Children and Worship

Friendship between God and Man—in worship, we go back and forth with dialogue

The great need is for the church to provide education for both young and older people as well as the children. All members of the Christian household need to know the meaning and methods of acceptable Christian worship.

              Robert G. Rayburn in O, Come Let Us Worship

We must be sure that what we do in worship nurtures the kind of people we want our children and ourselves to be as Church…All kinds of other things are being tried in the attempt to urge young people to get involved in our congregations’ worship. Why don’t they? Simplistically, youth don’t participate in worship because they don’t understand it.

            Marva Dawn in It is a Lost Cause?—
            Having the Heart of God for the Church’s Children

Ten and fifteen years ago, I would have jumped up and down screaming about the importance of OPC evangelistic and short-term mission teams as the means of discipleship and nurture of our covenant children and young people. I still jump up and down with enthusiasm about such things, but with less animation nowadays. Why? God sat me down as a pastor and parent to instruct me on the importance of worship.

OPC Pastor Larry Wilson reviewed with me somewhere between Seattle and Portland, driving home from a Presbytery meeting, the importance of capturing and making use of the dialogical principle of worship. I had known of and practiced such things before, but there are those times when truth is a providential trip wire. Fathers and mothers, you might explain it to your children as the friendship principle in public worship. God speaks to His people, and then, we respond. God and His people take turns in speaking and listening. He’s the living God: He welcomes us; He tells us Who He is and What He has done, and we get to return thanksgiving and adoration expressing words and actions to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Isaiah 6:1-13 provides the pattern about this. Note the taking of turns between God—with His angels of the heavenly realm—and Isaiah the prophet. Clearly, there’s dialog between God and man. But there’s more on the pattern.

Guide your children to see and join in these parts of worship:

First, there’s the call to worship—we receive God’s welcome to praise Him: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

                              We lift up our hearts to Him, and we remember that He is present with us.

Second, in order to be fit to pray, sing, read and commune with Him, we confess our sins and He promises forgiveness. Doug Wilson uses the figure of speech saying, we wipe our feet at the door of God’s house. With forgiveness comes the liberty to approach God to sing to Him, offer prayer and listen to preaching from the Bible, and in these ways, we are renewed, we are consecrated, for daily living.

                           He ministers to us with the words of the Bible, we respond with songs, prayer

                           and open hearts.

Next, after the sermon, we show our unity as church family by saying together words of what we believe, and then we receive nourishment at the Lord’s Table. This is communion.

                         He gives spiritual strength for our faith.

Last, God blesses us with His benediction; these are words of His goodness, kindness and favor. We leave commissioned to serve Him in the world.

                        We have been renewed in our relationship with God to live for Jesus Christ.

Children will catch on to your modeling, parents. They watch you and me like hawks. They watch to practice. One child, maybe a 4 year old, a little boy that I know, loves the Gloria Patri and Doxology. He mimics what he hears and sees. Since we sing these each Sunday, he’s grown to hum them, sing them and take part with the congregation. He knows his part! The other recitations shape his understanding too. In this way he’s being nurtured. One mom mentioned to me recently that she has grown to appreciate how dialogical worship calls for participation—you’re not to sit passively. Worship is not a spectator sport. She values the fact that she, her husband and children are engaged, active and share in the responses to the Lord.

G. Mark Sumpter

The Important Place of Memorization for Children

Teaching Sunday School by Brian Freer (Evangelical Press, 1984)

If this little book were required reading for all Sunday School teachers in every church, our children would be the better for it. Freer writes out of the conviction that our Sunday School time must be used to its fullest potential, and he has taken the time to show us how that potential can best be reached. In the first three chapters, he very encouragingly expounds and illustrates the hope that we may have in teaching our children the Bible -- it is an exciting prospect indeed! In the remaining chapters he very carefully and clearly lays out principles and practical procedures for teachers to follow in order to achieve highest success in their work. He deals with everything from the church to the teacher to the lesson preparation to the delivery to the classroom experience. A very, very useful tool for the improvement of our Sunday School and the evangelization and edification of our children. Every church should by a copy this book for each of its teachers to read, re-read, and refer to regularly until its counsel is completely absorbed.

