Daley Ponderings

The authors quote some statistics of how many children leave the church never to come back, and particularly notes some examples of where churches had "junior church" for the kids, and while it was fun and entertaining when they were young, when the kids were old enough to attend "adult church", they never went, since it was completely different than what they thought church was all about.  Having not seen either of the services in the example, I'd probably argue for something in the middle - that probably the junior church was too much fluff and "fun" (Jonathan and I have conversations occasionally and setup a quadrant diagram with the axes labelled "good" and "fun", and how there can be things that might be fun but not good, etc.) and probably also the "adult church" takes themselves too seriously and needs to realize that "good" church isn't dead and dry, and it is not about surviving the weekly ordeal in order to get to the football game in the afternoon.

We have a simple rule of thumb in our church: if we would do this as a family, we can do it as a church; if we would not do this as family, why do it as church?  This is not intended to cover every possible eventuality, but it has proved useful in maintaining a church life that is refreshingly simple and uncluttered, with space for relationships and front-line evangelism.