Worship and Justice

This is a pretty good article from a pastor in Berkeley...

The Real Worship War
Forget about choruses versus hymns—what about justice?
by Mark Labberton

At a worship service I attended, my attention was drawn to the enthusiastic worship leader. He opened our time with prayer, asking God to meet us and draw us into the Lord's presence. Then he stood with eyes closed and the band playing. He lifted his hands and offered his joyful praise to God.

That's when I really took notice, for as he sang so rapturously, he kept stepping on the feet of the people behind him. Not just once or twice but repeatedly throughout the singing. No apology. No acknowledgment of his "tromping in the spirit." He was just praising God while oblivious to his neighbor.

I have no doubt the worship leader was just so caught up in his own experience of worship that he lost track of others. That's exactly the problem.

For all of our apparent passion about God, in the end much of our worship seems to be mostly about us. We presume we can worship in a way that will find God but lose track of our neighbor. Yet it was this very pattern in Israel's worship life that brought God's judgment. Biblical worship that finds God will also find our neighbor.

What is ironic and especially pertinent is that many debates about worship are just indirect ways of talking about ourselves, not God. Our debates devolve into how we like our worship served up each week. It's worship as consumption rather than offering. It's an expression of human taste, not a longing to reflect God's glory.

If we worship Jesus Christ, then we are to live like Jesus. In fact, Jesus says in Matthew 25:31-46 that our worship will be measured by how we have lived.

The heart of the battle over worship is this: our worship practices are separated from our call to justice and, worse, foster the self-indulgent tendencies of our culture rather than nurturing the self-sacrificing life of the kingdom of God.

Paralyzed in the pews
I do not stand outside of this sweeping critique, not for a moment. Nor does the congregation I serve. Many of us are simply busy with our daily lives. Apart from major headlines, few international needs go deep into our hearts. When we do pay attention, we often experience information overload and an unending sense of need and desperation when we hear of places like East Timor, Darfur, sub-Saharan Africa, Bangladesh, Haiti.

We admit that people may be suffering in the world. But we conclude that the suffering of "those people" is not what it would be for us; that dying of starvation in a refugee camp in Sudan is roughly the same kind of suffering experienced by the street person we encounter on the way to work; that it is beyond our grasp to respond effectively to suffering on a global scale.

Part of the malady is this tragic rationale: that in the face of global need, if we can't do everything, we can't do anything. We are paralyzed, inert.

Meanwhile our suffering world waits for signs of God on the earth, "with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God" (Rom. 8:19). God's plan is that we, the church, are to be the primary evidence of God's presence. Every continent needs solid signs of that. Staggering statistics of land grabbing and bonded slavery, of malnutrition and starvation, of HIV/AIDS and wrongful imprisonment are rife. An enormous chasm exists between these daily realities in our world and the preoccupations of most Christian disciples in North America.

Jesus' call to "go and make disciples" must be carried out in a world such as this. The life-changing good news is God's saving love in Jesus Christ, who wants to make every person and every thing (including every form of injustice and oppression) new. That is our hope and our commission.

The real crisis over worship, is this: will God's people worship God in a way that demonstrates we are awake? By loving our neighbor in God's name? Will we worship the living God as he asks: "to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with [our] God"?

Worship leaders may want to focus only on what seems culturally and socially immediate. But if we are to worship the Lord of all creation, the Savior of the world, then while we are checking the sound system or pondering prayers or sermons, we have to hold on to a wider vision of God's love.

The world in our worship
For several years I received each Sunday morning an e-mail from mission partners we were supporting. This couple and their three small girls were living and serving at-risk children in Cambodia. One of the only e-mails I would read before the worship service was their weekly update. I read it as a spiritual discipline, as a morsel of mercy and truth, as a reminder and a call.

I needed to lead our worship services in Berkeley with my heart freshly reminded of the realities of suffering in the world, the urgency of hearing and living out the hope of the gospel, and the joyous and costly call of sacrificial living in the name of Christ.

Each Sunday I want to serve the people in the pews right in front of me and lead them into the transforming presence of God. The issue is: what are the criteria?