“There is great value in memorizing lessons and especially Scripture, even when the meaning is not fully comprehended at the time. Many children have learnt by rote passages of the Bible, or the questions, answers and proof texts of a catechism, without really understanding them. The truths learned have remained dormant for years. Unconsciously such knowledge has moulded their habits and attitudes, but, even more importantly, it has represented a golden store which has been tremendous benefit in later years, after they have been born again. Memorization is not the be-all and end-all of teaching, but it should have it place. If we cannot hide God’s Word in a child’s heart, at least we can attempt to hide it in his memory. To do this is like laying the paper and sticks for a coal fire and then placing on the dark coals. The fuel is ready and when it is eventually ignited what a blaze there will be! Men of previous generations were able to use Scriptures and preach sermons of great maturity within weeks or months of their conversion. How did they acquire such a facility? The answer is that they had the Scriptures already in store!” pp. 48-49

Retired reformed Baptist minister, Brian Freer underscores the work of parenting and teaching in our children’s nurture and evangelism; and specifically he addresses how kids are sponges. They soak up facts—the who, what, when and where—of Bible knowledge. They glory in facts. God has made them this way. We ought to take advantage of this. Facts guide. Facts inform. Facts are fuel. I read earlier today of the old Puritan William Gurnall, who said: “Knowledge may make thee a scholar, but not a saint; orthodox, but not gracious.” I disagree. Children—along with adults—learn the facts of Scripture, the scholarly stores of facts. They do so for saintly reasons. How? Jesus, for example, tells us before going to a brother to remove the offensive tooth-pick out his eye, we must first remove the offensive pile of lumber out of our own. That’s a fact; it’s a specific truth we’re to memorize, know, grasp—and be able to recall. Being grounded in the plain, surface points of Matthew 7:4-5 can preserve many from hardship in interpersonal squabbles. Facts of Scripture, such knowledge, guide in saintly ways.

As to more on children from Freer, I appreciate that he sees the role between the learning stages of Grammar and Rhetoric. He writes of young children storing away Scripture and catechetical doctrine—as fuel—and when the fire starts at later stages in life, they are ready. Did you catch that? He writes, “Men of precious generations were able to use Scriptures and preach sermons of great maturity within weeks or months of their conversion. How did they acquire such a facility? The answer is that they had the Scriptures already in store!” Students well prepared are those who have been grounded in the first level of learning—the grammar of knowledge; then, later they act on that knowledge—for understanding and wisdom.

G. Mark Sumpter

Classroom Teachers Who Home-carnate the Truth

Are we making gains in what Adams addresses? Are we getting the Home back into the School Classroom?

“…But today, there is no close affinity between the home and the school. We must, therefore, learn how to close the gap (1) through the development of new communication opportunities and methods, (2) in discipline, (3) in teaching and (4) even in the sort of personnel who are selected to function as teachers. Essentially, we must answer in the most practical terms, ‘How can we get the home back into the school and the school back into the home?’”

Adams goes on: “Among the many considerations that will have to be faced is the selection of teaching staff on a widely different basis than most of the present teaching qualifications require. Teachers must be appointed not simply because they are competent in a particular subject area, but because, in addition to that, and in addition to their competence in theology, they show promise as parent-teachers. If the familial father/son discipling method, rather than the Greek, head-packing academic model of teaching be accepted as the biblical method (which it is), then we must also consider the ability of the teacher to exemplify (or model) that which he teaches, along with his academic credits. It is, moreover, crucial for him to incarnate the truth he teaches in life as a parent would for his child. He will be, for the first time, genuinely en loco parentis.”

Back to the Black Board, p. 72, by Jay E. Adams, his emphasis, (Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1982).

Adams goes on to speak of ways to reduce or eliminate the professionalization of teachers, and as well, the institutionalization of the traditional day-school classroom setting. He aims at getting rid of: homework, report cards, parent-alone parent-teacher consultations, and other forms of professional and institutional expressions. He also, positively, stresses that parents must: support the authority of the classroom teacher, make plans to step into the class and assist in the teaching and learning process, and take on an active role of listening to students read, and to help with writing, as examples. Adams dreams too—“ The world is the classroom for teaching by discipleship. Students will be in contact with adults and with many sectors of life in the process, not merely with their peers in cloistered halls.” I am committed to his dream.


