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- [00:00]
Adam Francisco
What would happen if Aslan came bounding out of Narnia and began teaching your
- [00:05]
Pastor Sam Schuldeis
confirmation class or Bible study? What if Martin Luther could have traveled from Wittenberg through the Wardrobe, all while
- [00:11]
Adam Francisco
writing the Small Catechism?
- [00:13]
Pastor Sam Schuldeis
Hi, this is Pastor Sam Schuldeis, author
- [00:15]
Adam Francisco
of the latest book from 1517, Luther and the A Narnian Catechism. This book weaves together the imagination of C.S. lewis's the lion, the Witch in the Wardrobe and the instruction of Martin Luther's Small Catechism. Two great authors, two classic books, one
- [00:32]
Scott Keith
epic true story of good news for
- [00:34]
Adam Francisco
you in Jesus, the true untamed lion of Judah who is full of grace and goodness. You can order your copy today at 1517.org shop.
- [01:07]
Caleb Keith
Hello and welcome to the Thinking Fellows Podcast. My name is Caleb Keith. Today I am joined by Adam Francisco, Bruce Hillman and Scott Keith. The Thinking Fellows is part of the 15:17 podcast network of shows. You can go to 15:17.org podcast to see all of our shows there. A big thank you to all of the Thinking Fellows listeners who helped us reach our podcast fundraiser goal last year. It was kind of a tremendous effort. We got the support that we needed. We reached our $150,000 goal and we're very, very thankful for the new donations we got from listeners, both one time gifts and recurring donations. We had hundreds of new people sign up for recurring donations each month in support of these podcasts. So we really do thank you for your support and listening and sharing these shows with your family and friends. Today we're going to talk about children's church, maybe children's ministry in general. This was a big blow up on X, I believe. Also Facebook and these things tend to make their way on Instagram and YouTube.
- [02:11]
Scott Keith
Facebook's still a thing.
- [02:13]
Caleb Keith
Facebook is like more of a thing than I would have ever imagined. Still, as somebody who hasn't been on it in like 10 years, but when
- [02:21]
Scott Keith
I got off of it, everyone, all I ever heard was everybody's leaving Facebook. Facebook's I guess not, huh?
- [02:27]
Caleb Keith
Not everybody left Facebook, but Facebook is still there. But this happens, I would say once every 18 months. And that is there's like a huge blow up. Like a viral blowup about children's church. Or they'll call them children's ministries or youth ministries during the service, during church services. And the blow up usually goes like this. It's either a pastor who was preaching or traveling posts about being upset by the distraction of children in a church church he visited or at a church he was giving like a guest sermon at or something. It usually has to do with travel, being a guest somewhere. Because of course at my church we don't have these types of distraction because we got youth ministry locked down.
- [03:11]
Scott Keith
So he was distracted while attempting to preach.
- [03:16]
Caleb Keith
Let me just read this one for you. Ready? This guy, Luke Simmons, not to put him on blast, but he already did that himself.
- [03:22]
Scott Keith
Just put him on blast.
- [03:23]
Caleb Keith
I mean he had like a million
- [03:25]
Scott Keith
interactions with this guy, Luke Simmons on blast.
- [03:28]
Caleb Keith
But he did cause it this year, so good for him. I guess. It's a lot of engagement. I'm sure a lot of people clicked on his church website, visited a healthy church. Healthy. Love that word too. In another state today, while it was sweet to see some families worshiping together, I was grieved by how distracted parents were by their children. In my view, everyone would have been better served by utilizing the children's ministry. Okay, that then caused like a million interaction fallout.
- [03:55]
Scott Keith
Yeah, I bet it did.
- [03:57]
Caleb Keith
With things where, I mean, you had hundreds of thousands of comments supporting him and telling him how annoyed they are by the sounds and cries of children in the service. You had hundreds of thousands of people saying it's not just the sounds and the cries, but the children aren't being served properly because they can't learn anything in the service. And then you had obviously the sort of the more traditional position people come in and just say how kind of heartbreaking this view is at all. That children would be removed from their parents during the service or sent out to some sort of lesser Sunday school or whatever during the church service. Kind of giving historical reasons for why and then modern data. I thought I'd kick it to you guys with the two main problems that always come up here being this. You get two schools of thought why children should be removed from church service. Number one, age appropriate learning that children can't get value out of staying in church past maybe some hymns or some songs. We're going to call them praise music in this context. Typically that outside of that they're not getting the full benefits of what church has to offer. So you need to put them in a context that works for them. A study of the scripture or listening or watching something that's age appropriate and activities or whatever that would be age appropriate. That's one school thought. Then the other is the distraction that parents, adults, mature Christian believers need. This one person put it. They need an hour of peace with the Lord. And removing their children allows them to have this hour of peace with the Lord and that children then are damaging to the people who are really benefiting there, the mature, discipling Christians who are present. Because you can't hear, you're distracted, the pastor's work is going to waste. He put all this work into his message for you, and now nobody can hear it. And so there's the schools of thought. So I'll kick it over to you guys, see what you think, and then maybe we'll talk about some studies done on this, some movements about this, and whatever else. I know Bruce is passionate about this.
