Contrary to what some allege, Scripture’s clear witness is that children are to be present when God’s people gather for worship. Yet how do you train your kids to sit quietly at church as God’s Word is preached and to actively sing songs of praise during the service? What practical steps can you take during the week to prepare them for Sunday? And how do you manage the service itself as wise parents? 

 

In this podcast, Scott Brown and Jason Dohm, joined by special guests Isaac and Heidi Botkin, tackle these questions head on. With four children, eight and under, the Botkins are still learning how to direct their young ones in worship, yet they offer practical counsel: Teach them obedience and self-government at home through regular family worship. Get your kids familiar with the songs your church sings by singing them together ahead of time. And, during the weekly service, work together as parents to manage your children’s oversight and discipline. 

 

Read these two articles as a supplement to today’s podcast: 

 

“Does Nehemiah 8:1-3 Teach Age Segregation?” by Scott Brown 

 

“Nehemiah's Nursery” by Voddie Baucham 

 

Well, thank you for joining us on the Church and Family Life podcast. Today we have Isaac and Heidi Botkin, young parents. Oh, you know what? I've known them since they were little kids pretty much, and it's so delightful to be with them. They're raising a family, a family in the throes of trying to figure out how to be in church and all that kind of stuff.

And so here we go, Isaac and Heidi Botkin. Well Jason, here we are. We're going to talk about keeping your children with you in church, which is sometimes most of the time a challenge. I'm thankful we've done this with a couple of different couples now because different parents have different things that have been helping them in terms of having their children in church. So welcome.

I'm glad you're here. Yeah. Hey, so we want to talk about how you can get your kids to sit quietly. We want to talk about Listening to sermons, you know how much you know, how do you do? How do you pull that off?

How do you help them do that? We want to talk about how old kids should be when they're engaged in a sermon You know what if you're juggling like multiple children? You have a baby and a toddler and a six-year, five-year-old, you know, what is a mother to do? What's a father to do? So anyway, we're gonna talk about all that that kind of stuff.

Those are really important questions. So, and especially for us, right? Because for a couple decades we've been saying you should have your babies with you in church. Right. Yeah, like we're not ashamed of saying that because the Bible say it and so we think it's really important.

We're also not oblivious to the challenges which is why we want to talk to people like you. Yeah, absolutely. That capability is forged at home first. And I think that's where most parents kind of miss the boat. They bring their kids into church, and there hasn't been as thorough a training at home.

What do you guys think about that? Well, I do. So there's a couple of things that I noticed. I feel like we had a better, earlier on with fewer children we had a longer And I would say more rigorous family worship, which probably was really helpful to make sure that the kids who are now older, the older kids, they definitely handle sitting still in church and listening at the same time better than some of the younger kids. And some of that's probably age, but I am thinking a big part of that is probably that we have let family worship get a little shorter and a little simpler as the number of kids has ratcheted up a bit.

Yeah, yeah. It's an interesting phenomenon in families where when you have this span, a lot of times some children don't get the same thing as other children get. This is just a reality. That's very true. You kind of have to fight it, but it happens.

Have you dealt with that? Yeah. Well, as we have, We're at the point now, so we have four children sitting in church and one more on the way. So we're now out of hams. So we're at the point now where church is peaceful and it's calm, but I'm not sure how exactly to gauge across these different ages, like who needs to be listening to the sermon, who needs to be providing bullet points at the end, who needs to just focus on not causing a disturbance in the worship service.

A critical skill. We're balancing. I actually wanted to do your input because 10 years ago we talked about this in a very theoretical sense. Now 10 years later we're five children in and it's less theoretical. Hey give us your ages again of your five children.

So we've got eight, six, four, two, and then one arriving shortly. It's gonna blow up the whole scene right now. So yeah, I think the first thing I would just say is it takes time. In our church, we're encouraging parents to be patient and take, You know, you have this, the early years are the most critical in securing obedience and things like that. And so you have to work especially focused during that time to help those children on the younger end to really understand obedience the first time.

You know, third time obedience is, you know, double disobedience. So, you know, helping children as early as possible. And it takes, you know, it takes some time in the early years probably takes a couple years to get maybe three years I don't my wife told me don't throw out year Scott because it'll see it'll discourage some people you know but but frankly and kids are different absolutely but But I think it is important for parents to understand that the core mission in the very first years is simply obedience. It's not that that's all that they get, but the most important thing that needs to get grounded during that time is obey. Yeah, I'm gonna tell a story that I love.