Scripture indicates that the answer will be whether those who feel blessed by worship live changed lives. The evidence is not just the immediate post-service buzz but whether people are actually giving their lives away for the poor and the oppressed in some tangible way.

One Sunday I preached on Psalm 27, a remarkable psalm that vividly describes being afraid and finding God's comfort. I'm sure it was at least a "nice sermon," maybe even a good one. Later that week I attended a dinner sponsored by the International Justice Mission, a Christian organization that seeks justice for people facing various forms of oppression.

Elisabeth, a beautiful 17-year-old girl from Southeast Asia, spoke at the dinner. She had grown up in a Christian home, memorizing Bible verses, which became all the more poignant during the year she was kidnapped, forced into prostitution, and enslaved in a squalid brothel. As she spoke, she projected a picture of her room in the brothel. Over the bed where she was so brutally treated, day after day, she had written these words on the wall: "The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The LORD is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid? When evil men advance against me to devour my flesh, when my enemies and foes attack me, they will stumble and fall." These are the opening verses of Psalm 27.

I thought back to the previous Sunday and my sermon on this same psalm, remembering some of the fears I had listed for those in my church. Those were real and legitimate fears, but none of them were as consequential as those Elisabeth faced. I had this image of a silent movie going through my mind, listening to Elisabeth while envisioning my congregation gathering for worship on a random Sunday. While we were busy trying to park our cars in Berkeley that morning, a task "so totally horrible," as one person said to me recently, girls like Elisabeth were coming to worship in their settings too. She came before God in her windowless room in the brothel. We did so in our glass-walled sanctuary.

If we see Elisabeth's story through the lens of the biblical narrative, we realize that love for God ties us to love for Elisabeth. Not because her story provokes sentimental compassion, but because her life and circumstances make a claim on those who worship Jesus Christ.

Worship like the world depends on it
True worship reclarifies the purposes of God and our part in them. False worship, which can be found as much among God's people as elsewhere, leads to distorted mission.

Take power, for example. Power is one of the most profound gifts of God and therefore a prime target for false worship; that is, to take power and misuse it for something other than what honors God and his creation. Elisabeth's suffering, and much of our own, has to do with an abuse of power. Faithful worship helps us clarify and limit human power in our hearts and minds. False worship never does that. False worship sets the terms of injustice, a distortion or aberration of power. Faithful worship asks whether we are seeing and living in God's reality or in the fiction created by our own fallen lives. When we or anyone besides God assumes the central role, life whips us out of alignment.

The fallout of false worship distorts our sense of God, ourselves and others, leading to injustice and suffering, pride and entitlement. The damage continues relentlessly. No wonder God gets angry at Israel, or the church, when this distortion is perpetuated by the very people he calls his own. This is the burning message of Isaiah, Jeremiah and Amos. This is a battle line in the worship wars that really matters to God. Whom do we fear?

Another distortion that false worship fosters is this: the loss of God's intended witness to love and justice. God intends that from true worship will flow lives that are the evidence of his just and righteous character in the world. False worship instead leads to false representation: we may speak in God's name but fail to show God's life. The prophet Isaiah says that when God's people do this, we lie about the God we represent (Isa. 5:20-23; 29:13-16).

God intended for those in Abraham's line to be blessed to be a blessing. Their relationship with God was for their own sake but also for the sake of those who through them (and us) were to "taste and see that the LORD is good." The world is to see and know something about God through the lives and actions of faithful worshipers.

Worship that reorders
On a trip to India, I talked to a pastor about reading. He said, "If I save for four months, I am able to buy one Christian book through a discount I am offered. I have never traveled outside India, but I have heard that sometimes people in America buy books and don't read them." He asked with dismay, "Is that really true?" I mumbled something to cover my embarrassment, as I thought of just such books on my shelves.

