Do Kids Belong In Church?

Why more Christian parents are choosing to keep their children in corporate worship.

If you’re one of those families who keep your children in the church service instead of sending them to Sunday School, “Kids’ Church,” or creche, you’ve probably been questioned about it. Sometimes it’s polite. Other times, people will come at you as though you’ve admitted to feeding your child only once a day.

The assumption is often that keeping children in corporate worship is unnatural, unhelpful, distracting, or even irresponsible.

Yet today, a growing number of parents are deliberately choosing to worship together as a family each Lord’s Day. They’re not making this decision because they dislike supplementary children’s ministry. They have no problem with Sunday School and the like, provided it’s before or after church—not an alternative to church.

Rather, they believe that gathering with the whole church for Word and sacrament is one of the most important things children can experience.

Here are four of the most common objections to keeping kids in church, and a response to each.

“They won’t understand the sermon.”

This is probably the objection heard most often. The argument is that the sermons are too theologically complex for young children. Surely they’d get more out of a lesson designed specifically for their age.

At first, that sounds reasonable. But it assumes the primary purpose of bringing children to church is simply to maximise how much information they understand in that particular hour of the week.

Corporate worship is about much more than just Bible lessons.

Children spend far more time at home than they do at church. As such, parents have every day of the week to explain the Bible to their children at their level through family worship, Bible reading, conversation, catechism, and prayer.

They can read simplified stories, watch shows designed to teach kids about the Bible, answer questions, and—with the invention of the internet and the home printer—can colour in as many Bible-themed pictures as they wish.

What they can’t recreate at home is the gathered church.

Only in corporate worship do children experience the people of God assembled together across generations. They hear God’s Word publicly read and preached. They sing alongside grandparents, parents, singles, and other children. They sit under the shepherding of their elders. They witness baptisms, the Lord’s Supper, prayer, confession, and more.

Those experiences can’t be had in the living room.

The Bible consistently presents God’s people gathered together as one covenant community. Children were present when the Law was read publicly, not because they understood every word, but because they belonged among God’s people and were expected to grow into understanding over time.

After all, many adults don’t fully grasp every word and concept of every sermon either. Yet no one suggests they should leave for a simplified alternative.

“Church is boring—they’ll end up hating it.”

Many assume that asking children to sit through a worship service will only make them resent church when they’re old. In reality, however, the opposite is more likely to be the case.

When children are routinely removed the moment the “grown-up” part of the service begins, they learn an unintended lesson: church isn’t for them.

They begin to think, very early on, that this part of the service belongs to the boring old adults. Anyone who grew up attending Sunday School will probably remember the disappointment of church during school holidays, when children’s programs stopped, and they suddenly had to suffer the entire service they’d spent the rest of the year being told they couldn’t understand, wouldn’t like, and should participate in.

Keeping kids in worship communicates something very different. It tells them that they belong in church, with everyone, and regardless of their age, and importantly, whether or not they liked the sermon.

It’s not going to be easy on day one, but like every important habit, attention is cultivated through practice. No one expects a child to sit attentively for an hour overnight. They learn gradually. Week by week, year by year, they become familiar with the liturgy, the songs, the prayers, and the preaching.

In fact, if you’re doing family worship each day, your children will learn at home what it means to sit still while God’s Word is being read and talked about.

Long before they understand everything, church begins to feel natural, normal, and just a part of life.

Those memories often become deeply formative. The familiar sounds of congregational singing, the reading of Scripture from the pulpit, and the preaching of God’s Word create a rich spiritual foundation that many Christians later look back on with gratitude—and even nostalgia.

As Proverbs reminds parents: “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.” (Prov. 22:6)

“Children are a distraction.”

It’s true that young children make noise. Some more than others. They cry. They fidget. And they drop pencils, over and over again.

Removing them from the service may make it easier for adults to concentrate, but if that’s the reason for doing so, then the question is: What’s the purpose of corporate worship? Is it a Bible study lesson only for adults? What if a family with a handicapped child or adult attended? What if they made a lot of noise week after week? Would they be considered a distraction in need of removing too?

The New Testament presents the church as one body gathering before God. Children are not interruptions to that gathering—they are part of it.

Their presence calls for patience, grace, and respect. Just as churches gladly accommodate the elderly, the disabled, and others with particular needs, they can also make room for young families.

Supporting parents doesn’t require separating children from worship. Churches can provide nursing rooms, quiet spaces when needed, practical assistance, and especially a culture of encouragement without suggesting children are an interference and obstacle to be managed or removed.

Children are the future of the church. The sound of kids in the pews shouldn’t be a reason to get upset with their presence; it should be a reason to rejoice that the next generation of Christians is being formed and fashioned in the congregations they’re a part of.

Children are a blessing to parents and a blessing to the church. Take a child to a church with no children and see the joy and hope it brings everyone.

Of course, there will occasionally be crying or restlessness. But those brief distractions are a small price to pay for raising children who grow up knowing that they belong among the worshipping people of God.

“They don’t have the attention span.”

Of course, children don’t have the attention span. Neither do most adults, if we’re honest.

Like reading or prayer, attention develops through repeated practice and training. More importantly, the responsibility for helping children understand God’s Word belongs primarily to parents.

The sermon addresses the whole congregation. Afterwards, mothers and fathers can explain difficult concepts, answer questions, revisit the text during family worship, and apply its teaching in ways their children can grasp.

If there’s something important they’ve missed because they lacked the attention span, parents can help them out later.

That’s the biblical pattern of family discipleship.

Separating children from corporate worship can unintentionally shift that responsibility away from parents onto the church’s children’s ministry. Many have grown up with next to no biblical instruction at home because the parents outsourced that responsibility to the Sunday School teacher.

But the responsibility belongs to the parents. Parents are commanded to raise their children “in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Eph. 6:4), not outsource that responsibility to others.

Can you imagine a husband hiring someone else to love, lead, and sanctify his wife because he thinks they would do a better job at it? Absurd, right? The husband is the one responsible, and he has a duty to make it work, not pass it off to someone he considers more qualified. The same goes for parenting.

In corporate worship, children can hear the same Word proclaimed as the rest of the congregation, and then parents can help them grow into its meaning throughout the week. Assuming the adults have maintained attention throughout the service.

Children often understand more than adults think. Even when they can’t follow every point of the sermon, they are absorbing the language of Scripture, learning the patterns of worship, hearing the Gospel proclaimed repeatedly, and learning that gathering with God’s people is simply what Christians do.

Conclusion

Ultimately, the question isn’t whether children would enjoy a more age-tailored lesson, or whether parents want the hour-long break without having to worry about fidgeting children.

It’s whether corporate worship is something children should participate in as members of Christ’s covenant community.

More and more Christian parents are saying yes. Not because every Sunday is easy, or because every sermon is fully understood. But because week after week, year after year, children are being formed by something larger than themselves: The ordinary gathering of God’s people around His Word.

And that’s something that no Sunday School classroom can replace.