What Children Need

After Christmas Eve services this year, I found a note in my box from one of our young worshippers. It was inside an offering envelope that contained a five dollar bill.  The note had hearts on it and also the words, "Best Church Ever."

"Best Church Ever."  At least on Christmas Eve, that's what one seven year old thought.  I wonder what it was that made her write those words.  I wonder what it was she loved so much.

"Best Church Ever."
It's the kind of note a pastor wants to save, and possibly even frame.  Especially it's the kind of note the pastor of a small congregation, with more retired people than children, wants to save.   Our small congregation is tempted to look around and wonder what we have to offer families:  after all, there are many large (some mega) congregations around us.  They have large and busy children's ministries.  They have separate churches for children while parents go to "adult" worship.  They have age-specific ministries.  How can we compete with that?  We can't.

Even more amazing to me was that this note was from our 7:00 candlelight service, not our 4:00 "especially for families with children" service.  Now I happen to think that the 4:00 service was pretty great.  There were a lot of children there.  The service was engaging and interactive and we still got to sing a lot of Christmas carols.  Children got to pretend they were angels and adults got to wave canes and umbrellas and pretend they were shepherds.  A four year old boy stood out in the narthex and handed out candy canes to everyone who came.

At 7:00 there was no children's message, just singing and a sermon and of course, candles and darkness at the end.  It was not tailored specifically for families with children, although extended families attended:  grandparents and parents and grandchildren took entire rows.  Maybe that was part of why it was great.  Maybe children actually sometimes like to sit with their grandparents and their parents in worship and sing the songs together.  Maybe they even need to do it.

Or perhaps it was the candles.  There is something about receiving the light, and then sharing it with the next person, and then seeing everyone together in the light of the candle.  Maybe the seven year old who both receives the light and then passes it to the person next to him feels important, as if he is a part of something great and wonderful.

It is great to have programs for children.  Large churches can offer a lot.  But every church can offer what children need:  a place to worship with people older and younger than themselves, learning to sing and pray and know Jesus.  Every church can be what children need:  a place where children both receive the light, and can pass it along to someone else, a place where children learn that they are valuable and worthy, a part of the mission of God.

Treasure

On Tuesday, I went over to visit with a family to plan a funeral.

We picked hymns, planned the funeral lunch (they wanted bars, not cake), looked up possible Scripture readings.

His wife and two adults daughters reminisced about their husband and father, a quiet man who was not demonstrative, but clearly well-loved.

"He was not a hugger," they said, "but we knew he loved us."

He worked nights, for Ford, as a maintenance engineer.  He worked for thirty years, and then he retired.  He was retired for longer than he worked, he liked to say.

He could fix anything, they said.  He loved his tools, and to garden, especially roses.

And he loved the neighborhood children.  He would play stickball with them anytime they asked.

Sometimes the children would come over, knock on the door, and say, "Can Glen come out and play?"

Then they told me that he made jewelry, beautiful jewelry out of scraps of hardened paint from the Ford plant where he worked.  The scrap was created because of the way they painted the cars long ago, and how layers of different colors of paint would accumulate.  I'm still not sure I get it, how they explained it.  But they showed me some of the scrap material, and some of the jewelry he made.

And I tell you, I would never have guessed that those beautiful gems were inside of those thrown-away scraps of hardened paint.

But he saw it.  He saw treasure there.

It turns out those scraps are a thing.  They are called "Fordite."  (It is also known as Motor Agate.) You can google it and find out what it is.

It takes a special kind of insight to look at scraps of painted metal and see beauty inside them.

They said he didn't talk about his faith much.  He just lived it.

I can't help thinking that this is one of the ways he lived it.  Looking inside.  Seeing the beauty.

There are many ways to speak about what it means to live as a disciple of Jesus.  Here is one:  to look inside another person, and see the treasure inside.  To be a disciple of Jesus is to learn to recognize the image of God in one another.

Maybe that's why the neighborhood children loved him so much.  It was so simple.  He saw them.

Maybe that's why they stood at the door and asked him, "Can Glen come out and play?"