What does the Bible say about children's church?

Teaching the Bible to children and praying and singing with them is also a proper and valuable service for women. Such work begins in the home and is continued in the Sunday School and in children's meetings. The Sunday School in the Assembly is simply an enlargement of a family gathering, removed from the home to larger and more convenient quarters. Therefore, it would be quite proper for sisters to teach Sunday School classes of children or young women, especially when they are in charge of brethren under whose direction they serve. When young brothers or any brethren are part of a Sunday School, we believe it would be against Scripture for any sister to be the superintendent of the School, for that would be exercising authority over the man.

Sunday-school Work. The children of the saints are to be brought up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, and youth is the most favorable time when those in the world can be reached — Gospel Sunday-schools in neglected districts; the little neighborhood Sunday class of children, too, how much work is suggested here! The proper manner, the simple order of conducting Sunday-schools may well occupy our attention.

We may add to this another suggestion that seems deeply needed today. Young brethren who have some ability to speak and who desire to serve the Lord should surely be given every proper encouragement. Yet it is unseemly that they should begin by becoming teachers of the saints. How much more solid and stable would their progress be if they do what they can in reaching out with the gospel to the lost. We would greatly advocate work with children as an excellent training ground for young men. If, together with women also in the assembly, they are able to awaken interest in boys and girls to come to children's meetings, young men may take the lead in making these gatherings spiritually attractive to the young. Women also often prove to be excellent teachers of children. Let us never think lightly of this good and valuable work, but seek to prove faithful in the smallest details of it. Concern for these dear young souls will drive teachers to study their Bibles in order to get the simplest things across to their developing minds. So that in feeding others, their own souls will be fed.

Strange to say there are those — followers of Christ in some things — who frown upon Sunday School work and have given it up as not being in accord with the mind of heaven for today. Thank God their number is not large. Possibly they think that parents are responsible to teach their own children and that they should not be encouraged to pass on their duties to others. But if I am a Christian parent may not my children sometimes hear the story of redeeming love from other lips than mine? And then the children of our Sunday Schools, for the most part, come from homes where the Bible is never read and where the children are never taught to pray. Oh, it is Christ-like work, let others say what they will, to gather the children together by twos or tens, by hundreds or thousands, if possible, to tell them, for one brief hour a week, of Him, their best Friend, who came from heaven to save them, and who, saving, will be their Guardian and Guide through life.

Beloved friends, it is a grand mercy of God that such a book as the scripture of truth, which is so profound that the most agile mind is baffled by its instructions and revelations, can, as we gather here, be taught to a child, while by teaching it to a child we are conferring upon it a priceless boon. And, looking to the fact that all around us in the educational world is a sea of confusion and error, and that in public and general schools that which is not of God is communicated, along with, if not instead of it, ought we not to be the more careful that the children who are under our particular care should be instructed in what is true and what is of God? What is of God is true, and the communication of truth is the best preservative against error.

There are some persons who say, “Let the children grow up; let them get to years of understanding; there are parts of the scriptures which I do not understand myself, and how then can I communicate them to my children?” But, beloved friends, here we have the fact that these holy women of old, Eunice and Lois, took the little babe Timothy, and they sowed in his heart the seeds of a new life, while they communicated to him those holy writings which when he was advanced to the superior knowledge of Christianity he had not to surrender, but still to maintain. They were still to be a guide to him. Therefore we ought and it is a serious responsibility that we should instruct our children in the truths of holy scripture, since they are able to make them “wise to salvation.”

Instructing Children in the Scriptures

There is another point in connection with this subject, beloved friends, that one cannot help noticing in passing. It is clear that these Holy Scriptures which God gave by personal communication through the Holy Ghost to the prophets of old, this peerless Book with all its sacred splendour, with its profound and illimitable wisdom, can be communicated to a child. “From a child thou hast known the holy scriptures.” And I ask you whether we have not today a responsibility to the young in this respect. What was true of the Old Testament is true of both Old and New; and if Timothy derived an incomparable advantage from the scriptural instruction he received in his most early childhood ought we not to see to it that the children of this day, our own children particularly, the children of our families, of our households, are in like manner instructed in the truths of holy scripture?

