Community Matters
Last night our incredible children’s ministry team put on the annual event they do for 3rd graders at our church, Unwrapped. It’s a special night where each 3rd grader receives their first real bible, but it is so much more. The evening involved a beautifully decorated worship center with a lovely dinner and dessert (mini bar donuts were a huge hit!) for each family, a time of each 3rd grader unwrapping their bible, layer after layer of paper with each color signifying something about God’s word, and a time for each family to pray over their child—to pray for their friends, the community that is raising them, for their relationship with God’s word. It was special for all of us. Aidan said “oh mommy that was so worth the wait, I was so happy my eyes got all teary!”
We’ve been talking about and thinking about church a lot in our home these past few months, honestly even wondering if perhaps we might need to find a new home to worship in, primarily because I love traditional worship so much I am literally hungry to say the Lord’s Prayer or take communion on a regular basis with a church community. It’s how I am wired and how I best connect with the Lord—joining in voices that have said the words of the Nicene Creed for thousands of years every week. We even worshiped at another congregation for a month this fall. And here’s what I came to realize earlier this autumn, and what I told my husband when I said I wanted to go back to Beach full time. I said “worship isn’t about me. I know what I want, and I can find other ways of incorporating those things into our home life and take initiative to meet this hunger I have for something more ancient. What I want our kids to know more than anything is that church isn’t something we just go to once a week to “do.” I want them to know the church is the community of people we intentionally surround ourselves with because families weren’t meant to walk through life isolated from one another.” And there is no perfect church. Churches are going to make decisions we don’t like and hurt our feelings or offend us somehow, because they’re run by humans who aren’t perfect but who are doing their best. But if a church is made up of people who will love you and love your kids passionately, doing everything they can to make sure your kids know they belong there and are wanted there, that’s a place to plug in. Chuck and I already know and love Jesus. So if the service isn’t exactly what we want or there’s a sermon series that doesn’t really speak to us, that’s not what is most important to us. What we care most about is that the next generation, our kids and their friends, are in a place where they meet Jesus in the context of relationships that will last.
Some of you know, but many probably don’t, that I spent 5 years in graduate school studying ministry to families and adolescents, unpacking why kids are graduating from high school and walking away from church until they are married and have kids of their own. Superstar youth group kids who look like they’re on track to become pastors will walk away for 15 years—a huge percentage of them! My seminary went after this research in some major ways, trying to determine why. And here’s the number one thing they learned. Kids who don’t feel connected to the church as a whole (outside of youth group) will not find a new church community when they move to college because they won’t see the need. To them church is something you go to once a week and not much more. The kids who do move away and find a community of their own tasted something different as they were growing up. They watched their parents join with other families for small groups, for dinners, for weekend outings or service projects and the message that life was meant to be lived within rich community was central to their home. They had relationships with these other families, especially other adults who knew them and loved them outside of just their mom and dad. They saw attending church be a priority for their parents as well as serving, giving back to the community. It was the modeling of living life together in a worshiping community that gives these kids a picture of what to look for and seek out when they move away from home that was a huge factor in whether or not they continued finding that for themselves.
I know 2020 is so strange, that many churches aren’t meeting in person around the country yet and life looks so different. Yet if I could offer just one encouragement even in the midst of this weird time, it would be this: Find a place to really plug in with your family. Don’t let church be something you just walk into on Sunday and walk out of with no other connection during the week. Invite another family from church to meet you at a park and let the adults chat as the kids play, join a small group even if it’s on zoom right now. Don’t let your kids come to believe that church is just another thing we “do” like going to karate or swim lessons once a week—it’s not an event, it’s a living, breathing, messy and beautiful gathering of people trying their best to follow Jesus in our broken world. Begin building a community of people who also want to see their children come to know and love Jesus and go after that dream together—it’s those intentional relationships that will last and it’s that sense of connection to something bigger that will ground these kids as they grow towards and through adolescence. What we do now in these elementary years does matter, and we are so thankful for a community who will walk this journey with us. We’ve worked hard, investing in relationships, joining small groups, inviting people over, accepting invitations from others, reaching out when we have free time to meet up at the beach or a park with other families—community is messy and takes initiative and effort, but as we looked around last night at some of the other families who have kids also in 3rd grade we found ourselves so grateful for their friendships and for their partnership as we raise these kids.
