Originally published 30 Sep 2009.  Updated 25 Jan 2021.

The modern world — and the modern church along with it — is dominated by splinteredness and individuality.  Age segregation, gender segregation, grade segregation, marital status segregation…numerous forms of segregation abound, at the expense of the multigenerational worship and life that used to dominate church and culture.

Multigenerational living offered rich benefits, so this shift has cost us things most people don’t even realize we’re missing.

Why We (in Our Family) Don’t Utilize the Nursery, Children’s Church, Age-Segregated SS Classes, etc.

1. Parents are Scripturally responsible for teaching their own children (and grandchildren). (Gen. 18:17-19; Deut. 4:9; 6:6-7; 11:18-19)  There are several points to consider here:

• Children learn from their parents’ examples, even when someone else is doing the actual teaching. (They also pick up on what is being taught, even if they are just playing nearby.)
• If children have questions about what they’ve heard, they can easily ask Mom and Dad later, if Mom and Dad were there and know what was said.
• If children are routinely separated from their parents, it is easy for them to be exposed to teachings and/or comments which are contrary to what their parents teach them at home. This undermines the parents’ authority. If we’re with our children, we at least hear these comments and know what to discuss at home later. Someone will probably say, “But you should be able to trust the people who work in your church.”These things aren’t necessarily huge doctrinal differences. I’ll give you an example. In our home, we don’t “do” Santa Claus. Most people don’t think twice about asking children, “Are you ready for Santa Claus?” This could be very confusing for a small child, but if one of us is there, we can intervene and minimize the confusion for the child.

2. Most children’s curriculum is watered down. We believe that, since it is the Spirit who gives understanding (John 16:13; 1 Cor. 2:9-14), this is neither necessary nor desirable. We believe that, like anyone else, children should be exposed to the whole counsel of God. What they understand will sink in and we need not worry about what they do not yet understand. (And often these things will resurface later, when they do understand them.)
3. We do not want our children to learn that the purpose of the church meeting is to entertain them. We should be able to enjoy worshiping the Lord, but this is not the same thing as being entertained by it. Playing in the nursery, followed by the fun- and self-centered focus of children’s church, with its games, skits, puppet shows, etc., trains children to expect to be comfortable and entertained in church. We often see this training played out in older children and teenagers who are bored with church, and in adults who avoid doctrinally-solid churches in favor of shallow, entertainment-oriented churches.
4. We do not want our children surrounded primarily by other children. The Bible says that, “he who walks with wise men will be wise, but the companion of fools will be destroyed.” (Prov. 13:20) It also tells us that children, just by nature of being children, are foolish: “Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child.” (Prov. 22:15a) We do not choose to willingly make our children companions of fools, but rather to surround them with mature, godly, wise examples.
5. There is no biblical precedent for excluding children from the regular worship of God and study of the Scriptures. In fact, if anything, the biblical precedent indicates the opposite.

Biblical Precedent for Multigenerational Worship

Deuteronomy 29:10-11 “All of you stand today before the LORD your God….your little ones and your wives…”

Deuteronomy 31:12 “Gather the people together, men and women and little ones…”

Joshua 8:35 “There was not a word of all that Moses had commanded which Joshua did not read before all the assembly of Israel, with the women, the little ones, and the strangers who were living among them.”

2 Chronicles 20:13 “Now all Judah, with their little ones, their wives, and their children, stood before the Lord.”

There is one passage which, at first glance, seems to demonstrate the exclusion of small children:
Nehemiah 8:2 “So Ezra the priest brought the Law before the assembly, of men and women and all who could hear with understanding…”

But let’s think about it for a moment. Ezra brought the law before all who could hear with understanding. If this is true, those who could not understand must have also been present. It doesn’t say, “…all who could hear with understanding except for those who were keeping the nursery.” If all who could hear with understanding were present, then either the babies were left all alone (highly unlikely) or they were present as well.

Even as we move into the prophets, the expectation is still that worship and religious life extends to the whole of the community.

Joel 2:15-16 “Blow the trumpet in Zion, consecrate a fast, call a sacred assembly; Gather the people, sanctify the congregation,
Assemble the elders, gather the children and nursing babes…” (This is the passage quoted from in Acts 2, by the way.)

What About the New Testament?  Was there Age Segregation There?

The New Testament doesn’t really tell us for sure who was present at formal church meetings but it does show us how the people lived. When crowds gathered to hear Jesus teach, children were there.

Matthew 14:21 “Now those who had eaten were about five thousand men, besides women and children.”

Matthew 15:38 “Now those who ate were four thousand men, besides women and children.”

Matthew 19:13-14 “Then little children were brought to Him that He might put His hands on them and pray, but the disciples rebuked them. But Jesus said, ‘Let the little children come to Me, and do not forbid them; for of such is the kingdom of heaven.'” (also Mark 10:13-14 and Luke 18:15-16)

Paul evidently expected children to be present when his letters were read, to be taught along with everyone else.

Ephesians 6:1-3 “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.  ‘Honor your father and mother,’ which is the first commandment with promise: ‘that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth.'”

Colossians 3:20 “Children, obey your parents in all things, for this is well pleasing to the Lord.”

There is also a particular continuity, which is easily overlooked due to inconsistency of translation. When the New Testament talks about the “church,” the word refers to a “congregation.” So when you read in the Old Testament about the “congregation” or the “assembly” of Israel, and when you read in the New Testament about the “church,” this is the same thing — the “congregation” of the people of God.

Although the use of the English word “church” tends to make us think of the church as a completely new concept, the congregation or assembly of Israel/the people of God/the saints/the righteous are really all references to the same concept (and would have been perceived that way by the human authors and original readers of the New Testament).

