Little Ears, “Big Church,” and Sensitive Sermons
00:00:00.000 | "Should little children sit through big church?" That was a question we addressed
00:00:04.680 | in episode 919, and it is now the second most listened to episode in the history
00:00:08.960 | of our podcast, presently at over 300,000 plays. Amazing. It raised a number of
00:00:14.760 | follow-up questions in the inbox, like this one from Ryan. "Pastor John, I'm a
00:00:18.480 | teaching elder at our church, and another pastor and my wife and myself have been
00:00:22.240 | wrestling with the idea of sermon content when children are present. We
00:00:25.920 | share the value of having children in church with their family, but we cringe
00:00:29.320 | at the thought of dealing with homosexuality or abortion or bestiality
00:00:33.680 | with children present. How should one striving to rightly divide the word
00:00:37.880 | consider a child's innocence as they prepare and present a sermon? Should
00:00:42.120 | there be any deference shown to a family trying to be mindful of what those
00:00:45.160 | little ears hear, and would it be prudent to provide an alternative for families
00:00:49.160 | when those topics are covered? What would you do as a pastor?" My bottom line answer,
00:00:54.960 | and I'll give the bottom line, then I'll back up to why. My bottom line
00:01:00.880 | answer is that sometimes a church needs to hear a sermon that deals with such
00:01:07.680 | graphic and explicit detail concerning a kind of human depravity that
00:01:15.040 | arrangements should be made for the parents to be notified that such a
00:01:21.040 | sermon is coming so that they can decide whether they want their children present,
00:01:26.080 | and I think the leaders of the ministry to children probably will want
00:01:32.760 | to discern whether special alternatives that morning should be made for the
00:01:38.240 | children or not. So that's my bottom line answer. Now let me explain the
00:01:43.740 | principle behind it. That's as important, more important. I've argued in another
00:01:51.600 | podcast why I prefer and think it's good to have little children, say from age 4,
00:01:58.800 | on in the worship service with the parents or some responsible adult,
00:02:03.800 | and so I'm not gonna argue for that here, just point people to those resources. So
00:02:09.480 | that means I do expect children are going to be constantly hearing words and
00:02:15.840 | concepts and experiences they do not understand. I think that is good, good,
00:02:23.120 | good, good. I think that's what it means to be a child. The aim is that
00:02:29.440 | little by little parents are clarifying for the children what they've been
00:02:36.240 | hearing so that the children grow into things that were once above them. But
00:02:43.800 | things are more complicated than just whether a concept is hard to understand.
00:02:49.600 | The issue is also whether the issue is morally hurtful to the child. So here's
00:02:57.720 | here's an example. Take the sin of greed and the sin of homosexual practice. Both
00:03:05.160 | of them, the reason I choose them is because they're both listed together in
00:03:09.600 | 1st Corinthians 6 as keeping a person out of the kingdom if they are pursued
00:03:17.800 | without repentance. So greed and homosexual practice have the same
00:03:23.640 | horrific outcome when they are embraced in a lifelong lifestyle. Now should a
00:03:30.360 | child hear an extended explanation of greed? And should a child hear an
00:03:37.400 | extended explanation of homosexual practice? And by child I mean something
00:03:43.600 | like five, six, seven years old. And my answer is that there is a way that an
00:03:52.440 | extended description of greed can be good for a child, but an extended
00:03:59.360 | description of homosexual practice can be bad for a child. And one of the
00:04:05.680 | differences is this. This child is already greedy and there is a child form
00:04:12.560 | of greed. The child can be shown by the pastor in his preaching or by the
00:04:17.920 | parents in application, can be shown this in a simple way by the parents that he's
00:04:24.880 | greedy, he's sinful, he wants more than he should have or things that would be
00:04:30.640 | hurtful to him to have. And he can be then be given gospel instructions for
00:04:36.960 | how he can begin to overcome his greed. But in the vast majority of children, I'm
00:04:44.280 | gonna say 98 plus percent, just the vast majority, there are no homosexual desires
