CHILDREN IN WORSHIP SERVICES

NOTE: I have long shared the opinion expressed by Albert Schweitzer below - that children need to participate in the worship service with their parents. Seeing the reverence in which the parent participates in worship inspires the child to understand its importance. The romper rooms of the separate worship service for children imparts no such serious understanding of worship in the child - JLO 

 

“From the services in which I joined as a child, I have taken with me into life a feeling for what is solemn, and a need for a quiet self-recollection, without which I cannot realize the meaning of my life. I cannot, therefore, support the opinion of those who would not let children take part in grown-up people’s services till they to some extent understand them. The important thing is not that they shall understand but that they shall feel something of what is serious and solemn. The fact that a child sees his elders full of devotion, and has to feel something of devotion himself, that is what gives the service its meaning for him.”

 

ALBERT SCHWEITZER