There’s a lot of wisdom in this article by Jason Helopoulos on why children should worship with the rest of the church, a practice which the biblical authors seem to assume will be the case.

However, if anything I’d want to say I don’t think Jason goes far enough.  We shouldn’t just be content to get our children into and out of gathered worship without any loss of limbs and surely we’d want our children to be more than mere observers.  With some imagination and preparation we should be able to encourage even the youngest of children to interact and participate rather than resorting to mints and offering envelopes.

It may seem like mission impossible, but help is on hand.  A book we are currently reading through and that so far we’ve found to be full of great ideas on how parents can better nurture their children in this way is ‘Parenting in the Pew: Guiding your children into the joy of worship,’ by Robbie Castleman.