- [06:14]
Scott Keith
Well, the first thing I'm struck with is kind of take it out of the realm of even the age appropriateness. There's an assumption here that the only thing at work in a church service is sort of teaching and learning at the same level as you would a secular subject. In other words, this is no different than a history class. And children are not going to learn your adult history by sitting in your adult history lecture. So send them out to a history lecture that is more age appropriate for them. Now, that's a bad assumption because it assumes that proclamation is the same thing as teaching. Now, this assumption makes it even into Lutheran preaching all the time, but that proclamation is the same as teaching and has nothing else going on with it other than just straight teaching, much like a secular subject. When in fact, the promise to preaching is that it comes with the miraculous power of the Holy Spirit to engender faith, to strengthen faith, to keep one in the faith, to persevere that faith, and that this is miraculous, and that it happens through the proclamation of the Word, and that it's not just mere knowledge that's being imparted here. This was a hallmark of the Lutheran Reformation, that faith is not just mere knowledge. And that proclamation is not just the passing on of knowledge. It's the actual transmission of the power of the Holy Spirit in a way that we don't understand. And that, you know, that's it. And the reality here is that proclamation does something miraculous to the adult and to the child, much like baptism. And you can't just say, hey, there's an age appropriateness to this and that they have to understand it, everything that's going on. Because then you're just talking about a class. It's no different than a secular class. And you're talking about the faith in a way that's no different than the gaining of secular knowledge. And that's not what it is.
- [08:15]
Adam Francisco
I'm guessing what's behind this, Caleb, that I'm sure there's a lot of. Well, I don't know if there's A lot of history. But I'm guessing, and I think I'm right, even though I'm guessing that behind this is a very different theology of worship. So, like, this is not me putting best construction on it, but if for, for your Sunday morning you're getting together, singing some songs, like repeating a stanza 20 times, you're singing, I can sing of your love forever, like forever or whatever.
- [08:49]
Scott Keith
I can sing of your love forever, whatever, comma, forever, comma, whatever, period.
- [08:54]
Caleb Keith
That's a T shirt.
- [08:56]
Adam Francisco
And then you stop and then you have a teaching time. Let's say it's 30 minutes, 45 minutes, whatever. And it is sort of an exposition of scripture, maybe some historical background, maybe application, life application, as they say.
- [09:14]
Caleb Keith
That's probably most of it.
- [09:16]
Adam Francisco
Yeah. And then it's some singing at the end. Maybe you're singing about in the secret, in the quiet place that's where you find God. You know, that kind of stuff.
- [09:25]
Scott Keith
You're really familiar with all these songs.
- [09:26]
Adam Francisco
Oh, yeah. As Caleb introduced this, I was thinking, I guess I have experienced this, but it's been, you know, it's been 30, well, 25 plus years. But. So if that, if that's what worship or Sunday morning looks like to you, I'm not saying this is not a defense of it, but why wouldn't they?
- [09:47]
Caleb Keith
Yeah, I think that Scott put it,
- [09:49]
Adam Francisco
if all you're doing when you gather together is getting some more head knowledge that maybe is going to help your walk, your discipleship, however you describe it. I mean, no shocker that this sort of thing would come into play Now. I suspect that there's all sorts of like psychological theories too, that kind of prop it up. But I think it really does all boil down to. And I wouldn't want to be like super like if we got into a discussion. I don't. I'm kind of hoping we don't because I think I'm going to open my big mouth and offend or get some people riled up. But if we get into theology as a worship, and if it's not something where there's, as Scott put it, the Holy Spirit is working. And what I mean by that is not creating holy laughter or whatever you're into, but you're receiving the power of the gospel and forgiveness of sins, and there's a sacramental kind of, not just the sacraments being distributed, but there's something sacramental going on, if you will, then why wouldn't you do something like children's service? Now, I guess the big question then is, is it really worship if you're just going there to do Bible study. So that's maybe the confusion is just labeling it. Am I right there, Scott? Am I being too grumpy?
- [11:09]
Scott Keith
I've thought this for years and years and years. I've written this for years and years and years. What we suffer from mostly is a distinction between preaching and teaching or proclamation and instruction, you put it that way. If anybody's interested, I don't often plug this podcast when it's on. It's a really good podcast. But the Preaching to Text podcast with Steve Paulson and John Hoyam, they just did a show on preaching in Matthew, specifically Matthew 10 and Christ sending out apostles to proclaim the gospel. And the thing that Paulson lands on that's helpful here is that he actually gives them authority. He distinguishes it sort of from the rabbinic style of teaching. A rabbi would go out and they'd tell you the history and the context and everything, and then they drop a little piece of advice to you. But it didn't really come with authority other than this is what I think you should do in this situation. Then it's usually life advice. Whereas the distinction that Jesus does to the disciples in Matthew is he sends them out with authority specifically to forgive and retain sins that comes through the proclamation of the gospel. And. And in modern Christian churches. Again, I'm not going to peg every Lutheran church with this, but I've seen it and sensed it more and more in Lutheran preaching is that it's become more rabbinic like that, and less proclamation. So more pre Christian than Christian in a lot of ways, even down to the teaching being mostly sort of, how do I handle this in my life to make myself more righteous? More than the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ and the promise of that forgiveness through his death and resurrection, that comes with the power of the Holy Spirit to create faith, engender faith, and keep in the faith. So I think if you could sort of. I've not been successful over the last decade plus, but if you could sort of change people's definitions on this, it would be helpful.
