Is it church

[Dave and Sheri Gidney]

HI we are having problems when 120 kids come to the midweek afdter schools clubs pray, worship, learnf together from the bible, but the church members dont see bums on seats on sunday it does not count.

So when is church not a church?

[Rona Orme]

If your midweek club is church for the children attending, then it is church. I can understand your sense of pain, but focus on what the children are experiencing, learning and sharing and try not to worry about those who want to see results.

[Reuben]

Our kids were not moving up to our youth activities - they had regular contact with us for a few years and then we never saw them again. Our church kids would not go to the midweek groups. We should be praying, worshipping, and learning with un-churched children because it honours Christ, and it may also add to the kingdom, but there is a problem. We are also trying to think how to do things better. We are a very middle class church so some of our answers may not fit your situation. For us we need to change structures so our youth and children's stuff links together better (for example having groups that straddle the primary 2ndry school transition). I think we need to put more energy into working with families (dropping kids home and chatting, having family events, doing an "Incredible Years" parenting group, getting help from non churched parents with our group (art or dance workshops etc). We also need to work on our church families to come to midweek stuff. Ideally we would have other groups ready for parents who want to explore further (not just Alpha with argumentative students and no creche but ideally something they could come to as a family).

We tend to do noisy "youth" stuff with our kids and would love to hear how you mange prayer and worship with non churched kids.

[Kay Pead]

How exciting 120 kids coming to 'church'! What a shame your church members don't see the value in the work you and others are doing. Be encouraged, your work is reaching places where 'traditional church' does not. What would Jesus say? Where did Jesus work? You know the real value of the work you are doing.

[Ruth Thomas]

It's the classic problem with any age-specific group: yes of course it's "church" for those attending, but what happens when they grow out of it? Is there another church they can go to when they tip over the age limit (which will exist in practice even if not in theory), and how do they access that? There can also be a problem of relationships, or lack of them, with other members of the wider church: adults of all ages including the childless, and younger children. If good relationships are built between the midweek club and the Sunday meeting, then neither group is so likely to see the other as "not proper church". (Yes this does work both ways: I'm sure you've met teenagers who rather snobbily say that the youth group is the real thing but the adults' service is just boring old tradition that has nothing to do with God.)

It's not a problem restricted to children. An Alpha course may be "church" for those attending, but if they can't move on to something else at the end of the course, and don't relate to those who aren't on it, it's a dead-end church. Leaders of such groups need to think about how to turn group attenders into lifelong disciples of Christ -- not an easy thing to do...

[Catherine Reynolds]

I realize this conversation is quite dated now but I've only just joined the site and this is a real bugbear of mine...!
When did Jesus try and get people in to religious institutions? Jesus, if anything, tried to get people to flush religion out of their faith; think outside the box and do the loving thing not the socially correct thing...
I'd hope that what we invite children to mid-week IS their church, and that we don't invite them so they decide to come to the foreign, unique, bizarre, often hypercritical, often contradictory, conflicting, Sunday morning service....
Their church is midweek. That is their time of fellowship, teaching, praise and prayer. And a lot of the time their church is a better representation of the Body of Christ than the church we might "attend" on a Sunday morning.

[Ruth Thomas]

Thanks for that Catherine. Waking up old discussions is fine by me! And I quite agree about the importance of doing the loving thing not the socially correct thing. If the only reason for attending some meeting or other is because it's socially correct, we've got a big problem on our hands. I also entirely accept that a midweek group for children is a form of church, and in many cases those groups are excellent churches where those attending can learn to serve as well as having some of their needs met.

But such groups also have just the same risk as the Sunday morning gathering of being unique, bizarre, hyper-critical and hypocritical. As a non-churched child, my early experience of midweek children's groups was of something even less related to normal life than Sunday services were -- at least the service on Sunday bore some resemblance to a prolonged school assembly! Please don't assume the worst of the Sunday group just because it's mainly attended by adults. Both adults and children are fallible, sinful human beings, but God can work in and through both.

And it doesn't answer the question of what happens to a child who has outgrown the children's group...