Children and The Sermon
By Ian Murray, The Banner of Truth, issue #108
http://web.archive.org/web/20040625155003/http://www.foundersbaptist.org/C_Church.htm
"I begin to feel more and more that it is a mistake to divide the children from the congregation. I believe in special services for children, but I would also have them worship with us. If our preaching does not teach children, it lacks some element which it ought to possess. I like to see the congregation made up not all of the young, nor all of the old, but some of all sorts together." 1
We believe that Spurgeon had good cause to give this warning in 1873 and the question is now long overdue, ‘How much have churches lost by their all too common acceptance of the non-attendance of children at the preaching of the Word of God?’ It is necessary to be clear at the outset about what is not being discussed. The question is not ‘How are we to reach children with no church connection?’ nor, ‘What means are best suited to bring the gospel to them?’ – important though these issues are – but simply, ‘Is it right for a church to arrange for her children to be provided with some other instruction during the time when adults are listening to the sermon?'
The principle argument for the arrangement by which children leave the service before the sermon rests upon the view that another form of oral or visual instruction for the younger age group is preferable to the sermon; consequently a Bible class or Sunday School is scheduled to occupy the time which the remainder of the public worship will take. In liberal churches the case for such a division is axiomatic, i.e., the themes of sermons – social concerns, ecumenical issues, war, race, etc. – are not relevant for children. The truth that sin, the wrath of God, redemption, and holiness are as necessary for children as for adults has long been rejected. But obviously in evangelical churches the case is conceived differently; biblical teaching, it is said, should be given to children in the form most easily understood and they therefore need a different type of instruction and cannot be most effectively taught simultaneously with grownups.
It is usually a corollary of this viewpoint that if children are to be addressed in the public services of the church, then it must be a special address or sermon for them. If the children have their own ten minutes in the church service, then withdraw for Sunday School, they are getting, so it is thought, the best of both worlds.2 This argument proceeds upon the assumption that simplicity of communication is the primary need in the instruction of children and that any teaching which cannon readily be understood must be avoided. Apparently reasonable and obvious though this sounds, it is not scriptural. According to Scripture, the primary need of both adult and child is the removal of the aversion to God which is in the human heart. While that aversion remains, in any age group, there will be darkness of mind and where it is removed by the teaching of the Holy Spirit, there will be an intelligent reception of the truth.
What this means in practice is that a true appreciation of a child’s need will lead us to depend upon God and such a dependence includes faith in the means appointed by Christ for the conversion and instruction of sinners. Now it is not in dispute whether parents or Sunday School teachers may look for God’s blessing upon the teaching which they give to children; the question is whether, when Christian congregations are assembled for worship, children should be removed before the Word is preached. The claim that they must not be so removed rests firmly upon the truth that preaching is a divine institution. It does not stand upon the same footing as a Bible class or Sunday School which, though they may be useful and expedient branches of church work are, nevertheless, not commanded by God. 3
Preaching, the Scriptures teach us, is the means of grace for the ingathering and upbuilding of souls, and far from any suggestion that public assemblies for the ministry of the Word are to be limited to those of more adult years, there is explicit evidence to the contrary. 4 If we find, as we do, that the removal of aversion to God depends upon the Holy Spirit, and that further, it is pre-eminently the authoritative proclamation of theWord by those sent for that work which the Spirit promises to accompany with light and power, then the removal of children from the congregation before the sermon ought surely to be unthinkable. ‘The Spirit of God,’ reads the Larger Catechism (Question 155), ‘maketh the reading, but especially the preaching of the word, and effectual means of enlightening, convincing, and humbling sinners.’
We consider that by far the most important explanation for the Church’s problems with her youth in Britain and the United States lies in her failure to maintain the Biblical and Reformed view of preaching. Too often preaching has been regarded merely as one form of instruction among many. No significant difference is seen between the message of the pulpit and the Sunday School lesson, whereas the sermon ought to be a declaration as from Christ, delivered in His name and to be attended on by all hearers as in His presence. Preaching, in the Biblical context, is a part of worship, and the stranger to God, whether child or adult, who attends upon the Word of God amidst a company of worshippers may be constrained ‘to worship God and report that God is in you of a truth’ (1 Cor. 14:25).