- [13:05]
Caleb Keith
Yeah, the worship or worship. You know, these church services are essentially two Ps, praise and pedagogy.
- [13:13]
Scott Keith
Right.
- [13:14]
Caleb Keith
That's kind of what you have going on here. I think people in these traditions would say that the worship time is actually the praise. So your music is sort of serving your heart, but also is kind of this sacrifice to God kind of situation. And then the pedagogy is then what you need for the rest of the week. Right. So you get what you need for the day, you get your refresh through the praise, and then you get the food, the ammo, the whatever you need for the rest of the week through the pedagogy. As the Bible is kind of seen as just in a lot of ways, wisdom. And we see this too with the catch all the way. The word gospel is used in a lot of these contexts too, which is to mean anything good I can find in the text. So it doesn't really matter if it's law or gospel, properly speaking. That is the difference between a command or the promise of the forgiveness of sins on account of Christ. It's whether or not it is good to me right now. And so the law often is called good because it is good to me right now if it can help me defeat this giant in my life, or if it can help me be a better employee or a better husband or a better father, if it gives me the strength to go play catch with my son and put down the TV remote or the phone. Or the phone. Yeah, that's the distraction today. And the Bible can teach you that. It can teach you to put down the phone and go play with your kids, which is an interesting way to view the Scripture. It's an interesting assumption about the scriptures anyways, because the assumption is the evangelical work is done once you're converted. And now it's the discipleship work that the Scripture is really useful for once you've been evangelized into the faith. So you then have children who are. They're viewed as potential often in this system too. I think another important thing is not only is the theology of worship flawed, I said something I think that would probably be rather offensive, but I think is true, which is it's not even really recognizably Christian worship. It's something else. As my dad was saying, it's some sort of teaching from the Bible. But it's not recognizably Christian worship in the sense of that words historic use, or the marks of the church being the means of grace, the proclamation of the gospel and the administration of sacraments. And so the extension is that children then are also not quite believers yet they're the children of believers.
- [15:49]
Scott Keith
They have some advantages, family covenant, but
- [15:52]
Caleb Keith
they're still part of the need to be evangelized into discipleship. And so you need something appropriate for them, which is usually just learning the Bible studies. And I think the other habit is that you then have to make church and Christianity appealing or enjoyable to them as the other habit here. So if they came to praise and pedagogy time, by the time we got to pedagogy, the kids would be losing their minds. They'd be bored probably up until high school ages, all the way from your very little kids to your middle schoolers are going to be bored with a 45 minute hour long sermon that's maybe an extended Bible study plus life application that's centered on the lives of adults. So the assumption is you're going to make Christianity really unappealing to them. And so when it finally comes to decision time, they're going to say, well, I didn't really enjoy church, I didn't really see my friends, I didn't really do this. So what's the appeal? Unfortunately, those fears about making church appealing, making it tailored to their needs or their preferences specifically, hasn't really worked out well for these churches. So on the whole, if you look at Pew's sort of retention numbers of denominational and non denominational Christianity, most denominational Christianity actually has higher retention rates of children into the same faith into adulthood. And more and more research has been done that a lot of this actually seems to be about the multi generational worship or inclusion in things that are not just children's church. To the extent that I said earlier, Fuller Theological Seminary has a whole program around this now called sticky faith, which has to do with basically keeping children in the presence of adults when it comes to everything and completely rethinking children's, what they call children's ministry around basically being multi generational and included in everything. Some of their authors have written things about like getting rid of the kids table, you know, at church, how if we treat church like we do the Thanksgiving separation of the adult table and the kids table, where the adult table is, you get real china, you get a real meal, you have meaningful conversations, and the kids table, you get, you know, paper plates, plastic forks and spoons and everybody kind of throws food at each other and yells at their cousins. You're going to have some kids who are just not feeling like they're part of the family, especially as they get older and older. Same with some other apologetics institutes that have to do with children. So Ken Ham has been writing about this as well. He has a book titled They're Already Gone, talking about how children who have kind of made up their minds about not being Christian before even anti Christian attacks come, is younger than you think. So a lot of people are like, oh, it's high school and college. In his work, he's putting it all the way back at early middle school, 10, 11 years old, with basically kids feeling like they're dragged to church. They're part of these programs, church and learning the Bible is about their friends or about youth group or whatever. And so he's been on a campaign kind of begging people to rethink this as well. And a huge part of that is actually worshiping together and changing the way that churches worship in order to make it so that children can be included in the whole service.
- [19:21]
Scott Keith
Let's hear from the only guy that's been a pastor here on this. I mean, we do got one of those right here. Maybe he can say something like, I went to preach at another church. It was a healthy church, and it was sweet.
- [19:34]
Caleb Keith
But
- [19:36]
Pastor Sam Schuldeis
I won't say that I would have two observations. The. I think Adam's right to say that it comes down ultimately to a definition of worship. And Scott is right to say within that definition, there's a view, a traditional view, that the word is creative and working and is not the same as teaching. But there's a theological and a practical side to this, I think. And the practical side is. I mean, even in the New Testament, and a totally different issue, right when people are, like, speaking in tongues out of turn, and the whole church service is just becoming like a whole distraction and a crazy, chaotic, not orderly thing. Paul's like, you gotta stop. So there is a line. I'm not sure exactly where the line is. There is a line where a child does actually just become distracting and the child needs to be taken out. If the kid is talking the whole time, standing up on the pews, throwing things at the. All stuff I've seen, you know, throwing stuff at the people in front of
- [20:30]
Scott Keith
them or behind them.