For us, it's not a matter of if we have bought books we don't read, but how many. It's not whether we get our children inoculations, but whether we can keep track of the paperwork to prove it to the schools. It's not whether we eat, but how much we eat beyond what we need or even want. It's not whether we have a bed, but what color and theme the bed coverings will be. It's not whether we have a chance to hear about the love of God in Jesus Christ, but which ministry or church or medium we like best. Some people in our own country don't have these choices (a scandal in itself). But most people in America do. Meanwhile, millions in the Southern Hemisphere and in Asia have never lived a single day with choices like these.

This disparity between economics and justice is an issue of worship. According to Scripture, the very heart of how we show and distinguish true worship from false worship is apparent in how we respond to the poor, the oppressed, the neglected and the forgotten. As of now, I do not see this theme troubling the waters of worship in the American church. But justice and mercy are not add-ons to worship, nor are they the consequences of worship. Justice and mercy are intrinsic to God and therefore intrinsic to the worship of God.

Our worship should lead us to greater mercy, to costly acts of justice, for those who are the least seen, the least remembered, the least desired.

Vigorous biblical worship should stop, or at least redirect, our endless consumerism, as our free and faithful choice to spend less in order to give away more. Our community reputation, as Scripture suggests, should be that the church comprises those who pursue justice for the oppressed because that is what it means to be Christ's body in the world. We should not fool ourselves into thinking that it's enough to feel drawn to the heart of God without our lives showing the heart of God.

Mark Labberton is pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Berkeley, California

I put this in my last e-mail to us as a team and only Ken responded, so I'm still wondering on all your thoughts...

***

There is a sense in which it is actually easier for us to be attracted to the idea of working at being a worship team and the act of leading worship than to God Himself. Let's not settle in giving God anything less than a heart that is fully His. This takes us reaching out, acknowledging God, spending time with Him, waiting, listening, stopping our rationalizing, letting go of worry, giving what little we have, prayer, and looking for God in the little things.

As John said about Jesus when He saw that the moneychangers had turned the temple into something lesser: "Zeal for your house consumes me."


Please respond just to let me know you read through this... Thanks!

-w

On the Worship Industry and the Worship Leader

Brian McLaren has something to say about worship... I thought it was provocative.

http://www.theworkofthepeople.com/index.php?ct=store.details&pid=V00246

Please comment.

Another Article - Kid's In Simple Church

Another article from the archives of Neil Cole - original article found here.

What About Kids In Organic Church?
Part One: Integration Is Better Than Segregation
Neil Cole

A friend of mine recounts the story of his son coming home from Sunday School. He asked the boy the most common questions asked at 12:15 every Sunday: “So how was your class? What did you learn?” The boy suddenly was overcome with a look of frustration and remarked: “With a book that big there’s got to be more stories in there than the one’s they’re telling us! They’re keeping something from us!”

That sent my friend into a pilgrimage that led to involvement in organic church planting.

One of the most frequently asked questions we receive about organic churches is, “What do you do with children?” It seems that without segregating the kids from the adults we don’t know what to do. Apparently, grown-ups can’t learn anything if their kids are present and vice versa.

Many years ago, prior to any child labor laws, in an attempt to empower, evangelize and educate children being used in coalmines John Wesley began what is now known as Sunday School. Prior to this, there was no separation of congregants based upon age.

Today, we can’t seem to cope without it. We now feel that the only way children can truly be taught is when they are separated from all others but kids their own age. Why is that? Does life itself also follow such a compartmentalized fashion? Of course not. In fact, the truth is that children learn more at home with their whole family than in school with their peers. Perhaps we can begin to see better learning, of both child and adult, if we do not separate according to age.

In order to have a spontaneous church multiplication movement, we must not confine expansion with controls. For this reason, I don’t recommend that there is only one way to take care of kids in a simple church. In fact, we usually give two or three options and let churches decide for themselves. My experience shows, however, that there are better ways than others. Integration in church life has proven more powerful than segregation based on age.

I have three kids that are growing up fast. They have been a part of church from the very beginning and have been in a large mega church, a small traditional church and a simple organic church. They can tell you the best part of each experience and the worst as well.

