Today I am so excited to welcome Melinda Johnson to the blog! Melinda is the author of one of my son’s favorite children’s books, “Shepherding Sam.” She also coordinated the Ancient Faith Writing and Podcasting Conference that I attended last year. When I met Melinda, my first thought was, “What a joyful woman!” Melinda loves bringing people together and has the gift of making strangers feel as though they are long-lost relatives. Welcome, Melinda!
If your children are old enough to speak in complete sentences, you’ve already heard this statement, or you soon will. “Church is boring!” It often comes with “I don’t want to go” or “why do we have to do this?”
Many good articles and books have been written in answer to that last question – why we go to church – so today, I’m focusing on the other side of the problem.
What IS the practical response? What can you say to your children that supports Christian practice but embraces the realities of their child-like perception of the world?
You might have an excellent response worked out that isn’t on this list, and if so, I hope in your kindness you’ll share it in the comments. Parents need to stick together! But if you’re still looking for the answer or want to freshen your perspective, here are three practical options.
3 Practical Responses to “Church is Boring!”
1. Ask Why
You may not have time for conversation at the moment your child rebels, but take time later in the day to ask this question: why is church boring?
Children are often frustrated by contexts in which they aren’t allowed to participate. Sitting still watching someone else do all the work might sound like heaven to a tired adult, but to a child, it smacks of not getting a turn. The priest and the chanters and the altar boys get to do everything. Why do I have to just sit and be quiet?
Brainstorm
If your child is feeling left out and un-engaged in church, brainstorm ways to fix that.
- Is he old enough to be an altar boy?
- Would the ushers like her help handing out bulletins at the door?
- Does your chanter let children stand up front and sing along?
If none of these more public options are feasible, think about:
- bringing a prayer rope and using it to count through all the times “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” is said during the service.
- Or play the game another mom once described to me where you hold hands and quietly give each other a squeeze each time you hear a chosen word (Holy, blessed, etc.).
Participation
Make a point of reminding your child that everyone is participating. Explain that if you’re feeling like a spectator, you can think about whether you’re singing and praying along. Are you staring at the wall, or are you actually saying the words?
If your child can read, make sure she has a copy of the Liturgy book and help her follow along. You can offer the spiritual importance of participation – and the practical fact that the more you participate, the faster time passes, and the more you feel that you are a member of the parish, not a meaningless observer.
2. Make a List of People who do Boring things on Behalf of Your Child
As adults, we have daily proof that life doesn’t work without a host of good people who do things for us that we can’t or don’t want to do for ourselves. The idea of boredom, or of activity that is not entertaining, is attached to a major spiritual milestone in our human development.
Not everything is entertaining. This doesn’t mean something is wrong – it means that entertainment is only one part of the human experience. There’s a place for fun, and recreation is an essential part of our health. But we are doing much more than having fun in this life.
You can’t become the person God made you to be without encountering and overcoming challenges. This can be a vague, impenetrable concept for a small child. It can easily come across as one of those irritating virtuous things grown-ups say that just mean you have to do what you’re told and they don’t care if you don’t like it.
Brainstorm
To bring it down to a child’s level, ask her to think about all the people who take care of her in any part of her life. What do those people do? Go into detail!
For example :
- Where does food come from?
- How does it get to your house?
- How does it get to the store?
- Who grows it on the farm?
- What kind of work goes into running the farm to produce the food?
- Does the farmer have fun digging up the soil, pulling the weeds, carting manure, milking cows at 4:30 in the dark, cold, snowy morning?
- What about the people who collect trash?
- What about the people who maintain our plumbing?
It’s not hard to come up with a long list of things that are done for us by other people, things we can’t do without but are very thankful we don’t have to do for ourselves.
Build Empathy
When you have the list, ask your child to think about those people – how does he think the farmer feels? The plumber? The trash collector? The doctor? The janitor? Mom and Dad cleaning up stomach flu in the middle of the night?
This is an exercise in empathy, and it’s also an opportunity for gratitude. But to bring it home to the question of boring church, guide the conversation to help your child see that some very important activities are quite “boring”!
3. Explain the Invisible Good
If you’ve agreed that we’re all thankful the plumber doesn’t care if work is boring, the next logical step is to ask what good is being done by a child in church. It’s not hard to see why we need the plumber to keep on keeping on, but what good does it do to live through a 2-hour service every week?
This is a hard question to answer for a child who isn’t old enough to grasp the importance of religious freedom and the social implications of group commitment to essential values. And in fact, are those ideas really the point? In the external world, they are part of it. But theologically? Probably not.
To understand why church matters, you and your child need to leap into the embrace of the invisible. If you have never told your child that all the most important things can’t be seen with our eyes, this is the time to tell him.
Is love visible? Kindness? Fear? Relief? Can we see Grandma in heaven? What about God?
The things we see with our eyes are far less real than the things we see only with our hearts. Children may not have abstract thinking capability yet, but they have imagination, and it can help them enter fully into the life of faith.
Imagine
Ask your child to look around at church this Sunday and think about who is there that she can’t see.
- Is there a saint standing behind each icon?
- Are there angels shimmering around the altar?
- Are there loved ones present invisibly as we sing Memory Eternal?
- What about God? What is He doing during the service?
If God and the saints, and Grandma and the angels, are present with us at church, what can we decide about the importance of being there? Ask your child.
Don’t let it be a yes-no question. “Does God want you in church?” That’s a knee-jerk, meaningless “yes.” Instead, try “What are the saints doing while we’re in church with them?” or “What are some things you can do with God while you are at Divine Liturgy?”
There is no escape from the questing, resisting, aggravating curiosity of childhood. A child who is rebelling is also growing. All of us can think of times when we responded with quick impatience, or exhaustion, when we wished frantically that our children would stop building obstacles for us and for themselves.
The best parenting method in the world won’t stop them, and the best conversation in the world won’t be the last word. But with stamina and an endless supply of love, we can build the long accumulation of good parenting and good conversation that, by God’s grace, will someday produce a happy, faithful adult.
What do you think? How do you respond to “Church is boring!”? Let us know in the comments!
Melinda Johnson is an Orthodox Christian, wife, mama, writer, and the author of Letters to Saint Lydia (AFP, 2010), The Other Side of the Bonfire (LSP, 2012), Shepherding Sam (AFP, 2016), and The Barn and the Book (AFP, 2018). Melinda has a Master’s in English Literature because she loved taking literature classes so much she couldn’t stop doing it. During business hours, she thoroughly enjoys serving as the Marketing Director at Ancient Faith Ministries, where she encourages creative people, organizes events, and revels in the constant opportunities to share good news. You can read more of her writing on her website, https://
