Tis the season for multigenerational worship!  Both Thanksgiving and Christmas occasion our coming together to celebrate.  Regardless of age, we are joyful about who we are and who we can be, as a community.  Ushered in every Sunday morning with words like “Enter, Rejoice and Come In” or “Come, Come, Whoever You Are”, during multigenerational worship, these words are meant to greet everyone.  Our welcoming congregation is opening our sanctuary doors for all to enter:  young and old, walking or rolling or being carried, folks of all races and family histories and income levels and orientations, all being greeted by the strength of voices raised together.

And once we’re inside, squished into our seats, sitting on the floor, carrying in extra chairs, piling kids on laps, the energy is even richer.   Here we are, joined together by a shared vision of a new world, one where there’s always room, a world in which we have found a way to welcome the Other.

Children haven’t always been part of an excluded under-class, but it’s become that way in so many of our congregations.  It started with the best intentions: we want to meet the needs of different generations, we want to make sure everyone is comfortable, we don’t want anyone to have to be quiet or be distracted by a fidgety baby.  So, we moved the kids out of the Sanctuary.  It happened all over the country.  Unitarians, Universalists, Congregationalists, Quakers- we all did what we thought was the progressive thing; we separated the children from the adults.

But, over time, we’ve found unintended consequences that have serious implications for our congregations and movement as a whole.  If kids aren’t part of the worshipping community, it turns out, they don’t feel like part of the community at all.  Far too many teens claim that once their Youth Group disbands, they’ve lost their church; even though they’ve been going to the same congregation their whole lives, they never felt like they were really part of it.  Young children associate being UU with being in school.  Fun school, maybe, but not radically different from what they do the other days of the week.  On the other hand, children who join in worship feel connected to the community as a whole, understand instinctively what being UU is about in a way that can’t be taught in a classroom, learn skills in a very different way like how to listen and sit still, do things they rarely get to do like sing with their parents and, most importantly, they become part of our community.

Here are a few tips to worshipping with children:

•  Accept that children may not be as still or quiet you might like.
• Let the children around you know that you appreciate their quiet when they have succeeded.
• Introduce yourself to the children.
• Run your finger under the words in the hymnal as the congregation sings so they can follow along.
• Number the parts of the service in the program and check them off when each one is done.
• Families with children should sit in the front so the kids can see what’s going on.
• During Joys and Concerns, consider holding back at first so the children (who are not as easily seen by our ushers) have a chance to be heard.
• Bring a crayon so kids can draw in the program during announcements and other slow moments.
• Talk to kids during coffee hour (non-family) and in the car (family) about what happened in the service.
• From time to time, invite a child’s friend to sit with your family instead of his or her own and let your kids sit with friends or other families.  This encourages community building and normalizing.

At the same time, I’m making changes so that our early service has a more intentionally meditative quality and the later service is a little more animated.  If that will suit your needs better, Come, Come Whoever You Are!  Regardless of your particular needs and desires, we will make room!