It's really about Jason's daughter. When we first planted a family-integrated church in Wake Forest, you know, over 20 years ago, Deborah held one of their daughters for two years. Well, you know, they had other children and she, Deborah held her, just held her in church. She wasn't trying to teach her anything or do anything, but she held her for the first two years. And when she was about 13, I bumped into her and I said, hey, what's the first thing that comes to mind when you think of your Aunt Deborah holding you when you're a little girl?

Because she calls her Aunt Deborah because there was just something that happened there. And without stopping she said, oh what I remember the most is whenever there was a song that Aunt Debra loves she would go, mmm, amen. Or if there's something the preacher said during the sermon, she'd go, mmm, amen. By the way, Deborah still does this. Yeah.

And she said, that's what I remember. Well, okay, what was she getting out of the sermon? I think she was just getting sweetness out of that sermon and it made an impact on her even at age one and two. So you know how parents always want to know you know What is my kid getting out of the sermon? I believe that most of what your kids get out of the sermon in those early years is what you're getting out of the sermon and your whole disposition toward it.

And we did different things. If I had little kids again, I'd probably do more different things. But one of the things that we did when our kids were little is I would reach over and whisper. I would have one on each side. And I would whisper in their ears, did you hear what he said?

He said the word salvation. Well, maybe they didn't even understand what that meant. And then when they got a little bit older, like when they could write, I would have them look at my notes and I would write a word and I would have them copy that word. It's very simple. Now they have to be able to write, so now you're on the upper echelon of this cycle.

But I think, and even like in prayer meetings, I had a couple of my grandchildren with me a while back in our prayer meeting and somebody prayed for somebody. I said, did you hear that? He just prayed for Mrs. So-and-so. You know, it wasn't that nice.

So I just think that you sort of bring them along, but the parents disposition is the most important disposition And you gotta, if you're a parent, you gotta love it. And it'll help your children to love it. So I'm sure the Botkin family has patterns for how you manage the Botkin row, Seating row during the service. Just my youngest is more than twice as old as your oldest. So I'm rusty on this.

What are the patterns that you use to manage your row during the service? Well, there's definitely a few people that shouldn't sit together. This is important to great team. That's great. Yes.

Heidi and I are usually kind of on the outside, and As soon as the baby comes, you'll be leaving the row more often. But I also get up and do things during the service sometimes. We do have extended families. So occasionally there's a child who's a row back or a row in front with an aunt or an uncle. But generally, generally we're a little bit more on the outside and we have kids scattered a little bit.

And for the most part there isn't much of an exact pattern except for certain people should be separate. It gets a little rowdy. Two boys, two young boys together, an eight-year-old and a four-year-old drawing pictures of things that get loud, then they get loud too. So If they can look at what each other are drawing, it tends to get a little bit... I need to put that one in my booklet.

Yeah, on this. Yeah. So, you're each at the end of a row blocking the escape routes, and you take control of the ordering. That's just a really good tip actually. You know, without hearing that, less experienced parents might let their children determine the own ordering and that might not help, you know.

And it changes fairly frequently based on, am I first trimester pregnant and need to get up and go outside frequently for fresh air or do I have a newborn that needs to be nursed a couple of times or am I too pregnant to hold anyone on my lap anymore? That changes things pretty quickly too. So those are recent considerations. Well let's just say you got to have a powered-up husband. You really do.

When you're going through you know this life cycle of having children of different ages, you know I've seen from time to time husbands, they leave it all on the wife. That's a huge, well that's a recipe for failure and a lot of discouragement particularly to the wife. So A husband has to realize this is my job. We're working on this together, but I've got to leave the charge and help my wife to deal with this. Yeah, there are two of you, and both are needed actually to have the right thing happening on the row, and you need to be working in tandem, for sure.

Yeah. Have you... Does that just happen organically and naturally, or have you guys made rules for each other? I think it's happened pretty naturally. The only thing is we need to be coordinated so that if I'm Lord's table, if I'm doing a Lord's table exhortation, that's kind of the worst because it's at the end.

Generally our order of worship, that's after a long sermon. Everybody's been sitting for a long time, and now I'm up front, and all I can do is see at a distance. So that's one where there's coordination ahead of time. Other than that, it's pretty organic and natural. We kind of know who's having a good day and who's having a bad day and who needs to be close and who...

It usually works out without a lot of communication to be honest. I do know you can still play a role with eye contact from the front. It's Still a powerful weapon. If looks could kill, that child would be dead. Isaac, you just, you just.

I was gonna ask about that. Yeah, this, yeah. Yeah, you, Before you get up, you handcuff them and then get up, okay? Because touching, you know, touching is bad. You know, do not touch your sister.

