me an article co-written by the former pastor (now a full-time writer and speaker) of my former church. He and several other scholars and church leaders wrestled with the question of spiritual formation for children in the emerging church movement. The article talked at length about the role of community in spiritual formation, and argued that however children's participation in church is structured, children need to spend extensive time with adults (not necessarily being taught by them, but experiencing how they live and relate to God) and need to feel like full citizens of their community.
The same afternoon that I read that portion of the article, I sat down with Esther to watch an old "Donut Hole Repair Club" video. I first ran across this series of Christian children's musicals in high school, and despite some hokey acting (think "Barney"), and the fact that they were geared for younger children, I really enjoyed them. The music is fabulous, and the Easter episode routinely moves me to tears as it makes Jesus' triumph over death feel so real. Watching this one as a parent, I was moved to tears again to see spiritual formation in action. The plot was that the Donut Hole Repair Club (a group of kids), led by the Donut Man, were trying to refurbish the Celebration House, a place for anyone to come and find a place to sleep, someone to talk to, or a great meal. When they despair at the size of the job, the Donut Man is reminded of the story of Joshua, and leads them in a rousing rendition of it, followed by a prayer asking God's help for this overwhelming task. When one boy confesses that sometimes he doesn't feel like helping, the Donut Man shares that sometimes he doesn't feel like it either, but when that happens, he prays for God to change his heart, and God always does. And so it goes: insights from the Bible, personal experience from a fellow traveler on the spiritual journey, and lots of opportunities for prayer and praise, all beautifully intertwined with the details of what would otherwise have been just a noble chore. I so want to teach Esther that way! And as a necessary foundation, I so want to be the kind of person who lives that way myself! I do some...but I want to do it more!
None of this, of course, answers the question of where we'll go to church, or even exactly what we're looking for. But I'll keep thinking.
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