Why was it that such preachers as Whitefield, M’Cheyne, Spurgeon and countless more in the past, held many children among their regular hearers? It cannot be explained merely by the wishes of the parents, still less by any attempt on the part of these preachers to use the modern ‘children’s address.’ The children simply attended upon their regular preaching. Yet what modern publisher of Sunday School material would consider Whitefield to be suitable for infants and youth? Consider, for example, the following scene which resulted from his preaching at Crossweeksung, New Jersey:
‘Almost all persons of all ages were bowed down with concern together … Old men and women who had been drunken wretches for many years, and some little children not more than six or seven years of age, appeared in distress for their souls, as well as persons of middle age. And it was apparent these children (some of them at least) were not merely frighted with seeing the general concern; but were made sensible of their danger, the badness of their hearts, and their misery without Christ, as some of them expressed it.’ 5
We believe the explanation is, as we already noted, that preaching is not just one form of instruction, comparable to a Bible class or private instruction. It is the first means given by Christ, and therefore, with faithful messengers, and influence and an unction ought to attend the Word such as will impress even though it does not necessarily convert every age group. To suppose that children may be more profitably occupied during the time of sermon by being given another form of instruction is a serious error; it is taking children away from the very place where they ought to learn the power of the Word of God. The church is altogether another sphere from the school; God is there in a special way and children have need to know a constraint laid upon them from heaven so that they both listen and worship.
All this is not, of course, to say that being present during the sermon will necessarily do children good. We are far from holding the view that restless, inattentive children should be encouraged to remain in church notwithstanding the disturbance which they cause. If they are incapable of attention then they are, as a general rule, incapable of receiving profit, and in that case a plea that a church should tolerate the distractions which they cause to others is absurd. It is no accident that the instruction and discipline of children are conjoined in Scripture; if parents will not train their children when to be silent and will not guide them in prayer and family worship at home, they may have to recognize that they are depriving them of their rightful place in public worship. It may be said that the children who do sit quietly through sermons can be as mentally inattentive as those who do not. That is true, and the fault may be as much in the pulpit as in the child. If ministers prepare sermons without any consideration of the fact that children will be listening, then the children will all too quickly conclude that what is said was never really meant for their ears. Nevertheless, if children are trained in the habit of public worship, and if, as was common in Puritan times, parents use the sermon for further conversation in the family later in the day, there can be a greater intake in mind and conscience much earlier than is popularly supposed. And let not the value of the knowledge and serious impressions which are gained prior to conversion be depreciated. In many cases those early lessons have laid the foundation for lives of preeminent usefulness. Spurgeon’s own testimony is worth hearing:
‘I do hold that there is no doctrine of the Word of God which a child, if he be capable of salvation, is not capable of receiving. I would have children taught all the great doctrines of truth without a solitary exception, that they may in their after days hold fast by them.’
‘I can bear witness that children can understand the Scriptures; for I am sure that, when but a child, I could have discussed many a knotty point of controversial theology … In fact, children are capable of understanding some things in early life, which we hardly understand afterwards.’ 6
We have sought to deal with the argument that the sermon is not the best means the church can use to help children. There is another argument to be touched upon before we close. Whatever may have been true in the past, it is said, the church today will lose her young people if they are not given an alternative to sitting through a sermon. So the practice of removing children before the sermon should be continued not for any theological reason but simply on the grounds of wise expediency.
