The photograph above is of one of our grandchildren. This is his first day as an altar server. Notice how concentrated he is on going things right. Notice also that there is an adult altar server standing next to him who is his mentor this particular Sunday. This is the way it ought to be.
Too many parishes/churches/congregations, for it is a problem in every variation of Christianity, tend to limit participation of children to an occassional youth Sunday and to what can often be a rather boring Sunday School. The excellent parishes find ways to let the children be involved, at appropriate ages, with various parts of the church worship. The parish pictured above not only has the boys involved in helping at the altar from a very early age, or at the choir, but also has the girls involved in the bell ringing as church starts, and the choir.
Another of the parishes in the same city involved a couple of the teens as chanters from their tweens as well as having young altar servers mentored by older ones. That parish also has boys and girls all the way down to the first grade level practicing to perform at their multi-day Greek festival. They do not perform only once, they perform several days during the festival. They are a constituent and important part of the festival. As they are older, they not only perform, they also help with the serving, wash-up, etc. There are various other ways during the year that the children are involved while avoiding the dreaded Youth Sunday tokenism all too present in all too many organizations.
Part of the secret in getting children involved so that they stay when they grow up is the giving of responsibilities that are important and vital to the good functioning of a parish. Is it important to also have some way of teaching them the faith? Of course it is vitally imporant. But, there is the danger of assuming that running them through more classrooms will somehow make a church-attender out of them. Children also need to have a stake in the parish every bit as much as adults do.
I admit that it is true that children should not serve on the parish board or be parish treasurer, etc. They are not ready for that, although I know of at least one tween that used to help the adult Treasurer count the money every Sunday. But, if they see the worship of the Church as something only the adults do and to which they are forced to attend, then they will not be committed to that worship. If they see themselves as being participants, within appropriate limits, they will grow up knowing that they have been part of the Church all along, just like our Baptismal Liturgy proclaims.
My point should be obvious. Our children should be part of the Liturgy. Again, let me repeat, within appropriate limits. But, if we want to retain our children in the Church, then we need to let them see themselves as every bit a valuable as an adult.
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