- [20:32]
Pastor Sam Schuldeis
Okay, that's totally different. Right. That child is just not able to handle it at that moment and needs to be taken out. And there's a nursery or a place for them to go. And that I think we could all agree that that's necessary. And to the argument that, well, you know, you gotta meet them where they're at. Yeah, okay. There's a point where that's practical, too. I mean, you're not gonna wanna have a sermon probably dealing with sexual issues if you have a lot of kids around. You know, the service still isn't in Latin. We decided at some point that that's not a magical language and you still need to hear the word in your own language. So all that being the case, fine, I get all that.
- [21:10]
Scott Keith
Bruce. We just said it. German.
- [21:12]
Pastor Sam Schuldeis
Oh, sorry. German.
- [21:13]
Adam Francisco
Did you just call it the magical language?
- [21:16]
Pastor Sam Schuldeis
Yeah, Latin, the magical language.
- [21:17]
Scott Keith
Oh, that's hilarious.
- [21:20]
Pastor Sam Schuldeis
Exactly. But I think, and Caleb, you just mentioned it a little bit, but I think the bigger issue is, and this is coming out of my experience too, I think parents are less concerned. I think it is a concern, but I think they're less concerned. Like, oh, no, if my kid doesn't go to children's church and sits through the service, they're not gonna really learn things. And then they're gon give up their faith when they're older. I don't see that in my own experience as the big issue. That's like an add on that makes you feel good to justify it. What it really comes down to is I just want to sit here and hear this and do this for me right now. I got to deal with these kids all week. I don't want to police them. I don't want to be embarrassed. I don't want to keep saying, shh. I don't want to keep saying, stop, watch it. I just don't want to do it. I want to have my hour in church. That's really, I think, what it comes down to. And I sympathize with that. I really do. I don't want to make light of that. I understand that as a, you know, there's people who go, well, yeah, is this what you signed up for? You're a parent? Or that's just what you have to deal with? I do think we need to be concerned with the fact that parenting is really hard and people really want to come and they look forward to worship and they find their own kids are the distraction, not other people's kids. I mean, there are people who think other people's kids are the distraction, but really, as parents think their own, in my experience, think their own kids are the distraction and they can be embarrassed by their kids. It's a reflection on them that their kid isn't behaving. They don't want to be judged by other people in the church. So I see that side of things. I do think, though, it's, for me, the theology that's really important is that God has gathered us all together around word and sacrament, or if you don't believe specifically word and sacrament, that God has gathered us together on. On Sunday morning and we need to be together. That's part of the important thing. Now I'll give you one little antidote. Again, just a line. I always find it funny that it's like, well, we need to get rid of the we need to send the kids out now because they're a distraction or whatever else. My first, probably seven, eight years of ministry, we had a group home, come and sit in the back with people with mental challenges. And some of these people had Tourette's and other stuff. And it was not uncommon. It didn't happen every week, but it was not uncommon for those people during my sermon to yell out for the whole congregation to hear colorful language,
- [23:33]
Scott Keith
more
- [23:34]
Pastor Sam Schuldeis
colorful metaphors to sometimes, not often, some dirty stuff, although once in a while, but usually it was like. Like an F bomb or something would be thrown out, which you have to get used to preaching that way. It wasn't like they were just sputtering it up, but every now and then they would just do it. And the church understood the context, right? And nobody was like, they need to leave. Nobody ever said that. Nobody ever came up. For all the complaints I got as a pastor, no one ever came up to me and said, you know what? Those. Those people who have mental issues, they. They need to leave. The caretakers that were there, if they started having an episode where they could, they would take them out, but every now and then they drop an F bomb, they'd drop a whatever, and it would just kind of come out, and people understood. But when it comes to kids, there was actually less tolerance, which I. Which I always thought was interesting. And I do think it comes back to. And again, I want to be sympathetic to parents because we're human people and we struggle with things, but I think it comes back to one's own ego in a way. And I don't mean the ego of this is my time, more the ego of, I'm embarrassed that people will judge me as a parent because my kids are misbehaving or I can't pay attention because now I got to take this kid out. I would just encourage people. I want to say two things just in closing. One is I would encourage parents to think, actually most people aren't judging you. They're not sitting there saying, you're a terrible parent, your kid's getting sweat. They get it. They get it. And the second thing that I would want to say, just as someone who's been a pastor before, is we love seeing your kids in church. Most pastors do not themselves find kids in any way a distraction. I know very few pastors who ever think that we get it, too. And I just think it's so important for the family of God to be together in the way that God has orchestrated it and called us together. And gathered us together around the Word and around the sacrament to be one family, one body, one people. And we can't really say to one part of the body, in my opinion, I have no use for you. You know, you, you go do your own thing. I just think that that's ultimately not a great theology. But I also think churches do need to be practical and provide stuff for when kids do get just out of control and they just aren't having it, which happens sometimes.
