https://odb.org/MY/2022/04/19/come-and-worship
If you read today’s ODB text, it is writing about giving everyone a chance to worship, putting particular emphasis on a mother with 3 children – a baby, a toddler and a five year old. With the church members helping her with her eldest and the toddler, she managed to exhale, close her eyes and worship God.
However, if you go into the Scripture of the day at Deuteronomy 3:9-13, the LORD was speaking through Moses about giving everyone a chance to listen to the Law being read. To assemble the people, men, women, children, foreigners residing at their towns so that they can listen amd learn to fear the LORD and follow carefully all the words of the Law.
I recall during the nearly five years I was worshipping at another local church, the time when my eldest was around 2 to 3 years old to when he was around 5 years plus when we move on to another church, I used to bring him to walk around the corridors of the church when the message was being delivered. He refused to attend the children’s ministry session and no one from the ministry actually tried to coax him to attend or helped me to attend to him. So during those few years, I didn’t get to listen to any of the messages preached. I also recall in another church before that when we were all involved in ministry tasks, my wife used to run the children’s ministry class every week and thus she also didn’t get to listen to the message for quite a number of months.
Whether it’s the worship or the message, everyone should be given the chance to attend and experience the presence of God, to hear the rhema and logos parts of the Word preached. That is why some churches insist that everyone is present in the sanctuary hall from babies to youths to adults to the older folks and the children’s church is a separate service, not a babysitting service to the parents. If the children’s church needs to run concurrently with the main service, there must be a fair rotation of people involved so that no one is always left out from parts of the main service. Everyone should be involved in ministry but everyone should also be ministered to.
Assemble all the people – men, women, children and the foreigners. Let everyone be present to worship the Lord in all His splendour and to hear His Word being preached!
Ronnie's Thoughts 