Prophetic Thursday: Children’s Church

Welcome to Day #4 of Guest Post-A-Palooza! Today’s guest blogger is Jessica Bowman who writes about parenting, faith, unschooling, and lot of other topics at Bohemian Bowmans. She loves her husband, her four Wild Things, and Jesus. And she occasionally snorts (in a laugh/chuckle kind of way; not in a cocaine kind of way). She accepted the challenge of writing the Prophetic Thursday post for the week. Check it out, leave a comment, head over to her blog to read more of her writing, and follow her on Twitter!

Children’s Church

As a mother of 4 Wild Things children, it concerns me that there are really only two options currently in the world of Children’s Church.  The small church classic: “sit with your parents and draw on the bulletin while bearing down on a hymnal.”  And the cool large church: “Come on kids, big church is lame, come with us and we’ll give you your own praise band and children’s pastor.”

Hopefully the Children’s churches of the future will rectify this unfortunate situation.  Here are some suggestions from yours truly about how children might “worship” in the future.

1.  iChildren’s Church.  The lamest of all the options of the future, this church will best benefit those poor souls still stuck with the bulletin and hymn book entertainment.  You know you let little Johnny hold your iDevice for waiting rooms and ballgames – so why not hand him some earphones and at least let him keep up with the podcast from the cool church?

2.  Bieber Fever Bible Club.  The Biebs isn’t above taking good money.  So I’m sure for a small fee he wouldn’t mind crooning some scripture to your tweens.  What better way to get some scripture memory practice than by the classic “I point the microphone at me, I point the microphone at you” routine?   And no one will be able to resist the new Christmas version of his classic, “Baby, baby, baby, oh baby.

3.  Sponge Bob Church. Ever noticed that Sponge Bob is the very shape of the Holy Book?  That’s right – kids will love it, marketers will love it more.  Sponge Bob bibles,  Sponge Hole purity rings, a spinoff “Sponge Jesus” show on Nickelodeon.   Teach kids early how to blur that line between being “in the world but not of the world”.

4.  The Rumpus Church.   Lock them little sinners in a sound proof room without dinner and let’em have at it.  No holds barred.  Come back to retrieve them only after they’ve passed out from pure, sinnin’ exhaustion.

Will Churches of the future really sink this low when dealing with the next generation?  Um, maybe.

But if they do, remember that you heard it here first. 😉

(Can you think of any other Children’s Churches of the future?)