- [25:54]
Scott Keith
It's kind of funny because I'm older now and I remember kind of distinctly every church I ever went to as a kid had something. We have it at our church. There's several churches around here that have it. A cry room, which is basically a room off the sanctuary that has a window into the sanctuary and usually a speaker in there. So that in my day it was always the mom who is taking the crying baby. Baby into the cry room could still follow along with the service if possible. And that seems like a really good sort of practice because the thing you can't. I mean, there's, there's an, an age at which you could tell a kid, no, stop it, be quiet, whatever, all day long. And it's just not, it's just not clicking right. It's just, it doesn't really matter. They get locked in on something and that's probably up through round three. And just in sort of my own experience, experience with my grandkids, once they kind of hit four, that kind of mellows out a little bit. And by five or so, if they've been going to church their whole lives, this isn't an issue really at all. I think there's some things to Bruce's point that you can do to sort of mitigate this too. Like if you're a church that's got a bunch of kids and you're preaching 40 minute sermons, I also say, what are you doing? Like, why at the end of the day, just stop it.
- [27:27]
Caleb Keith
I'm sorry. The adults are like Bob Newhart, 15 minutes of it.
- [27:31]
Scott Keith
Yeah, just narrow it up, like edit it a little bit, bring it down. Not every word out of your mouth in those 40 minutes is absolute gold. And don't think that it is and get some help shortening them up. If this is just sort of your style and it's what you've done the whole time, you don't really know how to make it shorter or how to make a point in a shorter amount of time. Get some help with that. I find that with students, the students in My class at Concordia this past time around, I made them write shorter papers that had to be good papers, but shorter. And they all complained about how difficult it was that they would have preferred sort of a longer paper that they could have just BSed through than a bunch of two to three page papers that had to make an argument in a shorter, more concisely. And it's a difficult thing. Not everybody can do it. So get some help with it. But at the end of the day, the answer isn't if we believe that preaching is preaching to get them out. Right? Because this is where the power of the gospel is going to come into play, is there. This is why we come to church on Sunday, so that we get the goods. The goods are happening there and so you want them there. But I do think finding ways to make it so that they're more able to be there is helpful. We have, I'd say our church is weird. We have almost as many children, like small children in our church as we do adults at our church.
- [28:54]
Caleb Keith
They outnumber seniors like 2 to 1, 2 to 1.
- [28:59]
Scott Keith
And most of the pastors and preachers that have agreed to come help us on the regular have adapted. I mean, they know, I think we did have guys that would come early on who were kind of used to 25 minute sermons. That was kind of their standard. 25 right around there, 20, 25. Most everybody that comes up and preaches for us now is adapted down to between 10 and 15. Just because you have, you know, we've got what, two three year olds, a four year old, a two year old and two babies and another B. It's like in a very small space, the kids do pretty well, but they don't do pretty well if we go more than an hour.
- [29:37]
Caleb Keith
And you got to remove them sometimes to Bruce's point, removing a child who's, let's say throwing a temper tantrum, a baby who's screaming because you know, needs something, whatever, you know, temporary walking out of the sanctuary, going to a cry room, going to a space to go take care of that. Heck, I've had to drag a kid out into the parking lot to punish a tamper tantrum before I had to do that.
- [30:01]
Scott Keith
I've never tossed one in the snow. Yeah, that was hilarious.
- [30:05]
Caleb Keith
It is different than like the habitual separating of them so that these things never occur. And you know, for the episode, I think the big takeaway is what is the church gathering for? Why Sunday morning and to talk to something Bruce said, which is that I think we should Be more sympathetic to. And actually we've had some great, you know, some of the great pronatalist reading I've done as well, and I know my dad has done too, talks about like, that we've lost something in society where when it comes to parents being able to be free from the immediate caretaking of their children in normal circumstances, that a lot of the anxiety about doing everything right and proper around children means this constant exercised control. So, like, you can't go to the park with a group of parents and just hang out with the other parents while your kids go, be dangerous over there 100 yards, because everybody wants to supervise that. It's perfectly safe. And everybody's getting attention they want. And the little kids are getting help walking up to the slide and this and that. And we've done that everywhere. So that you can now see why some people go, well, church can be that moment to breathe. I would say this is a vocational thing, the church as the body of Christ. If you recognize this need for parents to have a break from their children, we should create space that isn't worship time for that. Like a completely separate space. If you want to do some sort of children's ministry or intergenerational night where, you know, grandparents or people without children come and watch kids in a common space at church or in a gym and parents can go out on a date or something like that. Geez, that sounds amazing. That sounds great. Or even if we want to do separate Bible studies where children go to one space and adults go to another for a night, I think that's relatively appropriate as well. But that worship is reserved for the receiving of God's holy works, like things he actually does to you. The proclamation baptism, the Lord's Supper. And that is for all Christians. In fact, it's so for all Christians that even in his later years, in the 1540s, when Luther is still angry and writing against the papacy and the Catholic Church, this is one of his kind of hobby horses, is that the public gathering of the church is for the weak. Primarily, he'll say that it's for children and for the mentally unwell or for those with unstable lives, because they are not going to have the capacity to regularly set aside in their life the hearing of the Word or the administration of the sacraments in random order. So we have Sunday morning as an ordered thing where we call out one particular preacher, even though the office of the Gospel belongs to all believers, that we call out one particular preacher in the way that God has prescribed because of the Great need of people like children and children make his list here. You know, I have this is kind of a great quote too for him, comparing the wisdom of apostles, evangelists, prophets to children. He says, you know, show me at least one who is worth as much as a schoolboy or who is well versed in Holy Scripture and Christian doctrine. As seven year old girls, I shall declare myself caught. For I know that some apostles and evangelists and prophets know more, indeed much more than a seven year old girl. But I thoroughly believe that they also are more acquainted with evil and villainy. So you have this kind of interesting perspective from Luther that comes up with. With great knowledge does not come greater Christian living or discipleship, in fact can sometimes come more assault to the faith. And that we should be envious of the faith or the knowledge, the simple knowledge of the seven year old or the schoolboy or the little child, similar to Christ's command that lest ye be like a little child, ye will not enter the kingdom of heaven. We should spend less time studying the personal wisdom of Scripture for our lives and more time receiving it like a child, not thinking of the ways that we can either usurp it or apply it personally to ourselves, but just hear it and believe it in faith. Anecdotally, I also think that the worship that we have does teach little children really effectively and that this whole idea of learning styles, preferences or age appropriate worship and learning is misguided by modern forms of education and education theory. Anyways, you know, my anecdote is that two Sundays ago I spent most of the service holding and sitting with my 2 year old who not loudly but quietly basically whispered every single word of the entire church service. Every prayer, every song, the creed, the entire thing. At two years old. So to say that that's not learning because she hasn't made a personal decision to let Jesus into her heart or something like this is.