We can imprint the classroom with a home-like climate even more: teachers telling stories relative to academic content and illustrating points with slices of everyday life, taking students outside for lectures and lessons, making use of communication forms with purposeful informality through dialogue, rhyme, rhythmic lines of feedback, chants, poems and quips, presenting comparisons and offering contrasts using common place matters, setting up interaction about a day’s lesson with a DVD clip or news article and other visuals, and starting a written or oral dialogue—and expecting students to finish them employing pertinent facts and applicatory features.

Community in the classrooms—the involvement of a variety of adults, with a mixture of age and life-experience—needs our attention as well.

Helping the class to be home-like takes work, but it is the method of education that reflects Deuteronomy 6.


Do our classrooms show a commitment to putting in place such teachers? Do you know teachers who teach to incarnate truth, who home-carnate truth?


G. Mark Sumpter

Baptized Children—Named Christian—Nurtured as Such

Children reared in the things of Jesus Christ, perspective on dramatic conversions

From the Directory for the Publick Worship of God, (Edinburgh, 1645)




“That the promise is made to believers and their seed; and that the seed and posterity of the faithful, born within the church, have, by their birth, interest in the covenant, and right to the seal of it, and to the outward privileges of the church, under the gospel, no less than the children of Abraham in the time of the Old Testament; the covenant of grace, for substance, being the same; and the grace of God, and the consolation of believers, more plentiful than before: That the Son of God admitted little children into his presence, embracing and blessing them, saying, For of such is the kingdom of God: That children, by baptism, are solemnly received into the bosom of the visible church, distinguished from the world, and them that are without, and united with believers; and that all who are baptized in the name of Christ, do renounce, and by their baptism are bound to fight against the devil, the world, and the flesh: That they are Christians, and federally holy before baptism, and therefore are they baptized: That the inward grace and virtue of baptism is not tied to that very moment of time wherein it is administered; and that the fruit and power thereof reacheth to the whole course of our life; and that outward baptism is not so necessary, that, through the want thereof, the infant is in danger of damnation, or the parents guilty, if they do not contemn or neglect the ordinance of Christ, when and where it may be had.”

I came across this commentary that fits well with the nurture of baptized covenant children:


“The possibility of gradual reform in no way displaces the need for conversion. Dramatic conversions do occur and are necessary for many individuals. The New Testament emphasis on conversion was shaped by the missionary outreach to Gentile adults who had experienced the hardening effects of sin and had to be called to repentance. A hardened adult cannot be simply nurtured into the faith; a radical casting off of the old life through repentance is needed. William James and many psychologists today speak of the importance of making a clean, dramatic break with a lifestyle and belief system that have become unbearable. For persons mired deeply in a life far removed from God, gradual reform is highly unlikely.


There is no biblical warrant for trying to convert the children of Christian parents in the same way that we attempt to convert adults. Yet Christian education of children must not adopt an insipid “Jesus wants me for a sunbeam” orientation that denies the reality of sin in human life and the demands of the gospel. Church-education programs for children should stress the nurturing of their faith through age-appropriate discipleship. Although he was unorthodox in his theology, Horace Bushnell was quite insightful when he said, ‘The child is to grow up a Christian, and never know himself as being otherwise.’ Thus children need not experience a datable conversion, but they must come to understand the joy of living in fellowship with God as well as the agony and aimlessness that they would have outside of Christ.


Of course, we must be wary of the notion that one can evolve into a Christian. The image of the new birth depicts radical change, a complete metamorphosis, but it need not be sudden change. Conception, pregnancy, and birth are a process which takes place over a period of time and includes numerous small crises. The nurturing of children is not a process of spiritual evolution but of guiding them through their spiritual birth. When they look back, they will know that they were spiritually born, though they may not be able to name a specific date of birth.”


From a chapter, ‘Theology of Christian Education,” by Jim Wilhoit, a faculty member at Wheaton College since 1981; his book Christian Education: The Search for Meaning has been edifying. This quote is from pp. 64-65.


G. Mark Sumpter

The Whole Thing

Total Truth

I am grateful for the insights into the unity of the Bible given by Douglas Wilson. I first heard a CD from him maybe 3 years ago, where he began citing the English Bible where there’s a quote or citation of the Old Testament referenced in the New. He went one by one, and then turning to examine the New’s citation and use.

