Oh Look There Are Children Here

Towards the beginning of 2014 we suspended running our Junior Church on a Sunday morning on what seemed the very reasonable grounds that there weren't any children. Well, there were one or two, but hadn't been any more than that for months. At that time it appeared that the young families who were part of the congregation had gravitated toward the Family Service we held on the first Sunday of each month. I reasoned (not without some evidence) that parents wanted to worship with their children, not hand them over to someone else while they stayed in the main service. 

This Spring we thought the time was right to have another go. A couple of years of more concerted contact with Messy Church, baptism families and Church Clubbers made it seem more likely that out of all those people we could build up enough of a group of regulars to make a Junior Church viable again. We'd begin modestly and relaunch it on the 3rd Sunday of each month. Part of the thinking is that, if you have young children and you want to come to worship, you might well conclude that the Family Service is the one that most suits you, but that's only once a month. Miss one and it's another four weeks before you can try again, and it's not enough.

We had six children on Sunday, which is plenty, and it made such a difference to the whole church. It made the Mass feel much more the offering of the whole of God's people in Swanvale Halt, not just part of it. That was something I hadn't expected at all: it's a ministry to children and their families, but also theirs to everyone else.