CHAPTER 1

Beginnings: The Broad View

If you broaden your understanding of what it means to be the corporate body atworship, broaden it enough to include your community's children at worship withyou, you will step onto an exhilarating, unpredictable, sometimes confusing pathof a congregation in bloom, whose promise is the approach of the Kingdom of God.

There are those of you in every congregation who are saying, "Something is notquite right about worshiping in ways that segregate." This is your book.

This a book for the whole people of God, lay or ordained, officially titled ornot, who are called to a ministry of inclusion.

Children know God. They experience the sacred in all kinds of ways and at adepth that often surprises adults.

In 1992, I was called to Holy Family Church in Half Moon Bay, California, tobuild a program of Children's Ministries. As you follow the story of ourjourney, remember that we had no clue as to what that program, faithfullyundertaken, might mean for the worshiping community.

In the seven years I served Holy Family Church, the population of our childrenand youth increased from under ten to about a hundred-twenty.

The program we developed is very simple: it consists of weekly worship whoseheart is Holy Communion. Sundays consist of a cracking open of the Word of Godin a variety of ways: storytelling, art, drama, and music.

Sundays consist of the kind of education that is born of the experience of God'slove made evident in the love of the community. Sundays consist of education andreflection.

Mission Congregation

Holy Family Episcopal Church is a mission congregation in the Diocese ofCalifornia, and it is blessed with children. Lots of children.

The program we developed is very simple: it consists of weekly worship whoseheart is Holy Communion.

Mission churches and children have a lot in common, and it has to do with theircapacity to create and re-create and be re-created. Children and missionsreflect the same heady excitement of things becoming ... and it's a becomingout of the emptiness.

Holy Family is a mission church, and within that status many things arepossible. Mission churches, if they are to stay afloat, have to be clever andbold and daring. Mission churches live at the intersection of invention andpragmatism.

But there's more.

Mission congregations serve the church as the seat of our memory, that moment ofcreation, in which all things that can be imagined are possible. Missioncongregations call us to remember a time when we could build kingdoms with ablock of wood and a piece of string and a rubber band.

In that sense, mission congregations can be the church's gift to itself, thestandard-bearers of its vision, living and serving, by definition, at the edges.

You have heard it said, "The children are the future." Who is saying that? Notthe children. Ask a child if she's the future. If she can even grab hold of thequestion, which I doubt, she'll tell you that she's the moment. She's the now.Or more to the point, she's hungry.

Their season is Advent, a time of deep scrutiny and the heady excitement ofthings becoming out of the emptiness.

Whatever we talk about, in terms of program for change—whether it's adultministries or children's ministries, or jail ministries, or hospital ministries—ithas to proceed out of that place. Out of the void, the emptiness.

My purpose here is to reveal our children's program in this light. I want toshow you what it is that we've developed, and how we've developed it, beginningat the God-centered place of emptiness—the only place where it makes sense tospeak of re-creation and transformation.

You have heard it said, "The children are the future."

Who is saying that? Not the children. Ask a child if she's the future. If shecould even grab hold of the question, which I doubt, she'll tell you that she'sthe moment. She's the now. Or, more to the point, she's hungry. And toappreciate and address her hunger is to turn the church upside down.

Adults are the ones who talk about children as the future. It seems to me thatwithin that statement, far more is said than intended.

Children are our future, so we better make sure they stay in the church. Or atleast we better make sure that they come back. Children are our future so we'lldevelop programs that are child-friendly.

It's very seductive.

Evolution and Renewal

Our churches have done spiritual damage, and continue to do so, not by design,but by inattentiveness, perhaps, or fear, or by our inclination to allow ourliturgies to go unexamined. We opt for the familiar, for the convenient.

We often speak to one another about the need for congregational change andrevitalization, and we are often correct. But most of us try to apply thesolutions before we do the work of spiritual examination. We embark on a "trythese shoes" frenzy and as we try and then quickly discard, our discouragementgrows.

Although this book is about the practical applications of the work of renewal asit has unfolded in one small congregation, the work is far broader. The peopleof Holy Family Church discovered that their theology of community, which came tobe expressed in liturgy, spilled over into every aspect of their congregationallife.

This will be true as well for your congregation. You will begin to function as acommunity, make decisions as a community, expand your understanding ofcongregational ministry.

But always remember that what works for one congregation may not work inanother. What works for that congregation today will evolve further tomorrow.This book is built around the centrality of change, in our lives and in ourliturgies, using one community's children as the centerpiece.

Children at Worship is built upon principles of liturgical evolution. Understoodproperly, our liturgies are designed to reflect, to respond to and to deepen thespirituality of the worshipping congregations. By definition, then, liturgiesmust evolve. Can we not learn to embrace the principles of evolution asnecessary and highly desirable?

The difficulty in the writing of this book lies in its fundamental premise: theliturgies of a community of faith are designed both to express and to deepen thespiritual work of the congregation. In order to do that, liturgies must evolveeven as the spirit deepens, or...