The New Testament is full of themes and direct quotations from the Old Testament. It contains a range of uses of the Old—from faint allusions to specific, definite quotations. Some 224 direct citations of the Old that are introduced by a formula, “it is written” or something like “where it says.” Beyond the 224 another 71 references cite Old Testament verses without the formula. That means one verse in every 22 ½ verses of the New mentions the Old. Some teachers have sought to make a case that there are over 4,100 passages “reminiscent of the Old Testament.” In a striking manner there’s a broad sweep about this—consider the spread of the Hebrew Bible quoted in the New: 94 times the Pentateuch is directly quoted or has direct allusion, 99 from the Prophets, and 85 from the Writings (Psalms, Job, etc.). Out of the 39 Books of the Hebrew Scriptures only 6 fail to get an explicit quotation or direct allusion (Judges-Ruth literature, Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Ezra-Nehemiah literature, and Chronicles literature). But no doubt all the Books of the Old Testament are faintly alluded to in the New.

There are volumes and volumes published that provide Insight Mountain about this: 1) The integrity of the Bible’s inspiration, inerrancy and infallibility; 2) The case for the closed canon of God’s revelation; 3) The centrality of the message of Jesus Christ on the page or in the scene of every OT story, and much, much more. Only one matter that I have time for—have you considered that one reason we fail to prize and act on the integrated whole and unity of God’s world in education is because we fail to prize and act on the unity—the integrated whole and unity—of God’s Word? We divide Chemistry from Literature; we separate English Grammar from Geography; we isolate Political Science from Cinema Studies. We fragment. We set disciplines off from one another turning them into self-contained, self-regulating, self-governing entities. Idolatry abounds. The One—anyone one of the subjects of life—becomes an overachiever; and it swallows up the Many. When the church fails to prize the unity of the Bible and act on it, she loses ground in her responsibility to sit under God as Lord working to bring every discipline of learning under Christ (2 Corinthians 10:4-5). We fragment and break apart the Bible; and we fragment and break apart God’s world.

G. Mark Sumpter

Charles Spurgeon 1

Spurgeon’s Pastors’ College

“Many of my readers will have read Spurgeon’s Lectures to My Students, recalling with joy such subjects as ‘The Minister’s Self Watch,’ ‘The Call to Ministry,’ ‘Sermons—Their Matter,’ and ‘The Faculty of Impromptu Speech.’ The lectures are evidence of the standards set in the college. At the time he gave them Spurgeon was only thirty-four.

The college now had three instructors beside Mr. Rogers. They were Alexander Ferguson, David Gracey, and J. R. Selway. The school majored on the study of theology, but the whole course was similar to that of many seminaries, and Rogers listed other chief subjects as ‘Mathematics, Logic, Hebrew, the Greek New Testament, Homiletics, Pastoral Theology and English Composition.’ Spurgeon mentions astronomy also as part of the course in physical science, and some of the men became, like himself, particularly interested in the stars and the laws governing the heavenly bodies.”

Arnold Dallimore, Spurgeon (Moody Press, 1984), p 107.

I agree with so many writing and teaching on the reformation of the purpose and philosophy of education happening in Reformed and Evangelical circles nowadays. The seminaries of the Reformed stripe in North America will be richly blessed as the years continue to tick by. The high school students of the late 1990s and moving into these early decades of the 21st Cent will be (are) top-shelf kids. They are top-shelf regarding their training and preparation for college and seminary. Like Spurgeon’s practice regarding education, the classically trained students are orbiting the Sun taking rides on the planets of life, faith, truth, revelation, the sciences, the languages and literature, and the fine arts, and they move in concert, and call up awe. The relationship between the Sun and planets are known, as well as the relationship between the planets themselves. It’s a splendid universe.

Note that all of life was on the menu at the Pastors’ College. It was getting grounded in an array of subjects as mentioned above. For Spurgeon, no question, it was training for bold faithfulness in the pulpit.

The students today anchored in the regiment of English Grammar, Latin, Greek and Hebrew, and in the basics of reading widely, and writing and speaking as rhetoricians are the students who will be the community of joy as a sound, robust Christian witness for the whole earth. Take notice—the Lord is doing marvelous things.