Why Do Multigenerational Education, Life, & Worship Matter?

A few of the benefits of multigenerational life & worship have been hit upon already.  At base, it’s this: children learn from what they see modeled.  To some extent, we all do.

That means there has to be exposure to the models.

If most of a child’s time is spent around other, similar-age children, he sees little or nothing to aspire to.  If he’s segregated out of normal worship, he doesn’t see and learn to worship.

This principle is true in all of life, and in education, but it matters most when it comes to worship, because worship matters.  The opportunity to observe the more advanced, more mature, the further-along-the-path folks that they ought to aspire to be like should form the bulk of their days, not the minority of their time.  And it makes a bigger difference than you might think.

Andrew Pudewa has written about mixed-age classrooms vs. age-segregated ones in the academic arena.  He notes that mixed-age classrooms — the traditional “one-room schoolhouse” type — produce multiple benefits that age segregation does not.  They further leadership abilities.  They give children the confidence to learn and grow at their own pace.  And they foster healthy relationships.

In the spiritual arena, we see similar distinctions.  Kara Powell, of Fuller Youth Institute, says that:

Of all the youth group participation variables we’ve seen, being involved in intergenerational worship and relationship was one of the variables most highly correlated to young people’s faith….the gap between the overall congregation and the youth ministry is growing, which ends up being toxic to young people’s faith. As a result, students graduate and all they know is the youth ministry and the youth leader. They don’t know their church; they don’t know adults in their church…

It’s not just youth group.  I observed personally, when an unusual set of circumstances put my oldest daughter and me into the elderly ladies’ Sunday School class for a week, how cut off we typically were from these women with their wealth of acquired wisdom.  Even as an adult, I was being stifled in my discipleship by being segregated from the very people who, biblically, should have had a strong influence on my life.

But What About…?  (Q&A About Multigenerational Worship)

Q. But what about my break?  I’ve been with my kids all week, and I want to worship in peace.

A. First of all, it’s not about you.  Don’t be selfish; prioritize your kids’ souls over your own comfort.  The purpose of the church meeting is not to give parents a break.  The purpose of the church meeting is for the entire local Body of Christ to gather to worship God.  It’s His house, His meeting, and He doesn’t like it when we kick the kids out because they’re “bothering” us.  If you need a break — which is a completely legitimate need — find a more fitting context to make that happen.

With that said, the entire point of the bigger picture here is that no man (or woman) is an island.  It’s a congregation — a family.  The entire household of God should be in this together; harried parents of little ones should not be left to themselves to scramble after toddlers.  Those without children of their own, or whose children are all grown, are in a perfect position to offer help — and should be doing so.

It doesn’t take much for an older couple to sit near a young family and provide an extra set (or couple sets) of arms to hold little ones, but it can go a long way toward making worship easier for the whole family.  A family with teens can sit near a family with younger children, and a teen can help by taking a preschooler for a potty break so Mama can stay and listen.

There’s a lot of room for give-and-take, and for supporting young families (or families with special needs children) and preventing overwhelm, while still adhering to the overall principle that worship is for everybody in the church.

Q. But what about the kids making noise?

A. Excessively noisy children should, of course, be taken out of the room temporarily.  When church is a normal part of life and the children know what’s expected of them, they learn.  (Remember that whole “modeling” thing?)  But by and large, this is, as Chad Bird referred to it, “a non-existent children’s problem.”  By and large, the problem here is unreasonable expectations on our part, not unreasonable behavior on the part of children.

We should have more realistic expectations (of grownups, too!).  Babies cry.  Toddlers fidget.  Preschoolers need to go potty.  Big people get hungry.  All of these are normal parts of being human and we need to expect them and account for them — especially if church goes long.

I strongly doubt that Jesus was out preaching on the hillside to people who sat, unmoving, in perfect rows, with no bathroom breaks, never stretching, never eating.

Q. But what about the kids’ inability to understand?

A. They understand more than you think.  Really.  They learn more, faster, when they see it modeled.  And being exposed to a breadth of information and theology frees them up to absorb it as soon as they’re able.

But, once again, there’s also an element here of responsibility on the part of the church.  My husband had a seminary professor who taught that if they couldn’t explain their theology in a way a second-grader could understand, they didn’t understand it well enough yet.  There are probably some situational exceptions to that, but as a general rule, we’ve found it to be true — and my husband’s preaching always reflected that.

It’s the responsibility of the pastor to be aware that all of the church is his to shepherd, and to preach to everyone.  If his message is too pedantic for the children, it’s probably too pedantic for many of the adults, too.  And explaining something well doesn’t have to mean (indeed, shouldn’t mean) watering it down.  My husband’s preaching was accessible even to the children in the congregation, but more challenging to me than most preachers I’ve sat under — which is to say that I’ve seen in action the reality that a sermon can be both understandable and meaty.

Age Segregation Allows Us to Avoid Confronting Our Own Failings

You might have noticed a common thread in the “but what abouts,” of “the kids aren’t the problem; the church is.”  We do a lot of things in the church because “it’s just the way they’re done.” We do a lot of things in the church because they’re what the world does (which is to our shame).  And it’s easy to avoid acknowledging them if we just keep the kids out.

But what happens when we “let the children come” is that they reveal to us all of these faults.  And it’s easier to banish the children than to confess and correct our failings.

It’s not the children’s fault that they’re humans with human needs that the church doesn’t want to tolerate.  (Nor are they the only ones!)

It’s not the children’s fault the congregation is a motley collection of random individuals and families, rather than a cohesive community.

It’s not the children’s fault the preaching is lousy.

They don’t create these problems; they only reveal them.  And so, even as children in an multigenerational community learn from those who are older and wiser, we also learn from them to think simply, like little children.