As always, the truth is that nothing is ever genuinely expedient for the church when is contravenes Scripture. The practices of the last hundred years have not led to the youth of the church being more steadfast and better instructed. In so many instances, the Sunday School has been the main spiritual institution for the young and when that has been outgrown, children have already passed through their formative years without being trained in the habit of full attendance upon public worship. In their infancy, their elders taught them by deed if not by word that the sermon was not for them, and by the time childhood is exchanged for youth, it is often too late to reverse this attitude. Dr. John Kennedy of Dingwall, one of the most acute observers of the dangers which evangelicalism was unwittingly encouraging in the late 19th century, saw this tendency clearly in his own day. In the course of commenting upon the disproportionate importance which was being attached to Sunday School work, he wrote:
‘Attendance in the Sabbath school is not infrequently substituted for attendance, along with adults, at the stated diets of worship. This result has been realized, in a very marked degree, where the Sabbath school system has been zealously carried out. And the consequence must be that those, who as children acquired not the habit of coming to hear the Gospel, will not care to acquire it at any subsequent period in their lives.’ 7
What has so often happened today is that the number of committed Christian families in churches has so declined that almost all youth effort is arranged for children outside the church whose parents do not attend regularly. These children, it appears, cannot be held except by meeting or classes other that public worship, and as they form a large majority, such children as do belong to the church are expected to fall in with the arrangements for the larger group. When an appeal is made that this system should end and that children who parents are in the church should be with their parents, it will be said that a distinction between children would be invidious and that any change in the present system would be to risk losing the majority. But by their early teens, the majority are already unhappily being lost to the church, and conditions today have reached such a point that there is no prospect for the future except in a determined resolution to return to the rule of Scripture. When that is done we believe it will be seen that the family is a basic unit; that the church has a primary (not sole) responsibility to the families in her midst; and that through the powerful preaching of the Word of God to the young, a generation more deeply taught in truth and godliness can yet be raised up.
There are a number of churches today who have never given up the Reformed view that children should be present throughout public worship. Though it has not been broadcast to the world, some of these churches have been blessed in the influence which the preaching has exerted upon their young. For five years it was the experience of the writer to worship at Westminster Chapel under the ministry of Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones. In that church, a cr裨e was provided for infants, but only until three, it was common for many children to be present throughout the whole service. Certainly no children remained in a cr裨e beyond the age of four, and before many years of attendance in the services had passed, a number of children could intelligently follow preaching which some adults were ready to regard as too profound. There is a passing reference to this in Dr. Lloyd-Jones’ recent volume Preaching and Preachers. Referring to the number of letters he received at the time of his illness a few years ago, he goes on: ‘The letter that I prize was from a little girl aged twelve who wrote on behalf of herself and her brother, unbeknown to their parents, saying that they were praying for my recovery and hoping that I would soon be back in the pulpit. She then gave the reason for this, and that is what pleased me so much. Se said, "because you are the only preacher we can understand."
The sovereign grace of God reaches the young and still it is true that the Lord of heaven and earth hides gospel truths from the wise and prudent and reveals them unto babes!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
end notes
1) Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, vol. 19, 323
2) It is often overlooked that by this practice a number of Christian teachers are every week prevented on Sunday morning from hearing the word of God to the church.
3) We are apt to forget that the Sunday school is a comparatively modern arrangement. Even as late as the last century, C. H. Spurgeon, who was brought up in a godly home, could write, 'I never went to a Sunday school' (Life by G. H. Pike, vol. 6, 225). In 1879 Dr. John Kennedy wrote: 'If things were as they ought to be - if all families had a place within the pale of the Church, and if parents were careful and qualified to give scriptural instruction to their children, the gathering of children into a Sabbath school would be quite unnecessary. It is only in the measure in which security for healthful family instruction is wanting, that the Sabbath school is a necessity….' The Present Cast and Tendency of Religious Thought and Feeling in Scotland, 1955 reprint, 51
4) See Exodus 10:9; Joshua 8:35; Ezra 10:1, etc. Similarly Paul, in the course of addressing instruction to the Christians at Ephesus and Colosse includes the children (Eph. 6:1, Col. 3:20). He can assume that the children would be present at the reading of his letters, with all their spiritual profundities, in the church. In this connection it is worth recording one of the rules for membership in the Welsh Cavinistic Methodist Connexion which came out of the 18th century revival in Wales: 'Every member who has children, is enjoined to bring them at the earliest dawn of reason, to the private society, or meetings of the church, into which they are initiated by the ordinance of baptism; where, unless they manifest any immorality of conduct, they are allowed to remain with their parents, entitled to the instructions, admonitions, and watchful care of the society, and subject to its discipline. But they are, nevertheless, withheld from the Lord's Supper, until they arrive at years of maturity; until they, by their conduct, evidence a change of heart, and until they express a desire to commemorate the Savior's dying love.'
5) The Works of Jonathan Edwards, 1840, vol. 2, 392.
