Corporate Worship: 10 Benefits for Our Children

Having your children with you in worship can be hard. It can be hard for the parents, for the children, and for the rest of the congregation. The squirming, the shuffling of papers, the loud whispers, and the louder cries, all can make it challenging to have our children with us in corporate worship. But the benefits far outweigh the challenges. Here are ten benefits of corporate worship for our children.

1. Singing

Our children are blessed as they hear the whole church singing to God joyfully and heartily, with full hearts and full voices. They learn that the truths we sing are truths worth singing about. And they learn to sing. They learn how to sing the psalms. They learn the great hymns that have been passed down to us from previous generations of believers. They learn to obey Paul’s command in Ephesians 5:19, ‘[Address] one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart.’ They learn to sing to the Lord with the congregation.

2. Prayer

To be sure, children learn to pray by listening to their parents pray, but they also learn to pray by listening to their pastors pray. They learn to pray along with those who are leading in prayer. They add their voices to the congregation as we all pray the Lord’s Prayer together, or join together in a corporate confession of sin. They learn to add their hearty ‘Amen’ to the end of the prayers, as a way of agreeing with what has been prayed and making it their own. They learn to pray in corporate worship.

3. Reading

Paul told Timothy to devote himself to ‘the public reading of Scripture’ (1 Tim. 4:13), which is for the benefit of the whole congregation, of which Ten Benefits of Corporate Worship for Our Children 27 children are a part (Eph. 6:1-3; Col. 3:20). Children should read the Bible in their home, or have it read to them, but they should also be able to benefit from the public reading of Scripture in congregational worship. It is one of the means of grace that God has appointed for his people.

4. Preaching

The preaching of the word of God is not just for adults, it’s for children too. The whole counsel of God is for the whole people of God and therefore the preaching of the whole counsel of God is for the whole people of God. And the preaching of the word is the high point of the means of grace, and we don’t want our children to miss out. We don’t want them to miss out on what the Westminster Larger Catechism says about the way God uses sermons to change us: ‘The Spirit of God maketh the reading, but especially the preaching of the word, an effectual means of enlightening, convincing, and humbling sinners; of driving them out of themselves, and drawing them unto Christ; of conforming them to his image, and subduing them to his will; of strengthening them against temptations and corruptions; of building them up in grace, and establishing  their hearts in holiness and comfort through faith unto salvation’ (Q&A 155). Those are things we want for our children.

5. Sacraments

The sacrament of baptism is a blessing to our children, not just their own baptism, but the baptism of other children, or of adults professing faith. They can see the sign and seal of the covenant of grace and their natural curiosity may spark off conversations with their parents about the meaning of it all. And the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper is also a blessing to our children, even though they don’t participate in the sacred supper until they have made a public profession of their faith and been admitted to the Lord’s Table by the elders. They see what’s going on, they hear the words of institution that become familiar with them, and again their questions can generate meaningful discussion about what the Lord’s Supper signifies – much like the question the son would ask the father at the celebration of the Passover in the Old Testament, ‘What does this mean?’ (Exod. 13:14).

6. Habit

The habit of worshipping God on the Lord’s Day is formed in the hearts and minds of our children. The healthy, holy habit of attending corporate worship is formed, which, if kept up, will be a blessing to them all their lives. We are creatures of habit, and we want to form the habit of Lord’s Day worship early in the hearts and minds of our children.

7. Inclusion

It is a tremendous blessing to our children to know that they are included in the covenant community, and that they have both great privileges as a member of the covenant community and great responsibilities. Their greatest responsibility is first and foremost to trust Christ personally and to make public profession of their faith. Our children can either get the distinct impression that worship is for adults, or they can learn that worship is for them too.

8. Learning

They are blessed with the opportunity to learn how to worship God by watching their parents and the rest of the church worship God. Author Jason Helopoulos writes in his book Let the Children Worship:

Corporate worship is corporate. The entire body gathers together. This re-emphasizes the unity God’s people possess with one another. It reminds us that we are one people united in our one Lord, one faith, and one baptism (Eph. 4:5). This blesses the entire congregation. The old saint looks around and sees generations that will carry on the faith once he has passed. A teenager, who may struggle to respect his parents, observes venerable and respected men and women in the community who also believe in Christ Jesus. The young child witnesses other adults possessing the same faith and heart for worship that her parents model at home. As the congregation sings, all the voices of the church unite. When God’s people read the confession of faith, they confess the same truth united. When God’s people hear the public prayers they voice a loud ‘Amen’ united. How unfortunate it is when the entire congregation should witness and voice this unity and receive encouragement from this fellowship, but our children remain absent. It steals blessing from them and the greater congregation itself.¹Jason Helopoulos, Let the Children Worship (Fearn, Ross-shire: Christian Focus, 2016), 44.

9. Modelling

This is actually a blessing for the whole congregation, because by modelling I mean our children modelling for us the child-like faith we should have as we worship God. In Luke 18:15-17 we read,

Now they were bringing even infants to him that he might touch them. And when the disciples saw it, they rebuked them. But Jesus called them to him, saying, ‘Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.’

We are helping our children learn to worship, but they are also helping us.

10. The special presence of God

Matthew 18:20 says, ‘For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.’ God, of course, is everywhere, but he is present with us in corporate worship in a special way. He is present to bless us and to keep us, to make his face shine upon us and be gracious to us, to lift up his countenance upon us and give us peace (Num. 6:24-26). And if God is present, we don’t want our children to be absent. As a pastor once put it, ‘If Jesus showed up for worship on a Sunday, would we separate our children from the service?’ The answer, of course, is ‘No.’ We would want our children there if he were there. But he is there, every Sunday, and so we want our children to be there too.

Matt Purdy is Senior Pastor at Carlisle Reformed Presbyterian Church, Pennsylvania, USA.

This article was published in the December 2019 issue of the Banner of Truth Magazine, no. 675.

Featured Photo by Ben White on Unsplash.