In the traditional Sunday School approach they learned many things for which I am grateful. But it was always cognitive learning rather than experiential. They knew facts about Jesus, David the giant slayer and the Lions in Daniel’s den, but they did not learn how to love their sister or how to share the Good News with a friend at school. They learned about character qualities, but never actually had the opportunity to experience them and see them lived out in others.

A few years ago, my family received a call to a new kind of ministry. At the time we lived in a suburb determined by the FBI to be one of the 15 safest cities over 100,000 in population in the United States. We had our own house with a nice yard on a quiet street.

Our new call was to urban Long Beach, a place where gangs not only started but also franchised around the country. We moved into a rented smaller back house with an alley instead of a yard. Many would think this was not the best move for our children. I have to admit, there were a few moments where I wondered myself. But deep inside I knew this was the right decision.

Looking back, I wouldn’t have traded the experience we had in that back house for any other.

When we moved to the city and began organic churches our kids began to learn in a more experiential fashion. They saw lives transformed. They listened to people share their horrid stories of abusive life-styles and then watched them live for Jesus. My son has even had a few roommates along the way who needed some stable and loving home life for support. He has learned something about love, kindness and hospitality that he never could learn on a flannel graph.

One of the sayings that we often repeat in our movement is that “when a child receives Jesus he doesn’t receive a Jr.-sized Holy Spirit and a Jesus action figure to play with. He receives the full-power of the Spirit of God and is no less spiritual than any adult.

With that in mind, we expect great things from our children and we are usually not disappointed. It is very common for the kids in our church to have the best questions and to share the most profound thoughts. One time when we were on a tangent about the rapture my middle daughter, who was about 12 at the time, had a puzzled look on her face. She asked, “When the rapture comes do people all go up?” I said, “That’s what is usually taught.” You could see the wheels turning in her head. Then she said, “Well, if the earth is round and we all go up, doesn’t that mean that we’re all going to different places?” I’ve never been asked that question before and it took the mind of a child to think it up.

The children in our church are often the ones most desired to pray for the prayer requests because they pray with a child-like faith and their prayers are often answered.

It is common for us to have small toddlers in our church. Rather than send them to another room with a baby-sitter we let them be a part of the church. They worship with us, pray with us and usually waddle from one lap to another. To be honest, I can’t remember a single disruptive moment. Because the kids are trained with this sort of church they just know how to be a part of it. I will never forget a time when a small boy had surgery to correct a lazy eye he had. He came to church and couldn’t wait to say something during the praise and prayer request time. He sat on the edge of his seat and his feet barely touched the floor and he opened his eyes wide and said with great wonder, “Jesus fixed my eyes,” as he slowly turned his head around the room to show everyone. Wow, what awesome worship. Jesus must love this. Why on earth would we want to send that away to watch the latest Veggie Tales video in the bedroom?

Early in the beginning of our movement, my associate Paul Kaak was concerned with how organic church would work out for his young child Elijah. Their family went on vacation for a couple months in a rural part of California and decided to start a church during the vacation. Elijah was an important part of the new church. He recalls a time when they were all praying very intently and he noticed how quiet it was. With small children, quietness, though long desired, is not always a good sign, so Paul opened his eyes to see if Elijah was getting into some trouble. To his amazement he saw his boy sitting right in front of him fascinated as he watched his mom and dad interceding for others. So many kids in America only see their parents pray at the dinner table. Paul was convinced right then that integrating kids into church was powerful.

We have forgotten that much of the Christian life is caught by example rather than taught by fill-in the blank coloring books.

It is a real blessing for kids to see their parents worshipping God and I am always moved to great joy and tears listening to my own children as they sing praise to their Savior and pray for other people. I could never go back to the days when we sent them away to another room to be entertained while we took God serious without them.

Later in that same summer of rural church planting, a bee stung a small girl on her head. While the adults were all trying to help with getting out the stinger and finding some ice, Elijah stepped right up, put his hand on her head, and prayed for her to be healed. The little girl felt better almost immediately, and the adults were again led by a child. I wonder what our churches would be like if we allowed childlike faith back into the heart of our common church life. The disciples wanted to segregate the children and not bother Jesus with such unimportant things, and He rebuked them (and us) by telling them not to take the children away, for all of us need to learn from their kind of faith (Matt. 19:13-15).