6) C. H. Spurgeon: The Early Years, 46
7) The Present Cast and Tendency, 52
By Ian Murray, The Banner of Truth, issue #108
http://web.archive.org/web/20040625155003/http://www.foundersbaptist.org/C_Church.htm
"I begin to feel more and more that it is a mistake to divide the children from the congregation. I believe in special services for children, but I would also have them worship with us. If our preaching does not teach children, it lacks some element which it ought to possess. I like to see the congregation made up not all of the young, nor all of the old, but some of all sorts together." 1
We believe that Spurgeon had good cause to give this warning in 1873 and the question is now long overdue, ‘How much have churches lost by their all too common acceptance of the non-attendance of children at the preaching of the Word of God?’ It is necessary to be clear at the outset about what is not being discussed. The question is not ‘How are we to reach children with no church connection?’ nor, ‘What means are best suited to bring the gospel to them?’ – important though these issues are – but simply, ‘Is it right for a church to arrange for her children to be provided with some other instruction during the time when adults are listening to the sermon?'
The principle argument for the arrangement by which children leave the service before the sermon rests upon the view that another form of oral or visual instruction for the younger age group is preferable to the sermon; consequently a Bible class or Sunday School is scheduled to occupy the time which the remainder of the public worship will take. In liberal churches the case for such a division is axiomatic, i.e., the themes of sermons – social concerns, ecumenical issues, war, race, etc. – are not relevant for children. The truth that sin, the wrath of God, redemption, and holiness are as necessary for children as for adults has long been rejected. But obviously in evangelical churches the case is conceived differently; biblical teaching, it is said, should be given to children in the form most easily understood and they therefore need a different type of instruction and cannot be most effectively taught simultaneously with grownups.
It is usually a corollary of this viewpoint that if children are to be addressed in the public services of the church, then it must be a special address or sermon for them. If the children have their own ten minutes in the church service, then withdraw for Sunday School, they are getting, so it is thought, the best of both worlds.2 This argument proceeds upon the assumption that simplicity of communication is the primary need in the instruction of children and that any teaching which cannon readily be understood must be avoided. Apparently reasonable and obvious though this sounds, it is not scriptural. According to Scripture, the primary need of both adult and child is the removal of the aversion to God which is in the human heart. While that aversion remains, in any age group, there will be darkness of mind and where it is removed by the teaching of the Holy Spirit, there will be an intelligent reception of the truth.
What this means in practice is that a true appreciation of a child’s need will lead us to depend upon God and such a dependence includes faith in the means appointed by Christ for the conversion and instruction of sinners. Now it is not in dispute whether parents or Sunday School teachers may look for God’s blessing upon the teaching which they give to children; the question is whether, when Christian congregations are assembled for worship, children should be removed before the Word is preached. The claim that they must not be so removed rests firmly upon the truth that preaching is a divine institution. It does not stand upon the same footing as a Bible class or Sunday School which, though they may be useful and expedient branches of church work are, nevertheless, not commanded by God. 3
Preaching, the Scriptures teach us, is the means of grace for the ingathering and upbuilding of souls, and far from any suggestion that public assemblies for the ministry of the Word are to be limited to those of more adult years, there is explicit evidence to the contrary. 4 If we find, as we do, that the removal of aversion to God depends upon the Holy Spirit, and that further, it is pre-eminently the authoritative proclamation of theWord by those sent for that work which the Spirit promises to accompany with light and power, then the removal of children from the congregation before the sermon ought surely to be unthinkable. ‘The Spirit of God,’ reads the Larger Catechism (Question 155), ‘maketh the reading, but especially the preaching of the word, and effectual means of enlightening, convincing, and humbling sinners.’
We consider that by far the most important explanation for the Church’s problems with her youth in Britain and the United States lies in her failure to maintain the Biblical and Reformed view of preaching. Too often preaching has been regarded merely as one form of instruction among many. No significant difference is seen between the message of the pulpit and the Sunday School lesson, whereas the sermon ought to be a declaration as from Christ, delivered in His name and to be attended on by all hearers as in His presence. Preaching, in the Biblical context, is a part of worship, and the stranger to God, whether child or adult, who attends upon the Word of God amidst a company of worshippers may be constrained ‘to worship God and report that God is in you of a truth’ (1 Cor. 14:25).
