My daughter attends gymnastics class every Tuesday afternoon. She’s eight years old and it’s a beginner class – nothing too serious, designed entirely for fun. 

She loves the bar the best, hoisting herself up, tipping forward and back, bending at the hips to find different ways to balance her body. 

I suppose, then, that I should’ve anticipated her using the back of the church pew as a gymnastics bar during worship on Sunday mornings, but I did not. 

And now she does this every—single—week.

Not the whole time, mind you. Sometimes she sits in the chapel at the back and makes sculptures out of foam blocks or pipe cleaners, but that space is designed mostly for younger kids. Eight  is a funny in-between age at church. So she’ll sit on the kneeler in the pew and writes letters in her journal instead, or choose a coloring sheet, or make shapes with kinetic sand on the hymnal in her lap.

But every so often, all throughout the service, she balances on the back of the pew in front of her like it’s a gymnastics bar. 

And every time she does, I have to catch myself, because my instinct is to ask her to stop. 

“When I was raising my kids in the church, they sat quietly and followed along with the liturgy!” Honestly, I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve heard some version of this statement over the many years I’ve been a religious professional. A good deal of my vocational time and energy has been spent speaking and writing and preaching and teaching in response to it, to demonstrate that kids are present, are participating in worship, are following the liturgy, even when they’re not sitting still, or standing at the appointed times, or reading or singing along with the rest of the congregation.   

I know this because I watch what happens when kids are given the space and understanding to act their age and be themselves in the worship space. I hear my own kids singing the kyrie from the bathtub. Other parents tell me about playtime tea parties where their child consecrates the meal, reciting the Words of Institution from memory to their dolls and stuffed animals. The liturgy gets in their bones, even when they appear to be paying it little to no attention.

More importantly, when these kids understand their worshipping communities to be places and spaces where they can show up with their whole selves, they really want to do just that – to show up with their whole selves, and to be a part of things. They want to light the candles, and pass out bulletins, and collect the offering. They want to help in the sacristy after worship.

My daughter has recently begun to help serve communion, and it’s her new favorite thing. In between all the pipe cleaners and kinetic sand and sitting on the kneeler and using the pew as a gymnastics bar, she asks me, over and over, “Is it time yet?” She wants more than anything to go put on the robe that’s two sizes too big, to stand with the other worship leaders in the chancel, to declare to the people of God, “the blood of Christ, shed for you.” 

And when it’s time, she is all-in. She pays attention up in that chancel space in a different kind of way. She steps into that responsibility with the knowledge that she is a full participant in this community – a leader, even! – and she brings her whole self to that role. 

My own daughter is one example, but I watch this same dynamic play out week after week in my congregation with kids as young as four and five. When we understand kids as people who are only learning to be full participants in worship – as in, they will only be full participants when they follow along the entire time, speaking and singing and sitting and standing and listening attentively at all the appointed times – we communicate to them that they don’t fully belong. (This understanding is also wildly ableist, for worshippers of any age.)

But when we meet kids in worship with the invitation and affirmation to just be themselves, and we welcome them as full participants just as they are, it changes their self-understanding in that space, and it changes their engagement. 

I will admit that this can be easier said than done. It’s not always our first instinct. I still catch myself wanting to ask my own children to sit up or sit still or quiet down. I grew up in a congregation where we were absolutely expected to sit still and follow along with the liturgy, and those expectations are hard to shake. It’s nothing against my parents or the congregation where I was raised; that was simply the norm when I was a kid. 

But it’s still the norm and expectation in a lot of worshipping communities today, even though we know so much more about kids and their social and emotional development. 

There’s a loss of control when any community chooses to make space for kids to be themselves, and to bring their whole selves to the table with the understanding that they really belong. It’s never smooth sailing. It’s a balancing act, like my daughter on that gymnastics bar.  

But it’s always worth the effort. So the next time you see a kid acting their age in worship, check your first instinct, like I still have to. Then delight in the fact that they feel comfortable enough in your community to be themselves. What a gift, if only we make the space.