My children will all tell you that this is the kind of church they love being a part of.

A few years ago while I was doing ministry in Japan I had a dream that my oldest daughter Heather (who was almost 15 years old at the time) started a church with her friends in Huntington Beach, CA where she went to school. After I returned I told her about the dream as I was saying goodnight to her to let her know she was on my mind while I was traveling.

The next day, after school she came home and said to me, “Dad, my friends want to do it.” I asked, “Do what?” She replied, “Start a church.” She told me that they were tired of the old boring type of church where they try and entertain them for a couple hours and they wanted to be a part of starting a new church. Because she had seen organic churches start a few times I told her, “Well, you know what to do, go do it and I will be available to help if you need it.” The next day she came home from school and they had planned church to start that next Thursday in her friend’s living room (in Huntington Beach), they had invited many from High School and had arranged for a friend who was a musician to lead worship. That Thursday their new church was born.

My children have learned things by being a vital part of the beginning of new churches that they could never learn in a traditional Sunday School. They have watched people come off the streets addicted to speed that turn and follow Christ. They have seen them transformed into powerful agents of the kingdom of God. They fully believe that God is powerful and able to change lives, not just from the stories in the book of Acts but from the stories they have seen in people’s lives. They now have a very real faith and compassion for lost people. I know many churched kids who are actually afraid of lost sinners, but my kids have learned to love them. I have taken them with me into the barrio of East LA to share Christ with kids who are growing up in crack houses and among notorious gangs.

One evening Dana and I were going out on a date and we left the kids at home. After dinner we called them to make sure Zachary, my youngest was getting ready for bed since it was already getting dark. My oldest answered the phone and said that Erin and Zachary were still out back in the alley. I told her to get the kids and bring them in immediately. Zach got on the phone and was excited to tell me that the mean old lady across the alley had backed out of her garage and had said cruel things to Zach and Erin as she left. I asked what they were doing in the alley this late. Zach said he was waiting for her to return because he and Erin had made things for her. Zach had made her a picture to try and help her to become a little happier and Erin had written a sermon to tell her about Jesus.

When I told Zach that he needed to come in and get ready for bed he burst into tears and said, “But dad, she is old and doesn’t believe in Jesus. She probably doesn’t have long to live and I want to tell her about Jesus. We’ve been praying for her and want to give her these things.” I know few adults who have wept for the souls of lost people, let alone those who have treated them unkindly.

These kids obviously were filled with the Spirit because they had deep compassion for this lost soul that had consistently been mean to them. I was tearing up with my son. I let him bring the picture over to her the next day. It didn’t change her demeanor at all but over the course of a few years she did seem to lighten up a bit.

A few years later my son was listening to a P.O.D CD and heard the song “Youth of the Nation” about the sad end of many young people who live without Christ and die without hope. He was so moved by the song that he came into our bedroom late because he couldn’t sleep. I asked him what was wrong and he said he’d decided that he wanted to go back to public school so he can help people like those in the song.

These attitudes toward the lost have been embedded in my children because they have made sacrifices to bring the gospel to lost people and they have seen lives change so dramatically. They know the power of the gospel and they believe in it. These lessons have been learned experientially and will stick with them for the rest of their lives. Instead of just hearing the stories of other people’s faith thousands of years ago, they are living stories of faith today.

In fact, it is my hope that these children will grow up and see church differently than previous generations. Instead of viewing church as an entertainment center, to be evaluated by how well it suits our own individual needs, they will see church as a missional community that they bring something special to. They will not evaluate church as consumers looking for a good product, but as a family that is on an important adventure together, each with special abilities needed for the success of our common mission.

This is a poem that my middle daughter wrote to express her own feelings about church. We are a part of a church called Awakening and this poem was written when she was 13 years old. It is important to know that she was the only 13 year old in our church at the time. But she felt very strongly that this was her church and even today she loves it.