So how do you manage sound on the row? Whispering, whispering is allowed, but when unnecessary conversation starts to happen in the whispering, that's usually when it gets quieted down. So That's what we've tried to do is... And it's different with the different ages. So James, who is the oldest, who is eight, will sit very happily and draw and listen at the same time.

He will hear stuff and remember stuff from the sermon without the prompting. But what that means is oftentimes he is kind of neglected and other people get more of the attention and more of the focus. And so it just sort of depends a little bit on what's going on, but we allow a minimum of communication. Lots of emergencies happen during the sermon. After about 15 minutes in, people really need to communicate emergency.

We would often manage sound through various kinds of touch. Like it would begin with a light pinching and if it didn't stop, it would escalate. So you know, kids will cry, especially little ones will cry. That's pretty normal. Parents need to realize that's actually normal.

Parents do need to teach their children to control their crying and to control their talking. You know, it's not appropriate to scream and they need to be taught that at home so that's not happening. I remember one time, this was like probably 18 years ago, we were having a conference right here in Raleigh. Oh yeah. Remember that?

Oh absolutely. Oh you remember it. Vody was speaking. He yeah. The North Raleigh Hilton.

That's right and there was, You know, when we're talking about the glories, you know, of having children with you in church and everything, and there's this family out of control. And I don't know how they got up. They were like laying on the floor in front of the platform. Well, to the right of the platform, if I remember correctly, it's like yesterday. And these and this kid is screaming.

Bloody murder. Screaming bloody murder. These parents had no clue that children should not be allowed to scream bloody murder. Or at least you should, at least you could take them out, you know? And so the parents were just like fixed on the speaker, like no motion to address.

It was amazing. It was terrible. And then, hey, and then I went up there and I was doing, I was preaching and the same thing happened and I'm looking at them anyway. So, but I, why am I saying this? You know, you often have parents in your church that they have, they really don't understand self-government, teaching your children self-government, teaching your children that they can't cry whenever they want to.

They actually have to govern their crying and they can't and they can't wail. You know, wailing is typically a manifestation of rebellion. On the earliest stages it's probably just a natural manifestation of frustration and sin or hunger or things like that or tiredness. Parents have to understand that But that needs to be managed as early on as possible with children. They need to be taught that there are certain things that are not done in public.

And screaming is one of them. And talking while somebody else is talking is one of them. And also not honoring what's going on in the room, not honoring the speaker, not honoring the singing, you know, just doing their own thing. Those things are just socially unacceptable. My encouragement to parents is just make sure your kids know what's socially unacceptable in particular situations.

You know, you want to be able to take your children anywhere, really, and if you can't take them to church, you're probably not gonna be able to take them anywhere. So we've got three dads and a mom here. Give us a mom tip. There you go. I was just thinking about one thing that helps, I think with not the sermon part of church, but the rest of it.

We work hard at getting our kids familiar with the songs that we sing so that they can engage in that part. And it's, it's not just them sitting there listening to a new song. So one thing I've done is created a Spotify playlist with a lot of the songs that we regularly sing at church and I'll play it at home so that they even the ones that can't read are familiar with the songs and can engage in that part of worship and it makes the whole service feel a little shorter when they're engaged and happily participating in that part of church. Oh I love that. That's a grill.

That is transferable. Yeah, no that's that's that's true because you know children, you do have children, some of them they don't want to sing. They refuse to sing. But you want them to sing. They need to sing.

And it's often a matter of disobedience when they don't sing. But they need to be brought into the beauty of it. And then they have a mom who's playing the songs and they know the songs, that's really great. I love that tip. Hey parents who sing enthusiastically in gender, children who sing enthusiastically for sure.

Yeah, you know creating a culture of singing is really important. You know singing is one of the most important things a church does. You know, singing unifies that church. Singing declares its doctrine. Singing is something where we say what we believe together and we do it all together.

It's one of the most unifying doctrinally things you can do. And so I love that. I love that pro tip from you, Heidi. That's really good. Anything else?

What else comes to mind about having juggling children in church as a mom. One unique thing that we've had to wrestle with recently with our most recent church building is that there are no separate rooms at all. It's just one big room with two very small bathrooms. So that's made it a little more challenging because there's nowhere to go with the small child except just the parking lot, which is hard if it's snowing or pouring rain in Tennessee weather. So that, I guess, has kicked us, spurred us on to work a little harder to make sure that we're not going to have any serious emergencies.