G. Mark Sumpter

Ready to Hit a Blocking Sled

Norman DeJong, an OPC Man, has a Super Book on Education

“Knowledge is unified by nature. Knowledge is an organic oneness, but because of the ingenuously labeled “knowledge explosion,” its unity is obscured by fragmentation. We fail to see its unified arrangement and we get lost in the shrapnel of detail without ever recognizing knowledge’s essential character. In order to grasp and control knowledge, we fragment it, dissect it, and re-structure it into inanimate classifications called subjects or disciplines. We think “in clusters” partially because we are not big enough to grasp the magnitude of knowledge, but primarily because we were taught to think that way…

…The greatest challenge facing Christian education today is that of discovering the unity of all that is known, of formulating for our children a single mental vision, of bringing every tidbit of interpreted fact and every theory of explanation into subjection of Christ…

…Knowledge is not divided by nature; it is not made up disciplines or subjects or studies. The dividing of knowledge into disciplines and subjects and studies is purely a human invention, a human construct. God’s knowledge is one, and is characterized by no divisions…


…What do we mean when we talk about the oneness of knowledge? In the first place, it means that in every instance or portion of knowledge, all of the so-called disciplines are represented. There are no distinctly historical facts or distinctly religious facts or distinctly biological facts or distinctly musical facts. Second, it means that every portion of knowledge is at one and the same time:


[My commentary with his order]

1. religious [moral, devotional, community with symbols]


2. economic [related to man and his work and dominion]


3. historical [persons, events and ideas in a context]


4. aesthetic [concerns goodness and beauty]


5. philosophic [relationship between men and things, and the eternal]


6. mathematical [order, predictability]


7. educational [facts, questions and uses]


…[and] on to the end of our abstracted analytic categories.”


Education in the Truth (revised edition), from Redeemer Books, Lansing, MI, pp. 46-48.

G. Mark Sumpter

The One and The Many—in Creation

Why are we given to isolate and fragment the subjects of day-school education?

“Secular philosophy moves from one extreme to the other, because it does not have the resources to define a position between the two extremes, and because it seeks an absolute at one extreme or another—as if there must be an absolute oneness (with no plurality) or else a universe of absolutely unique, unconnected elements, creating an absolute pluralism and destroying any universal oneness. To find such an absolute in either direction is important if the philosopher is to find an adequate standard apart from the God of Scripture. Thus is revealed philosophy’s religious quest—to find an absolute, a god, in the world. But the Christian knows there is no absolute unity (devoid of plurality) or absolute plurality (devoid of unity). These exist neither in the world nor in the world’s Creator.” p. 49-50 Apologetics to the Glory of God by John Frame.

As I prepare a talk on approaching Christian learning and studies of the various subjects and disciplines across the landscape of a standard day-school curriculum, I am mediating on man’s inclination to sever the subjects from one another with the hopes of exercising his dominion, albeit in a way that invites him to be his own self-governing interpreter. How? In what way? Our age is the scientific age. Break down the parts to the finest, granular minutiae for study. This age tempts us to fragment for our pretense of intellectual mastery. There’s something attractive about that—it fits like a glove over a hand: man’s pride and boasting, etc.

To use Frame’s reasoning above, severing Biology from History, and Language Study from Economics, and the like, suggests that there’s an absolute oneness, almost a self-contained set of rules and applications within the said discipline, that governs our approach to learning, study and behavior. For example, for some Physics can take on absolute oneness: it’s held so high that it’s thought to contain the basis for fundamental truths for answers to life. Can Physics really and truly carry that much weight? It’s believed—YES, on the basis of it being an adequate standard by which to think and live. In this view, Physics has become a god, an adequate standard.

But what’s the answer to this idolatry?

