Written by R. Scott Clark |
Wednesday, April 20, 2022
It is likely some pastors and elders, however few, erred and even sinned in their response to Covid and to the congregation. Where that happened they must confess those mistakes and sins and ask for forgiveness from their congregations. That act might be the most powerful sermon they preach to their congregations all year.

A few days ago I made an appeal to those who left their congregations over disagreements with church leadership about how the visible church responded to Covid. I asked for understanding and forgiveness. I also argued that, in most cases, those who left did so for the wrong reason: they were asking the visible church to be and do something that the visible church is neither called nor equipped to do. At least some of the comments published under that essay support that analysis. To the degree that is true, what happened was a case of conflicting expectations. The church leadership expected the church to manifest the marks of the true church: preach the gospel purely, administer the sacraments purely, and administer church discipline (Belgic Confession, art. 29) and some of those who left wanted the church to be an institutional advocate for civil liberties, to become, in effect, something like the American Center for Law and Justice, FIRE, or the Pacific Justice Institute. These are all fine organizations and they do good work in helping citizens secure their civil liberties. I have advocated for civil liberties consistently in this space but the visible church is not a civil liberties advocacy group. It is the embassy of King Jesus to the world. The message he has entrusted to her is the moral law and the good news of free salvation in Christ.
Further, during Covid, I was critical of some congregations not for practicing civil disobedience (I defended their right to follow their conscience and to obey God rather than man according to Acts 5:29), but for aligning the visible church with a political candidate and turning a worship service into a political rally and using it to score points in the culture war. Again, none of these things is in the church’s brief. One simply cannot find any evidence in the New Testament of that sort of response to civil authorities.
One response I have received, however, is cogent: What about the role of the visible church in the rupture of the relationship between members and the church? What I saw was pastors and elders trying to serve their congregations as best they could in a situation for which few of them were prepared. They did so in a time when the nation had become deeply fractured along cultural and political lines. Almost immediately, how one responded to Covid came to symbolize, regardless of whether one intended to send a cultural-political signal, a cultural-political stance. Again, see the comments on the original post. The discussion moved almost immediately to the question of who was right or wrong about “the science.” In other words, the discussion moved from grace (e.g., how to forgive one another) to nature (i.e., who was wrong about Covid).
Nevertheless, some critics have expressed a valid concern. What if the leadership of the visible church erred or sinned? We may not say a priori that it could not happen. Popes and councils do err. Every consistory and session (ministers and elders) is composed of sinners, and sinners sin. They violate the moral law of God. They fail to love God perfectly and they fail to love their neighbors as themselves.
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Keeping our children in church every Sunday is HARD. It is hard being the only adult able to correct and train on a weekly basis. It is hard to constantly be leaving service to discipline a toddler and continually coming back in. It is hard, but it is so worth it. There is no better use of my time than to teach our children the importance of corporate worship together.

