What are we telling our children?

Have you ever thought about what we tell our children about Church? I mean, where do they think they are going when we say “let’s go to Church”? Most kids think that we must be going to that building on the corner of such-and such and so-and-so streets… After all that’s what we have taught them all their lives. We say sit quiet in church, don’t run in the church, never bring a drink or snack into the sanctuary of the church, you must wear the proper clothing to go to church, you must say the proper things (never during service), you must simply do the proper thing, after all we are in church. Have you ever thought about saying to your kids on Sunday (or every day for that matter) “let’s be the Church?”

How did we travel so far? Far enough to take the biblical concept of Church from being a gathering of people who are followers if Jesus to being a building on a corner? The question I hear a lot in church (since I am currently a pastor in two traditional denominational churches) is: “Where have all our children gone?” and.. How can you (meaning pastor) get them back? They want to know why we don’t have halls full of young people, and youth and children. I think it is simple.. First; we taught them all their lives that Church is a building, and a building that you cannot have fun in. We put our names on everything we could possibly donate and memorialize, and inadvertently told them that the Church is something we built with our own hands, and we got our name on it to prove it! We took the need for God away from them. Now the Church is a fallible construction of man and they just don’t want that. They (me too) want more!

The second problem is that when they have the opportunity to hand over the keys to the house of worship that they call the Church they do it with the caveat (often unspoken but there just the same), don’t change anything, we got it right where we want it… That’s a church the younger generation simply doesn’t want.

When did we begin down this path where we started going to church instead of being the Church? If we keep this up, instead of calling us all to worship, the bells on the “churches” will be ringing for their funerals…