- [35:41]
Scott Keith
But Jesus has a decision to beat his way in there.
- [35:44]
Caleb Keith
Yeah. And has done so. And she does know more than I would say many, many mature Christians I've met. In knowing the words of the Psalms, through worship, in knowing the various songs of the New Testament, the praises, the prayers, the Lord's Prayer, the Apostles Creed. She knows and can recite the truths of the Christian faith. Well, and so you know, or my 4 year old is obsessed with identifying the forgiveness of sins in places. He talks about it all the time. To forgive our sins. He says regularly. He knows.
- [36:22]
Scott Keith
He needs assurance of that.
- [36:24]
Caleb Keith
Yeah, he does. He knows what Christianity is about. And I would say that that's not because of my job here at 15, 17 and because I'm the most amazing dad who sits down and does endless Bible studies and catechism studies with my kids every evening. 90% of the heavy lifting has been done by simply showing up to divine service. I mean, that has done the huge amount of work as a family active in that worship together. So, you know, and I think the secular research seems to support what the church has historically done in these cases with having children present.
- [37:06]
Scott Keith
Not to plug my book Being Family Passing down the Faith through the Generations, which you might want to go buy either at 157 shop.1517.org or Amazon.com but one of the things that keeps rolling through my head when you say this and you bring up sort of the, the instances from our church is just that there's a real multi generational thing going on in our church, which makes some. I mean, there's a lot of reinforcement too. For Ed to know that he needs the forgiveness of sins and try to identify it like everywhere around him too. It's not just in one place. There's help. Right when you got a lot of kids and there's only so many arms between you and Erica and when there's someone else that needs to step in and take somebody out. And I'm not saying everybody can pull that off, but in the decision making processes for like, what job should I take? This one or that one? Where should we live? Here or there? You know, decisions that everybody makes for various reasons throughout all their life, you might want to factor this one in. And the reason I point that up is not to point out that we have it great, we do have it great. But not to point that out, but to just say people don't usually in the modern world put this one into the metrics that they use to make decisions about where to live or where to work or what career to have. And maybe they should. And I'm not saying it's always going to win, it certainly won't always win. But if it makes it into the mix, it would be a good thing because I do think it is helpful to have other people around to help with that. I mean, had an instant this Sunday with my grandchild from our daughter where he was being awful and I was staring at him and she said, if you don't behave, you're gonna have to go sit with Pappy. And he's like, I'll behave the rest of service. It's a little thing, but at the end of the day he could see me eyeballing him and he could see that he didn't want to come sit by me because he was going to get away with a lot less even if he made it through church than if he sat by his mom for the rest of church and he made it through. And did you do that better Sunday than he did three Sundays ago? So anyway, Go ahead, Adam.
- [39:27]
Adam Francisco
Sorry, no, I have nothing to say. I just was wondering. People who are just listening to this won't be able to see it, but on YouTube you do this point your eyes and point back at them. That tells them to shape up.
- [39:40]
Scott Keith
Or this. I'm a snapper.
- [39:43]
Caleb Keith
I do think people should question some of the presuppositions we all have. Not just about worship, but just about even education in general. Like using phrases like age appropriate learning. So okay, there's a difference between what an 8 year old and a 4 year old can learn in theory. But the way that that applies today is age appropriate is to typically say that the 4 year old can't really learn much. So you should focus more on the fun, right? You should focus more on coloring and less on letters and numbers. You should focus more on singing songs and clapping them. Memorization. And we just have like this idea just popped out of 20th century Education theory and stuck because it seems to make sense. Oh, they're smaller, they're dumber. Of course they would learn less. And you then do this to all of your materials such that they're really not learning at all. You go to some of these things like children's church stuff for little kids and is coloring David in. You might believe that that's more age appropriate. While some teacher tells a children's version or reads a children's version or puts a movie on that's a children's version of David and Goliath or something like that. But I think you'd be. Most people's presupposition about that would be really shocked by hearing if you just sat in church and heard this through the lectionary, referenced multiple times or regularly in preaching, how quickly they would catch on to some of this anyways. Or the language that little kids are really a sponge that they can learn huge amounts of things. The fact that they learn to speak in English in complex sentences by these
- [41:31]
Scott Keith
to people speaking in English just because
- [41:33]
Caleb Keith
you speak around them. Can you even imagine how hard it is for you or some people have experience with this as an adult to learn a spoken language today as something a child just does that their brain just does why would we approach the faith different than that? What if the faith, the language of the faith, is taught and learned the exact same way just by being in proximity to it, not having to study it, understand all its history or context before you know, you don't learn English grammar before you learn to speak English. Yet with the faith, we teach it like that. You need to learn grammar before you learn the vocabulary. And it just is.