My Awakening
By Erin Cole

Every Friday night about six thirty or seven,
I meet and have church with believers of heaven.
We worship and gather together and share,
Of all sorts of things that just need some prayer.

There could be a few of us, maybe five or ten,
Or maybe, on occasion we’ll be thirty again.
All of the people used to be lost,
But now they love God at any cost.

Before we begin we sing praises to God,
I play the drums and everyone’s in awe,
At what Jesus did for us on the cross.
To not accept that would be a great loss.

This changed my view of what church should be,
I learned that God loves everyone, not just me.
Church doesn’t have to be repetitive or traditional,
But sharing God’s love that is unconditional.

Children in House Church

I wanted to post this article because it's relevant to what we're doing and I'm discussing it with some of our children's people and wanted it to be posted somewhere so they can respond to it.

House Church and the Children
By Dan Trotter

At a recent house church conference, before a panel discussion was about to begin, I whispered to Les Buford that I bet the first question was going to be: "how do we handle the children?" Sure enough, it was. This, in my opinion, is the number one question asked by those contemplating doing house church. It is a tremendous stumbling block. But it shouldn't be.

This issue will examine three things: one, the differing philosophies or mindsets that the institutional and house church have toward children and the church; two, practical issues that arise; and three, the advantage to children of the church in the home.

"Jesus never, ever said: 'Suffer the little children to be packed away in the nursery.' Can you imagine the children being led to Children's Church during the Sermon on the Mount?"

In the very first issue of NRR, I asked the question: "What do you do for the children?" I am ashamed to say that the first draft of that issue read: "What do you do WITH the children." I had subconsciously succumbed to the philosophy or mindset of much of the institutional church: children are a problem, they interfere with the almighty "service," where important, paid professionals in robes or coats and ties give important speeches, and where serious, quiet, and holy listeners sit deathly still in pews. So, the question becomes, what do we do WITH the children while we are doing the important things in the "service"?

Neither Jesus, nor the apostles, ever worried about what to do WITH the children. Jesus never, ever said: "Suffer the little children to be packed away in the nursery." Can you imagine the children being led to Children's Church during the Sermon on the Mount?

The Scripture doesn't say much, if anything, on handling children when believers gathered. But I can't imagine that the believers back then didn't have children. I imagine nothing was ever said, because the early Christians didn't make such a big deal about the issue. The churches were in the home, families lived in homes, children lived in families, and therefore, children met with the church in the home. And despite the Scriptural silence on kids and church, I can guarantee one thing: there weren't any Sunday Schools and Children's Churches.

Doug Carty of High Point, N.C. (along with many others) makes this point: "If Sunday Schools are essential adjuncts to church life, why is the Bible silent on this subject?...His building plan, the Bible, is complete in every detail. Where is the Christian who would deny that the Bible is a perfect blueprint? Interestingly, there is not even a hint of Sunday Schools in God's blueprint." Doug goes on to point out that Sunday Schools were not even originated to teach Bible stories or Christian morality, but were started in nineteenth-century England to give poor children of mill and mine laborers a chance to read and write. So who had primary responsibility for training children before the appearance of Sunday Schools? The family. I think it is the contention of most house churches that the family still has the primary responsibility for the instruction and nurturing of Christian children. That may be the reason most home churches (just like the biblical NT church) don't have Sunday Schools. And this really is a barrier to Christians who contemplate leaving the institutional church for the home church. It is amazing how many Christians worry about the spiritual welfare of their kids to the point that the parents will poison themselves to death on the corrupt religiosity of the institutional church, just so long as there's a good youth program. I am convinced that many institutional churches realize this, and capitalize on it by providing jam-up "youth ministries," in order to keep their "tithe-payers" from leaving. (Of course, I realize that often there are other, sincere motives involved, too.)

Although it is the family's primary duty to raise children up in the Lord, it does not follow that the home church should be uninterested in their welfare. Quite the contrary. If kids see their parents' church as a drag, they'll tend to think Jesus is a drag, too. In the next section we will discuss practical ways for the home church to make children know that the church belongs to them as well as their parents.