We had the privilege of worshipping with some friends last Sunday. Jacob team preaches with another faithful pastor, meaning from time to time we as a family get to travel and be visitors with other churches we otherwise wouldn’t ever get to see. It is always such a privilege and a treat when we get to worship together as a whole family in the pew. Since becoming a Pastor’s wife, I will never again take for granted the entire family sitting together during worship. But this post isn’t about that. This post is about giving thanks for what I observed in our children during this service. Our children have been sitting through church services for their whole life. They are used to sitting through a worship service. Services are often interactive, including singing together, responsive readings, prayer and a sermon. Whenever we attend another church, we have the same, if not higher, expectations than on a regular Sunday. This past Sunday we asked a lot of our kids ages 2, 5, 8 and 11.  They have amazed us in the past in their ability to be flexible to various orders of service and to learn from God’s Word from a multitude of different preachers.
Last Sunday was one of those days.  We asked them to wake extra early so we could drive a little over an hour to a friend’s church. We then asked them to sit quietly during the entire service, which was different from what they were used to. A wonderful service, but different. We then asked them to eat quietly at a table and play calmly while we had lunch at the church with some friends. Unfortunately, due to the weather we were unable to play outside, which was the original hope. We asked a lot of our children and they exceeded our expectations in a new environment. 
Children Can’t Sit Long
Thinking back on the worship service, I had several reasons to give thanks. Our normal Sunday service runs about 1 hour and 10 minutes. There are ample times when the children are active, responsive, up and down participating through singing and reading. We allow them to bring a notebook and pen, or a small toy for the younger ones, to use during the sermon to help keep their hands occupied and ears open. This week, I forgot to grab our church notebooks. A Big mistake! Or so I thought until we arrived at church. Again, our children surprised me! They were perfectly fine listening to the sermon without their notebooks. Not only did they sit quietly (well, all but the toddler) but they sat through a service that was 1.5 hours. An extra 20 minutes longer than they are used to. They were friendly and interactive with those who sat around us. And despite not knowing many of the songs included in the service, they began to sing along on the 2nd or 3rd verse as best they could.
So why am I telling you this? It is not to brag about our kids, or to brag about our parenting. It is to brag about God. To brag about the goodness of His Word. To brag about the all captivating Word that he speaks to all ages. I often hear parents, grandparents and well meaning friends say that children can not sit through the worship service. I hear that children are too young to sit still for that long. That they are not able to understand the sermon. The word of God written in Scripture is above their heads. We hear that children must have the story retold in an easier way. How foolish can we be to insinuate that the Word of God is too hard for our children? That we, sinful creatures can take the word of God and minimize it for our children. That we know better than God. It’s insulting to God and proves our selfish, sinful, conceited attitudes. 
Many children in our western culture have been told they can’t sit in worship. They have been led to believe that the Bible is too difficult for them to understand. That there are only certain stories worth learning about. Why these stories? Because some believe kids can only learn the “fun stories of scripture.” Children are taught about Jericho falling down, but are they taught about Joshua, Rahab, or Moses? Are they taught why the walls of Jericho needed to fall down? Are they taught of the victory of God in fulfilling His great promises to His people? Are they taught how destructive and devastating sin is? Are they exposed to the ultimate reality of God’s wrath against His enemies? Are they told of the grace of God in Christ? Are they taught about the significance of the return of
What Are Children Being Taught in “Kids Church”
For us at Redeeming Family, we desire (as do many who serve the church by volunteering with children’s ministry programs) to see the lambs brought to the great shepherd Jesus. Often the confusion we experience surrounding children’s ministry isn’t about motive, it is about method.
From our observations through years of participating and volunteering in a variety of capacities in multiple churches, the content of “kids church” is often lacking at best, and counterproductive at worst. Children might be taught that Jesus was a good man (rather than the God-Man) who died for them to save them from their sins. But are they taught the consequences of their sin?
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Titus is to “teach what accords with sound doctrine,” since the same grace of God, which offers salvation to all, also teaches us to “renounce ungodliness and worldly passions” (Titus 2:1, 11–12). If we miss that connection between truth and godliness, we have missed the main point of this letter.

Titus is one of the Pastoral Epistles, which is an eighteenth-century term for the books of 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus because they are letters from the Apostle Paul to his fellow pastors. Here are three important things to keep in mind as you read this letter.
1. Titus is about the truth that leads to godliness.
At the beginning of his letter to Titus, Paul says that he is “an apostle of Jesus Christ, for the sake of the faith of God’s elect and their knowledge of the truth, which accords with godliness” (Titus 1:1). The stress on truth and godliness continues throughout the letter: these things must always go together.
When it comes to describing the sort of people Titus is to appoint as elders in the churches on Crete, Paul is very clear that they must be “above reproach” and that they must “hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught” (Titus 1:6–9). Conversely, the false teachers that Titus has to wrestle with “profess to know God, but they deny him by their works”—which shows they are wrong in both lip and life, in their teaching as well as their behavior (Titus 1:16).
To counter this, Titus is to “teach what accords with sound doctrine,” since the same grace of God, which offers salvation to all, also teaches us to “renounce ungodliness and worldly passions” (Titus 2:1, 11–12). If we miss that connection between truth and godliness, we have missed the main point of this letter.
2. Paul calls Jesus “God.”
In chapter 2, Paul says that Christians are “to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:12–13). What we might easily miss is the reference here to Jesus as “our great God.”
We know that Jesus is God, of course, from elsewhere in the Bible. His words and actions, His fulfillment of prophecy, and the way the New Testament speaks about Him prove that this is so.
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