- [42:13]
Scott Keith
I don't know.
- [42:13]
Caleb Keith
It's a weird presupposition about learning.
- [42:16]
Pastor Sam Schuldeis
There's a linguist, he's still alive. He's really famous. His name is Krashen, and he studies foreign language acquisition. That's where his study has been done. He's very well known in the field. And his hypothesis, he calls it comprehensible input. So he says an adult, a child, a baby, it doesn't matter. There used to be this view, like children can learn stuff easier than adults. And he's kind of proven that that's not true with language acquisition, because what actually it takes is what he calls comprehensible input. So comprehensible input is when you know 80 to 90% of the context, but you don't know the 20 to 10% of the kind. And the sweet spot, if you can find it, which is hard, is like the 10. You don't know 10%, but you can get as far down as 20%, and it's. And you learn very rapidly a new language that way. And I think what people, to your point, kid, what people don't realize is when you pull a kid out and they go to like a children's church and they get a coloring book and they get a little lesson or whatever else, they're missing a lot of other input that they get in the service. So what are they missing? Yeah, exactly. First of all, they're not seeing modeled to them the importance of the faith to their parents. Their parents are sitting there paying attention. They're modeling for them, how do you sit in church, how do you behave in church, how do you do? They're missing that. They're missing seeing the pastor. They're missing seeing that a sermon is being preached. They're missing all this context. So are they going to get all the stuff in the actual verbiage of the sermon? No, just like when they're learning a language, they don't know their first words are going to be mom and dad or ma or da or something. They're not going to be. They're not going to be sufficiency of scripture. Right or no. But eventually, what are you doing? You're building up comprehension and you're building up input. And when you take them out and put them in a sterile environment, that's a problem. I also think that we haven't talked about this and not to get on a rabbit trail, but I also think the other problem I have with the taking the kids out is that it subtly trains kids or reinforces to them what's already prevalent in the culture, which is that this is sort of about you.
- [44:22]
Caleb Keith
Yeah, you're special.
- [44:23]
Pastor Sam Schuldeis
You're special and you deserve to have this catered around you. You deserve to have this time. Yeah, exactly. And one of the beautiful things about church is that it's not really about anybody. It's multi generational and everybody's coming together and they're all worshiping the Lord together. And it's not supposed to be catered just around one specific age demographic. And I think that's alien. That's not something people are used to. But I think it's a really healthy thing for people to come to learn from a young age, which is not to expect from the world that the things that are most important are going to revolve themselves around you. I mean, just for a quick example, like imagine if you took that attitude into a marriage where you're like, well, I'm the most important person in this marriage. The marriage is to make me happy. The marriage is all about what I want. Well, your marriage isn't going to be very good and it's not going to probably last very long. But that attitude, that sort of, well, I'm bored. So it needs to be entertaining. Well, I don't like this. So it needs to be this way. Well, I think it should be this way because that consumerism, if you get that from a very young age, it really can do a lot of damage to you later. So I wouldn't say that's a purely theological reason. I still think the theological reason is that God knows best and God is gathering us together. But there are practical reasons you can stack on top of that that make the case, I think, that taking kids out for a children's church kind of thing might not be the best way to do it and that there's more creative ways to deal with squirrely kids and stuff than just saying, you know what, they can't, they can't handle it at all. So we're just not gonna. Just not gonna do it. And they miss the context when they get pulled out and they don't see maybe the most important thing they should see at that young age, which is my parents really believe this and take this seriously, you know, and if they're privileged to have their grandparents there too.
- [46:11]
Caleb Keith
Wow.
- [46:12]
Pastor Sam Schuldeis
Like and my grandparents also take this seriously. They miss all that if they just see them sing, if that's the only thing they see is they see them sing well.
- [46:20]
Caleb Keith
And you just hit the one that the secular research has like found which is that the seriousness or the direct involvement of the parents as an example to the children and with the children is one of the highest things of stickiness of the faith into that child's life as an adult. More than almost any other factor is people's also answering yes to My parents were highly involved. I was with them and I learned the faith from them. And you know, it's funny is like something in a survey that was done. It was like when they asked 97%, when asked 97% of clergy in like all denominations, this was non denominational, you know, Protestant confessional, Protestants and Roman Catholics, all pastors answered, you know, what's the most important factor to a child staying a believer as an adult. And it was 100% of the time they said the involvement of their parents. It was like 97% of clergy said that. So separating them during worship from the people who are going to be most influential I think also neuters the parents ability to do things at home. So let's say. So I have five children of various different ages. So if you broke them up into
- [47:35]
Scott Keith
children, it'd be funny if they were all the same.
