Tuesday, February 17, 2009

A clip from Voddie Baucham's Blog-

Neiamiah's Nursery

"If you’ve walked into a church service lately with a baby in your arms, chances are you are well aware of the new anti-child atmosphere that dominates much of the modern American church. There are smiling men and women stationed at every door ready to “guide” you to the nursery where your child “will have a very enjoyable experience” and be cared for by the best childcare staff in the history of the universe.
Rebuff these helpful people and their smiles will soon be replaced with determined glares. Things escalate slowly at first, but eventually the truth comes out. These people are not here to help you and your child; they are here to protect the sanctity of the sanitized worship environment. Their job is to see that you –and people like you—don’t ruin the service for everyone else. They’ve been warned about people like you. You just don’t get it. For millennia Christians have been denied the privilege of enjoying worship the way God intended it (sans children); now we’ve finally arrived, and you want to mess it up by bring in your squawking baby! How selfish, inconsiderate, and unspiritual can you be?
Then along come churches like ours that don’t help things a bit. At Grace Family Baptist Church, we don’t have a nursery. Families worship together from the oldest to the youngest. We welcome the cooing of babies and consider the act of taking an unruly child out of the service as an invaluable teaching opportunity for both parent and child. What’s more, we think it is as important for children to learn to ‘endure’ a service, and see worship modeled by their parents as it is for them to have an ‘age appropriate’ lesson. As a result, our church (along with others like it) has been thrust into the middle of many a debate over whether or not the concept of the nursery is “biblical”.....
read the rest of this entry at: http://www.voddiebaucham.org/vbm/Blog/Entries/2009/2/16_Nehemiah%E2%80%99s_Nursery%3A_Part_1.html

So, what do you think? Personally, we agree with Mr. Baucham, yet we've been on both "sides" before, so we don't wish to look down upon parents who rely on the nursery. It certainly is more "work" to keep your kids with you during a service, but we believe our efforts will bear fruit.
We currently don't choose to use the nursery at our church and we are blessed with a church which does support Family Integrated worship. We'll write more on this again real soon.
B & J

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