Why was it that such preachers as Whitefield, M’Cheyne, Spurgeon and countless more in the past, held many children among their regular hearers? It cannot be explained merely by the wishes of the parents, still less by any attempt on the part of these preachers to use the modern ‘children’s address.’ The children simply attended upon their regular preaching. Yet what modern publisher of Sunday School material would consider Whitefield to be suitable for infants and youth? Consider, for example, the following scene which resulted from his preaching at Crossweeksung, New Jersey:
‘Almost all persons of all ages were bowed down with concern together … Old men and women who had been drunken wretches for many years, and some little children not more than six or seven years of age, appeared in distress for their souls, as well as persons of middle age. And it was apparent these children (some of them at least) were not merely frighted with seeing the general concern; but were made sensible of their danger, the badness of their hearts, and their misery without Christ, as some of them expressed it.’ 5
We believe the explanation is, as we already noted, that preaching is not just one form of instruction, comparable to a Bible class or private instruction. It is the first means given by Christ, and therefore, with faithful messengers, and influence and an unction ought to attend the Word such as will impress even though it does not necessarily convert every age group. To suppose that children may be more profitably occupied during the time of sermon by being given another form of instruction is a serious error; it is taking children away from the very place where they ought to learn the power of the Word of God. The church is altogether another sphere from the school; God is there in a special way and children have need to know a constraint laid upon them from heaven so that they both listen and worship.
All this is not, of course, to say that being present during the sermon will necessarily do children good. We are far from holding the view that restless, inattentive children should be encouraged to remain in church notwithstanding the disturbance which they cause. If they are incapable of attention then they are, as a general rule, incapable of receiving profit, and in that case a plea that a church should tolerate the distractions which they cause to others is absurd. It is no accident that the instruction and discipline of children are conjoined in Scripture; if parents will not train their children when to be silent and will not guide them in prayer and family worship at home, they may have to recognize that they are depriving them of their rightful place in public worship. It may be said that the children who do sit quietly through sermons can be as mentally inattentive as those who do not. That is true, and the fault may be as much in the pulpit as in the child. If ministers prepare sermons without any consideration of the fact that children will be listening, then the children will all too quickly conclude that what is said was never really meant for their ears. Nevertheless, if children are trained in the habit of public worship, and if, as was common in Puritan times, parents use the sermon for further conversation in the family later in the day, there can be a greater intake in mind and conscience much earlier than is popularly supposed. And let not the value of the knowledge and serious impressions which are gained prior to conversion be depreciated. In many cases those early lessons have laid the foundation for lives of preeminent usefulness. Spurgeon’s own testimony is worth hearing:
‘I do hold that there is no doctrine of the Word of God which a child, if he be capable of salvation, is not capable of receiving. I would have children taught all the great doctrines of truth without a solitary exception, that they may in their after days hold fast by them.’
‘I can bear witness that children can understand the Scriptures; for I am sure that, when but a child, I could have discussed many a knotty point of controversial theology … In fact, children are capable of understanding some things in early life, which we hardly understand afterwards.’ 6
We have sought to deal with the argument that the sermon is not the best means the church can use to help children. There is another argument to be touched upon before we close. Whatever may have been true in the past, it is said, the church today will lose her young people if they are not given an alternative to sitting through a sermon. So the practice of removing children before the sermon should be continued not for any theological reason but simply on the grounds of wise expediency.