But it's also, I think everyone has understanding and grace for the fact that a newborn baby that can't go out in the snow is sometimes just going to cry and yeah and everyone is willing to cover that in grace too so that that's a challenging church building situation but it's also a small building so there's not a whole lot of room in the back for mingling around. So yeah that's a little bit of a challenge but just figuring out, trying to help young moms figure out things like baby wearing because there's no room for strollers, things like that. We just have to be creative with the building that we have. One of the things Deborah has said is it's helpful if your baby can go to sleep in a stroller because that is often during church time and that can be a helpful containment thing if the child is used to doing that. But let's talk about this problem of not having anywhere to go.

Our church has a foyer behind the main worship area. That's really helpful. You know, if a child is crying, that child can be taken out. And that's really, really helpful. But boy, you don't have that.

That makes a double challenge. I think it does. It has forced a little bit more proactive training ahead of time because it's more obvious when you have a child that's struggling. Nowhere to hide. And you know, nowhere to disappear to.

But that's really interesting. I think we have utilized some more things like allowing snacks or drawing during church just because some of the younger ones, there isn't a place to go even for a few minutes to get some wiggles out. So, you know, Sometimes we use those things when necessary too. Yeah, that's really interesting. You know, in that four-year area, we have a lot of babies in our church, lots of new babies, it's crazy.

And so I'll walk out there and there will be more than a dozen people out there with their kids. But they have this kind of safe zone they can go, and then they'll come back in. But it's interesting that you say it's sort of forced a little bit better instruction and control of children. Maybe we should eliminate our foyer, you know. Our church is a lot smaller than yours too, so I don't know that we have quite that number of small children.

Yeah, it is good if a church has a cry room or something like that. You know, we're finding lots of churches are abandoning their staffed nurseries. We think that's a good thing. I don't think we would say it's sinful to have a nursery at all. But it does, not having a staff nursery does two things.

One, it allows the staff to actually worship with the church, which is really, really important. And it also helps parents to maybe grow quicker through the process. Isaac, is there a dad tip? An exhortation to dads. Well, for my limited experience with our own kids only, I think drawing has been really good because it has, It is a thing that they can do while still listening.

It isn't too distracting for them. I don't think it's too distracting for other people usually. So that is something where I think that that has been really, really helpful. It has given them an additional activity that they can do that doesn't take them out of the worship service too much. So I have been pretty happy with that.

I would say that part of what I would like to know is, in addition to not distracting other people in the church with the children, making sure that the children are also not distracted from the worship service and participating and listening, even if all that they get are some words and the parents' response to the sermon. Even if all they can get is that, I would like to try to figure out how there's as much of that as possible and the kids aren't being entertained in sort of a separate channel, even though they're in the same, the same pew. You know, on the drawing thing, we had our kids do that, but I would encourage them to draw what they were hearing. And sometimes I would give them a, okay, here's a lamb, draw a lamb, you know. I would want them to try to be dialed in on that rather than some other alternative world.

But hey, my view is it's implicitly helpful for a child to be in a place where they know that the people love God and the people are praying to God and the people are singing to God and the parents are into it and there's preaching, there's the sound of the preacher. You know, one interesting thing in our church, I've had multiple women come up to me and say, you know, when my baby was born, it was obvious that they knew the sound of your voice and they would perk up. And what they tell me is they think it's because they heard the sound of my voice in the womb. That's what they say. Might be true.

It might be true. I don't know. But, but the, and it's interesting as the years have passed, who comes up to me after I preach? It's the little kids. Oh, adults, adults stay away from me.

But the little kids, you know, they're coming up to me all the time. And I want, and some of them, you know, because they heard me preach, you know, six, seven, eight years ago, you know, when they were, when they were in the womb. Maybe that's that, I don't know. I think just the, the, the awesomeness of the experience is all a kid needs in the early stages and parents who love it. To me, that's enough.

And then God, they'll get a little bit and a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more. And you'll often be surprised that they got a lot more than you think. So, well, OK. Hey, we've actually gone over time with these guys. We've taken more time than we promised.

But hey, this was great. Thank you so much. I hope a bunch of people listen to it and hear some of your pro tips, you know. It was really helpful. I was gonna say, I also am happy to hear your emphasis on family worship.

We do need to ratchet our family worship back up to a point where it is better preparation for the Lord's Day and more singing. We've, Family worship singing used to be really good for getting them feeling with the songs and we've kind of let that trail off a little bit. So, yeah, thank you for your input as well. You're welcome. That kind of stuff happens in family life.

You just got to keep coming back. Eps and flows. Amen. Good deal. Thank you so much for joining us.

What a joy it was. Appreciate you guys. Always good to talk. Okay. Thank you for joining us on the Church and Family Life podcast.

We'll see you next time. Church and Family Life is proclaiming the sufficiency of Scripture by helping build strong families and strong churches. If you found this resource helpful, we encourage you to check out ChurchandFamilyLife.com.