"Relax - there's going to be more noise and interruption in the house church. People with children need to quit feeling guilty about it."

PRACTICAL WAYS

In discussing practical ways to integrate children into the life of the home church, we must understand off the bat that if parents bring the traditional mindset of the institutional church into the house church, nothing will work for the kids. The system church has the mentality of juvenile segregation: push them out into the Sunday School wing, so everything can be Holy and Quiet. This, of course, is unbiblical. How quiet do you think the kids were during the Sermon on the Mount? The system church is liturgically rigid in its "order of service," and kids, being as unprogrammed and unpredictable as they are, can never fit within that rigidity. So: the first practical thing to do in the church in the home is to relax-- there's going to be more noise and interruption in the house church. People with children need to quit feeling guilty about it, and people without children need to exercise more tolerance than they would in the institutional church.

The second practical thing to do is to develop close relationships between each parent, and between each parent and child. This is possible in the home church, as it is not possible in the organized church. With close relationships, when little Johnny is about to flush the cherry bomb down the toilet, an adult not Johnny's parent can firmly request that the little hellion extinguish the wick, without fear of alienating little Johnny, or little Johnny's mom. Close relationships are extremely important.

The third practical thing that should be done is to find creative, workable ways to involve the kids in the meeting with the adults. Where did the idea come from that the meeting (or the church) belongs exclusively to the adults? I know of one house church in which the children are generally musically gifted. The young folks play guitars, violins and flutes, and feel free to lead out in song or music. Other home churches encourage kids to share testimonies, or to recite memorized Scripture, or to ask for prayer requests. My particular home church one meeting had the teen-age young people lead the service with Scripture and music. The meeting was entirely different--it gave us variety, and helped the young people join in. During another service in my home church, one of the sisters conducted a "Sunday-School lesson" for the young children with the adults present. The adults were forced to adapt to a young child's viewpoint (something that all adults should do periodically). And the kids got to have fun with their parents as they learned the spiritual lesson being taught.

The fourth practical thing I would suggest is not to be hidebound by "house-church theology." Sure, we don't believe in Sunday Schools, but the world's not going to end if someone has something special for the kids, if he or she takes them aside in another room once in a while. And we don't believe in pacifying the kids with entertainment to keep them out of our hair, but there's nothing wrong with showing them a video once in a while (even, heaven forfend, if the video is a Bugs Bunny cartoon, and not spiritual).

A fifth practical suggestion that one house-churcher has suggested is for each meeting home to have announced house rules, so that children and parents might not inadvertently harm anything.

A sixth practical suggestion is to tolerate fussing infants as much as you can, but if they get too loud, make sure the parents understand that the baby should be taken out of the meeting until he cools off. If a parent doesn't do this, the parent should be communicated with. Remember, relationships are important.

My seventh, and last, practical suggestion, is to never let the meeting become boring--neither for the children, nor for the adults. If the meeting is dead or too long for the adults, imagine what it's like for the kids! Their attention span is probably about half of ours. We need to constantly put ourselves in the shoes of our brothers and sister--and our kids are, in the body of Christ, our brothers and sisters. Let's prefer them in love.

We finish these thoughts on children and the house church by presenting the manifest advantages of the home church for young folks. We should not look upon children as an obstacle to getting folks into the house church. We should look at the advantages of the house church for kids, and point these advantages out to potential house church converts.

One big advantage of the home church for young people is that the youth get to see their parents in loving, supportive relationships with one another. They get to see their parents open their hearts to God in a real, personal, non-religious, un-phony fashion.

Another tremendous advantage is that the kids are not given second-class status in the church: they are not segregated, put out of sight, out of mind in nurseries, Sunday Schools and youth ministries.

One of the biggest advantages, in my view, is the close relations that develop between adults and children of other adults. In my home church, I constantly pray for the children involved. There are only six couples in the church, and only fourteen children. It's very easy to find out what's going on in the kids' lives, and easy to pray for them daily, individually, by name. I submit to you that this doesn't happen too often in the mega-church.

can we worship God through death?

haven worship

:)