00:04:52.720 | at that age that need stopping because the child is normally developing
00:05:02.360 | unselfconsciously into a typical heterosexual young person as it should
00:05:07.600 | be. An extended and detailed explanation in a sermon of the evils of homosexual
00:05:14.560 | practice would require a child to be exposed at a very tender and formative
00:05:21.440 | age to possibilities of sexual experience he should not have to bear. He
00:05:29.880 | shouldn't have to carry the burden of even contemplating or going to bed at
00:05:34.360 | night wondering, "What was that? Am I that? Should I consider that?" He shouldn't even
00:05:40.920 | have to face those questions at five, six, seven, eight years old. I wish he
00:05:47.000 | didn't ever have to face them, but terribly difficult if a child is dropped
00:05:52.480 | into that cesspool at a very, very early age. But I don't think any five-year-old
00:06:01.000 | boy, for example, should ever pose the question to himself whether he will
00:06:06.560 | engage in or someday grow into homosexual activity. That is too heavy
00:06:11.400 | and can create uncertainties and worries that he should not have to deal with at
00:06:17.840 | that age. God's design for him is not to face multiple choices of
00:06:23.320 | sexuality. Our culture thinks that's the way it should be because choice is
00:06:28.880 | God, but it's not God. Rather, he should grow naturally with God's help and
00:06:35.040 | parents' guidance into a heterosexual, godly young man. Hence, there's a
00:06:41.240 | difference between the vigilance we need to take over what children hear
00:06:46.520 | concerning sins as opposed to some other sins, even when both sins are deadly. Some
00:06:53.800 | are more destructive for a child to hear about than others. But I don't think this
00:07:01.960 | means—this is an important, I think, qualification of what I just said—I
00:07:06.840 | don't think this means that in the normal course of preaching, a pastor must
00:07:13.040 | avoid all references to kinds of sins that might create problems for children.
00:07:20.640 | That would be too constraining on the normal course of preaching. But he can be
00:07:26.640 | aware that any extended treatment of those sins, rather than a general
00:07:32.800 | reference to them, could wait for that other special sermon. And the reason I
00:07:39.640 | don't think he needs to avoid every reference is that for young children, it
00:07:45.040 | is possible for parents to give age-appropriate explanations of things
00:07:51.720 | like adultery. A little five-year-old doesn't have a clue what adultery is, and
00:07:56.620 | if you tried to explain it to him, it wouldn't make any sense. It would sound funny. Or
00:07:59.800 | fornication, or homosexual practice, or transgender issues, or abortion. Children
00:08:07.960 | are often satisfied by being told graciously by their parents, "Let's wait
00:08:13.180 | and talk about that when you're a little older, because you're gonna be able to
00:08:16.920 | understand that, and I'm gonna explain it to you." And they're happy to run outside
00:08:20.240 | and play after you say that. So the parents are able to decide and be
00:08:25.040 | discerning what level of exposure or awareness they think their children
00:08:30.920 | need. So I would suggest that pastors talk with the parents and the children's
00:08:38.040 | workers, and try to lay out an agreed-upon philosophy of parenting and
00:08:42.240 | education and preaching that would enable them to give appropriate
00:08:47.040 | protection and appropriate education to their children.
00:08:51.560 | Yeah, that's very good. Thank you, Pastor John. And once again, the episode that's
00:08:54.800 | over 300,000 plays now is titled, "Should Children Sit Through Big Church?" It's
00:08:59.520 | episode number 919 in the archive. For more details about this podcast, or to
00:09:04.040 | catch up on those past episodes that we've released, or to subscribe to the
00:09:07.280 | audio feed, or send us a question of your own, go to our online home at
00:09:10.320 | DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn. Well, why did it take centuries, even
00:09:18.000 | millennia, for Jesus to incarnate into human history? Why the wait? What took so
00:09:23.020 | long? It's a great question, and it's on the table Monday. I'm your host, Tony
00:09:27.320 | Rehnke. Have a great weekend. We'll see you then.
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