"Let the children come to me"… but make sure they are quiet, respectful and behave like adults.

Jesus said many controversial and challenging things. After all, he told us to love our enemies, to stop pointing out the fault in others and look at what we do instead, to turn the other cheek and to give up everything to follow him. Yet possibly the most challenging of all his messages for the church is Matthew 19:14 "Jesus said, 'Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.'"

Challenging! What am I talking about. Of course we want children in church! ‘He has lost the plot’, I can hear you all thinking. Perhaps in a desperate attempt to keep this blog going, I have finally run out of things in the church to make fun of and am now just inventing issues. Well hopefully, by the end of this blog you will realise that this isn’t the case.

Yes, the church wants children, we want young families. After all we want to grow, and without the next generation this is unlikely to happen. In fact, many churches will actively put forward a strategy aimed at encouraging children and their families to attend their services, special events and/or holiday clubs. Time and effort often goes into a strategy aimed at doing exactly what Jesus commanded us to do. Church leadership meetings will discuss whether it is practical (or Theologically sound) to fit a giant bouncy castle in church or how much mess, Messy Church can make, without incurring a huge cleaning bill. They will debate whether having a kids light, bright, twilight, delight, non-fright evening is a good alternative to Halloween or whether families will just use it as a pre-trick or treat party. Or whether Minecraft upholds the Biblical values to build our houses on solid rock. Yet once we have children in the building, once they have joined the actual service, this is where the problems arise. Suddenly the words of Jesus take on a different meaning. It is as if he actually said…

Let the children come to me… and make sure they stay seated when they do, not wriggling, not getting up and not squabbling over who sits where.

Let the children come to me… and make sure they are quiet, throughout the service, no crying, no laughing, no shouting out the answer 'Jesus' every time the pastor asks a rhetorical question.

Let the children come to me… but if they can’t see anything because they are sat behind taller adults, tough. We don’t want them to actually come to the front, Jesus was being metaphorical, wasn’t he?

Let the children come to me… so that we can immediately usher them away to a back room and keep them there for the remainder of the service so that the rest of us can have a bit of peace and quiet.

Let the children come to me… as long as they are well groomed, well dressed, well spoken young people. Anything else and perhaps they could stay at home next week, as the Bishop is coming.

Let the children come to me… but if they are noisy, or excitable then could they just come to the special ‘all age services’, when there is an early morning alternative for the rest of the congregation to attend. That way they won’t upset anyone.

Let the children come to me… but don’t let them have fun. They should be ‘mild and obedient’, after all Jesus was talking about children in the Victorian age wasn’t he?

Let the children come to me… when I say me, I don’t mean me. I mean let the children come to someone else, preferably the young intern or one of the students who has returned from uni for the summer.

Let the children come to me… and make sure they aren’t on some modern device, when they should be listening to the word of God not just staring at screens these days because… hang on, my phone is ringing and I must answer it.

Let the children come to me… we really want to listen to what they have to say, to give them a voice, to learn from them. But just to clarify we won’t be implementing any of their ideas, not unless they agree with our 5 point youth and families plan that the church leadership team spent 3 months working on.

Let the children come to me… as long as they behave the way we were made to in ‘my day’. They mustn’t do anything to distract anyone from listening to the preacher or wake up the half of the church that has dozed off.

But what should we do? Build a giant Lego church and meet inside? Have a special Teddy Bear and Doll service, where Humpty Dumpty leads the worship and Barbie is giving the talk? Meet at 1:15pm, when the youth have finally woken up and have table service to provide copious amounts of fizzy drinks and unhealthy snacks throughout the talk? Invent a new slot in the service for everyone to run onto the stage, pull out as many wires as possible (preferably not live ones), before being bribed to sit back down. Perhaps these are going too far.

But I wonder how we might feel if we were to turn up next Sunday and instead of being welcomed into the service we were taken to a small side room, given a series of increasingly tired looking accessories to occupy ourselves and asked to colour in yet another picture of Jesus. Then we are brought back into the main church budling with 10 minutes to go and asked to justify to everyone how we’ve just spent the last hour and what important Theological truths our colouring have revealed. Well? I think I might feel a little short changed. I certainly might not believe that the Kingdoms of Heaven belongs to me…

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