The Christian’s answer is the doctrine of the Trinity. Just as God is both One and Many, so His creation is One and Many. The doctrine of the Trinity stages us for an invitation to remain the student in our studies. God is His own interpreter of all subjects, and since He is Lord holding all subjects together, we must study them in concert, in an interrelated way. This doesn’t mean, however, that the Christian approach moves into a field of study in an irresponsible way, in a way that refuses to pursue the minutiae of the bits and particles of a discipline. But as it approaches a matter for learning, it’s always approached as something in a context of diversity, plurality and variety in the creation. The pursuit of learning includes interests about the package or interrelatedness of the creation. This means keeping absolute unity and absolutely plurality in a give and take relationship. Such a give and take approach leads to a holy contentment about the resultant mysteries, humility, faith and dependency in our study of the creation, the handiwork of our Lord and God.

G. Mark Sumpter

Reading Group for the Rogue Valley

Caedmon College Tutorials

Four or five students have signed up to tolle lege—as the Bishop of Hippo heard it said back in 385-386 A.D. CC Tutorials welcomes students and young adult learners ages 16-30 of the Rogue Valley, the region of Southern Oregon.

Here’s the scoop….
1. Christian high school students and young adult readers—homeschoolers, Christian and public—are cordially invited to read, discuss and learn through these Tutorials.
2. The format is simple. A book will be chosen by a Teaching Fellow* and will be advertised near the beginning of each month. Near the end of four weeks, we’ll meet in Grants Pass for an evening meal and discussion. You are responsible to obtain the book.
3. Each month, Pastor Mark Sumpter of Grants Pass, the Registrar, will send out an email. You reply—voila!—you’re registered. A confirmation email will be sent to you.
4. Any fine print? Yes. Bring $10 to the dinner (cash only). The $10 covers a nice meal, a small stipend for that month’s Teaching Fellow and any other administration costs.
5. Registration is month-to-month according to your interests in the book, time available, etc. Look for an email notice about each coming month’s new book.


August 2010 Information:
Book: Sophie’s World—A Novel about the History of Philosophy (FSG Classics) by Jostein Gaarder.
Timetable: Read the book during August. The dinner and discussion is Friday, September 10th.
Teaching Fellow: Mr. Sumpter, contact: faithpastor@grantspass.com


*These are men—professing evangelical/reformed pastors, church elders and laymen—who adhere to the Nicene Creed, 381 A.D., the fundamentals of the Christian Church’s faith and life.

G. Mark Sumpter

Eugene Peterson On Learning and Schooling

A little interaction on a blog entry from Pastor John Barach

Eugene Peterson, pictured right, is quoted by John Barach here:

Eugene Peterson says that we all suffer from “an unfortunate education,” which “has come about through the displacement of learning by schooling”:

“Learning is a highly personal activity carried out in personal interchange: master and apprentice, teacher and student, parent and child. In such relationships, the mind is trained, the imagination disciplined, ideas explored, concepts tested, behavioral skills matured in a context in which everything matters, in a hierarchy in which persons form the matrix…. The classic methods of learning are all personal: dialogue, imitation, and disputation. The apprentice observes the master as the master learns; the master observes the apprentice as the apprentice learns. The learning develops through relationships expressed in gesture, intonation, posture, rhythm, emotions, affection, admiration. And all of this takes place in a sea of orality — voices and silences” (Working the Angles 93).

As Peterson points out, what he is describing here is the way children — even infants — learn from their parents. Interestingly, I noticed that my son picked up the music of “Thank you” before he could say the words: he was imitating our pitches, first a higher one (“Thank”) and then the lower (“you”).”

I saw this quote by Peterson and then read through the commentary on the part of Pastor Barach.

The Deuteronomy 6 passage could not be more clear on this topic that Peterson addresses. Moses gives his charge to parents to carry out the teaching and nurture of children as a way of life and living. Specifically, the point of being together walking along the road or sitting at a table or in the living room in the home, and the lying down and rising up shows the daily life give-and-take of instruction and training. The points of the Peterson quote about learning developing through relationships are spot on the mark.

What makes the Peterson quote particularly engaging—and the point that Pastor John conveys about his son learning how to say Thank You—turns on the expressions Peterson uses to describe the ingredients of learning: gesture, intonation, posture, rhythm, emotions, affection, and so on. These are the ingredients that are found in the dialog of worship liturgy.

Pastor Barach mentions that his son, as a very young child, was learning to say Thank You with a musical-like intonation. That makes for a strong connection between Sunday worship and the Monday-Saturday walk of life. Maybe we can call it liturgically-based learning.

G. Mark Sumpter