As always, the truth is that nothing is ever genuinely expedient for the church when is contravenes Scripture. The practices of the last hundred years have not led to the youth of the church being more steadfast and better instructed. In so many instances, the Sunday School has been the main spiritual institution for the young and when that has been outgrown, children have already passed through their formative years without being trained in the habit of full attendance upon public worship. In their infancy, their elders taught them by deed if not by word that the sermon was not for them, and by the time childhood is exchanged for youth, it is often too late to reverse this attitude. Dr. John Kennedy of Dingwall, one of the most acute observers of the dangers which evangelicalism was unwittingly encouraging in the late 19th century, saw this tendency clearly in his own day. In the course of commenting upon the disproportionate importance which was being attached to Sunday School work, he wrote:
‘Attendance in the Sabbath school is not infrequently substituted for attendance, along with adults, at the stated diets of worship. This result has been realized, in a very marked degree, where the Sabbath school system has been zealously carried out. And the consequence must be that those, who as children acquired not the habit of coming to hear the Gospel, will not care to acquire it at any subsequent period in their lives.’ 7
What has so often happened today is that the number of committed Christian families in churches has so declined that almost all youth effort is arranged for children outside the church whose parents do not attend regularly. These children, it appears, cannot be held except by meeting or classes other that public worship, and as they form a large majority, such children as do belong to the church are expected to fall in with the arrangements for the larger group. When an appeal is made that this system should end and that children who parents are in the church should be with their parents, it will be said that a distinction between children would be invidious and that any change in the present system would be to risk losing the majority. But by their early teens, the majority are already unhappily being lost to the church, and conditions today have reached such a point that there is no prospect for the future except in a determined resolution to return to the rule of Scripture. When that is done we believe it will be seen that the family is a basic unit; that the church has a primary (not sole) responsibility to the families in her midst; and that through the powerful preaching of the Word of God to the young, a generation more deeply taught in truth and godliness can yet be raised up.
There are a number of churches today who have never given up the Reformed view that children should be present throughout public worship. Though it has not been broadcast to the world, some of these churches have been blessed in the influence which the preaching has exerted upon their young. For five years it was the experience of the writer to worship at Westminster Chapel under the ministry of Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones. In that church, a cr裨e was provided for infants, but only until three, it was common for many children to be present throughout the whole service. Certainly no children remained in a cr裨e beyond the age of four, and before many years of attendance in the services had passed, a number of children could intelligently follow preaching which some adults were ready to regard as too profound. There is a passing reference to this in Dr. Lloyd-Jones’ recent volume Preaching and Preachers. Referring to the number of letters he received at the time of his illness a few years ago, he goes on: ‘The letter that I prize was from a little girl aged twelve who wrote on behalf of herself and her brother, unbeknown to their parents, saying that they were praying for my recovery and hoping that I would soon be back in the pulpit. She then gave the reason for this, and that is what pleased me so much. Se said, "because you are the only preacher we can understand."
The sovereign grace of God reaches the young and still it is true that the Lord of heaven and earth hides gospel truths from the wise and prudent and reveals them unto babes!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
end notes
1) Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, vol. 19, 323
2) It is often overlooked that by this practice a number of Christian teachers are every week prevented on Sunday morning from hearing the word of God to the church.
3) We are apt to forget that the Sunday school is a comparatively modern arrangement. Even as late as the last century, C. H. Spurgeon, who was brought up in a godly home, could write, 'I never went to a Sunday school' (Life by G. H. Pike, vol. 6, 225). In 1879 Dr. John Kennedy wrote: 'If things were as they ought to be - if all families had a place within the pale of the Church, and if parents were careful and qualified to give scriptural instruction to their children, the gathering of children into a Sabbath school would be quite unnecessary. It is only in the measure in which security for healthful family instruction is wanting, that the Sabbath school is a necessity….' The Present Cast and Tendency of Religious Thought and Feeling in Scotland, 1955 reprint, 51
4) See Exodus 10:9; Joshua 8:35; Ezra 10:1, etc. Similarly Paul, in the course of addressing instruction to the Christians at Ephesus and Colosse includes the children (Eph. 6:1, Col. 3:20). He can assume that the children would be present at the reading of his letters, with all their spiritual profundities, in the church. In this connection it is worth recording one of the rules for membership in the Welsh Cavinistic Methodist Connexion which came out of the 18th century revival in Wales: 'Every member who has children, is enjoined to bring them at the earliest dawn of reason, to the private society, or meetings of the church, into which they are initiated by the ordinance of baptism; where, unless they manifest any immorality of conduct, they are allowed to remain with their parents, entitled to the instructions, admonitions, and watchful care of the society, and subject to its discipline. But they are, nevertheless, withheld from the Lord's Supper, until they arrive at years of maturity; until they, by their conduct, evidence a change of heart, and until they express a desire to commemorate the Savior's dying love.'
5) The Works of Jonathan Edwards, 1840, vol. 2, 392.
6) C. H. Spurgeon: The Early Years, 46
7) The Present Cast and Tendency, 52
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