But the question may be anxiously put, How is this to be done? First and foremost, by assiduous instruction from the Scriptures. Thus in the passage already cited from Deuteronomy it is said to the Jewish parent, "And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children," etc.; and St. Paul, writing to Timothy, reminds him that "from a child thou hast known the holy Scriptures" (2 Tim. 3:15); and it may be inferred, from the mention of Timothy's mother and grandmother, that it was by these godly women that he had been so instructed. It should be a solemn consideration with all Christian parents how far they are doing the same thing. There are many families where the Bible has a place, but not the chief place, in the instruction of the children. But surely "the nurture of the Lord" can only be derived from the word of God; and hence, whoever would be faithful in this matter, must be diligent in its systematic explanation. And what an advantage to the children who are thus taught! The truth of God is brought to bear upon them from the very outset, and used by the Holy Spirit, according to promise, to quicken, form, and direct; they are, under His gracious power, reared in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. There may not, in such cases, be any signs of distinct conversion (as is often observed in the case of children of faithful, believing parents), because the Spirit of God uses the Word at the very commencement of life for their blessing in regeneration.

(b) The danger is also very common of delegating to others the responsibility of training children for the Lord. However devoted and consistent the persons may be who are instructing their children, nothing can relieve parents from their individual responsibility. That there are difficulties in the way of its discharge in many situations in life cannot be denied. But if the exhortations, more than once alluded to, in Deuteronomy, be recalled, it will be seen that there are very few indeed who could not undertake it. "Thou shalt teach them (God's words) diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up." Every opportunity must be seized, because it is the one responsibility that God has laid upon the Christian parent. No one else has the same place or the same claim upon his children as the parent; and if they are ever so well instructed by others, the parent has failed if he has not himself brought them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

(c) The danger is great too in many Christian homes of the allowance of worldly amusements and associations. The Lord's control must be enforced throughout the whole circle of the children's lives. Separated from the world by their connection with their parents, not a single link must be permitted to be re-established. Even their dress should proclaim that they are under the government of the Lord through their parents. And the parents' example, their houses, all the surroundings of their children, must confirm, support, and illustrate the instruction given as to these things; and then, in the full assurance of faith, God can be reckoned upon to remember His own word, "Train up a child in the way he should go; and when he is old, he will not depart from it." (Prov. 22:6.)

In some countries today young people can attend a Christian meeting only from the age of eighteen; in other countries one can present the gospel only to those over twenty-one. Even among Christians in countries which enjoy liberty, the enemy strenuously endeavors to induce parents not to take their children with them to the meetings; or he persuades them to think that attending Sunday School or other special meetings for the young is too taxing for them! The enemy's tactics have not changed. He knows very well that youth is the favorable age to turn to the Lord, for then the entire life becomes oriented toward Him to be lived for Him.

Nehemiah 12:43 describes a day of worship and rejoicing when all the people — not only the men but also the women and the children — were happy to be gathered in the presence of the Lord. When on the other hand, it was a question of listening to the reading of the law, Ezra spoke “before the congregation, of men and women and all who could hear with understanding” (Neh. 8:2).

Does this not teach us that we should all come to the worship meeting, including our children as soon as they are old enough to remain quiet? The oft-cited excuses about household chores and schoolwork should not prevent this. As for the meeting for Bible study where the Word of God is explained and studied, do not the Scriptures instruct us to bring along “all who could hear with understanding”? (Here understanding refers to natural intelligence, not the renewed intelligence which can exist only through conversion).

The whole congregation gathers together to hear the reading of the law: both men and women, and even those with intelligence, that is to say, children capable of understanding what was read. Thus God made provision, in a touching way, so that even young children might profit from His Word.