Please no Babies

Have you seen a sign like this as you enter the sanctuary, sorry worship center, of a church?


I am sure this sign is put there with good intentions but what does this sign truly say. Well I think it first of all says that adults are more important than children. It also says that the personal worship experience is of the utmost importance even if it intrudes on the worship of children. How sad it is to me that we have so elevated the idea of having a worship experience that we would deprive children of worshiping with their parents and other adults as they should and have most of the history of the church.

We have become an experience-oriented society that allows the experience to drive all that is done in today’s church. It drives the music we sing, the messages we hear and the environment we worship in. Is not worship to be God centered and the experience we gain in worship to be that which God provides and not one we strive to generate.

Let us have the children come to God (Matt 19:14), not in their own “Children’s Church” but in the midst of the community of faith they are part of. Let us take down the signs that say children not welcome.