- [47:36]
Caleb Keith
Yeah, that would be. Well, I mean, I guess it's possible but.
- [47:39]
Scott Keith
It's possible but kind of weird.
- [47:40]
Caleb Keith
But the way their age breakup is is they would probably be in five different age children's ministries depending on the size of church you were at. So if you were at one of these really big ones that kind of kick this off, you know. My baby, baby would probably be in a nursery being taken care of by nursery assistants. My 2 year old would be in some really little kids thing probably with a TV with veggie tales going on. My 4 year old would be 4 or 5 year old would be in the equivalent of the kindergarten one where they probably sing some songs and clap and do a coloring page. And then my two older kids, my oldest would be close to the middle school group and she's a girl and she pays attention so she'd probably go learn something Bible study style. And my 8 year old boy would be sent off with other 3rd grade 8 year old boys and Learn nothing as they point crayons and, you know, sticks at each other like guns while there's a lesson about David or the flood going on in the background. I would get home, we'd get in the car, and there would be no continuity of conversation. They could have learned or had four different Bible studies. You know, one learned about Jonah, one learned about Noah, one learned about David, one learned about Jesus, one learned about the apostles in Acts, who knows? And then my service was part of some study on marriage or something, some four week thing on marriage of the Bible or whatever thematic preaching was happening. Now there's no family conversation about what we heard at church or what we learned at church. And as a parent, you've now made my job harder because if I'm supposed to be the one having reinforcing conversations with them about what they learned, I now have to have maybe four, five different conversations. So I'm supposed to sit down at the dinner table with each of them individually now and have a conversation about the different things they learned. If we all had the same experience at church, if we all listened to the same sermon, if we all heard and received the same forgiveness of sins, same liturgy, the questions are all going to be answerable and by the parents, you're going to be able to have a conversation about the sermon. When mom and dad are talking about what happened at church today on the drive home and the kids are hearing it, it's going to be about what they saw and heard too, as Bruce was talking about here, filling in the context that they maybe were missing or things they didn't understand by now, hearing something in the car at the dinner table about those things. It's just interesting to me that this is the way that God has made us, is to learn in this infused manner with our family, that separating people out by generations is pragmatic for some things, but hasn't had all that much better outcomes, right? Like reading outcomes in the United States aren't better now that we have like massive imperfect grade separation by age than when we had, you know, full grade schoolhouses, single classroom schoolhouses on the prairie. Okay, so outcomes haven't gotten generally better through these education styles. So I just don't think we have wisdom to apply them to church. And I don't even think it's appropriate once you consider the beginning thing that Adam brought up, which is, you know, it's not really constituent of worship either as the scripture gives it to us or as we have it gifted to us as Christians in the means of grace through the proclamation of the word and the application of the sacraments, which is for everybody and not just adults. And I think adults whose churches are around praise and pedagogy are being robbed of this, too, not just the children.
- [51:16]
Scott Keith
So as we close out, can we at some point do another show on what it means to have a healthy church? Because I suspect that that dude just meant growing.
- [51:24]
Caleb Keith
Yes, he did. And I have bullet points about that. I have a lot of questions about that word healthy in church.
- [51:30]
Pastor Sam Schuldeis
So.
- [51:30]
Scott Keith
Because I've heard it so much, I've heard it used by certain Lutheran pastors, too, and I feel like it's unfortunate.
- [51:37]
Caleb Keith
I think the word healthy is really unfortunate. Yeah, Great idea. We can do it next episode. Everybody come prepared.
- [51:44]
Adam Francisco
Like, maybe I just mean, like, they have. They have like a. I don't know, deadlift hex bar in the narthex. You know, dead.
- [51:51]
Caleb Keith
You'll love this. We'll close out with this protein church.
- [51:53]
Scott Keith
It's like, yeah, your. Your commune wafers are infused with protein powder.
- [51:58]
Caleb Keith
So we'll close out with this. Because I do think we should do an episode on unhealthy church, because this same pastor, after he gained his click fame from this other one, made one. He's like, here's a bunch of other takes that'll make people mad. And one of them was, a healthy church is more often than not a growing church.
- [52:16]
Scott Keith
Oh, there you go. Hey, look at that. I didn't even have to see the
- [52:19]
Caleb Keith
rest of the post, so you knew it already. I would say I'm part of a healthy church that is actively and constantly dying.
- [52:29]
Scott Keith
Yeah.
- [52:30]
Caleb Keith
I think we're part of what makes
- [52:31]
Scott Keith
it healthy in our tiny little church. In the next couple weeks, we're probably going to be a couple funerals. Yeah.
- [52:36]
Caleb Keith
And I think that's part of what makes it healthy. So interesting. All right, well, we'll do that in the future. Hey, thanks for listening to this episode of the Thinking Fellows Podcast. You can subscribe to this show in your favorite podcasting apps, if you haven't already. Share this with family, friends, maybe your pastor, other people at church, especially in this case, maybe like ministry leaders or people on boards of education or children's ministry or something like that, just to see that you can, in fact, do children's ministry. But it should be a separate vocational consideration apart from worship or something like that. So we thank you for listening to this episode, and we will catch you next time.
- [53:14]
Adam Francisco
Bye,
- [53:26]
Scott Keith
Sam.