By Father Casey
I grew up in the Episcopal Church. I was baptized as a baby at Christ Church in Temple, Texas, and that is the church where I was formed in the Christian faith. My parents were active and involved – my father was often on the Vestry, and my mother was also a leader and on the altar guild – so I wound up spending a good deal of time at church as a child. The campus and buildings of Christ Church felt very much like a second home to me as a kid: I knew every room, every stained glass window, every hiding spot for hide-and-seek. There was even a smell at Christ Church when I was growing up that I still associate with “the smell” of church (it was carpeted, so the smell was probably dust, mold, and decades of foot traffic).
I will always feel at home in churches because I have always been at home in churches. I can be traveling to a place I’ve never been before, somewhere far away where I don’t know a soul, and if I can find a church to visit, where I can sit down in a pew and kneel for a prayer, I feel like I’m at home.
My strongest memories at Christ Church happened during Lent. I remember certain other services – Christmases, Easters, an ordination – but the ones that lodge deepest in my spiritual imagination all happened in Lent and Holy Week. For as long as I live, I will always remember the first Maundy Thursday service I attended with my parents, when I was about ten years old. When the lights were turned off, and the altar was slowly stripped bare, something stirred in my soul. For the first time in my life, the meaning of our faith and the reality behind our worship came alive.
You could say that this was a sign of my calling to the priesthood at a young age, and there is some truth in that. But the larger truth is that my experiences were no different from most children who have been raised in the church. There are many people just like me, who will always feel at home in churches because they have always been at home in churches. Their parents, grandparents, or godparents regularly brought them to Sunday school and the Sunday service, which fostered a familiarity and love for the people and practices of the church.
We need a renewed commitment to offer to our children – and by “our,” I mean all the children of Transfiguration, whether or not they are biologically related to us – the precious gift of being at home at church. I recently read this by pastor and author Brian Zahnd, and what he says is incredibly true:
“If we want faith in Jesus to remain realistically possible in a secular age, one of the most valuable things we can do is bring children to church. We need to raise children in the community that is formed and sustained by the grand narratives of Scripture – a story that culminates in the gospel of Jesus Christ. In an irreligious culture where not much is sacred, we need to introduce children to the sacred place where sacrament is formative and faith is normative.”[1]
Lent is a fantastic time to renew our commitment to bringing kids to church. What happens in our worship and formation this season is enormously powerful: the prayers, the rituals, the signs and symbols…they are capable of leaving a lasting impression on young souls. The word “Lent” is an old English word that means “spring,” which means this is the perfect time to plant seeds in young hearts that can grow up over a lifetime.
The truth is that, unless we actively pass the faith on to our children, grandchildren, and godchildren, the chances that they will know the love of the Lord are small. There are enormous cultural headwinds blowing against us that are causing dramatic declines in church involvement. If we’re interested in future generations knowing what we know and receiving what we received – if we want them to have a life-giving and guiding faith – then we have to share it with them.
In the next five weeks, there are some of the most poignant activities for kids that we offer all year. We’re writing icons on Wednesday nights and talking about prayer. We’ll offer an immersive and interactive Passion experience on Palm Sunday. We’ll walk a special outdoor Stations of the Cross for kids on Good Friday. Maundy Thursday and the Great Vigil are not “kid services,” per se, but they are also the most sensory and evocative liturgies of the year. And, of course, on Easter Day we bring the joy of resurrection to life by releasing butterflies.
I don’t know what your Lenten disciplines are this year, but I hope you’ll add this one: plant some seeds of faith. Bring the kids in your life to church. Help them know Christ by spending more time with his body. Give them the most precious gift they’ll ever receive: a lifetime at home in the house of the Lord.
Fr. Casey
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[1] Brian Zahnd, The Unvarnished Jesus (Spello Press, 2019), p 46.