For the most part, children were integrated into the gathered assembly of God’s people, regardless of the occasion. As an integral part of the community of faith, children are to be part of our worship. Furthermore, there is no text of Scripture that prescribes or describes age-segregated corporate worship. When the Bible speaks of corporate worship, a covenant renewal ceremony, or any other covenant community activity, there is not a single example of systematic age-segregation. To the contrary, Scripture demonstrates an unmistakable pattern of inter-generational worship, discipleship, and fellowship.

Parents and families play a God-ordained and indispensable role in their children’s spiritual nurturing. The ordinary pattern in Scripture is God working through covenant families to pass the apostolic faith on to the next generation.

At Faith Presbyterian we seek to equip families and provide support and reinforcement as parents evangelize and disciple their own children. We are passionate to help new believers, and others new to our congregation, in transitioning into this covenant family ministry model.

Since Scripture places such emphasis on parental responsibility to nurture their children spiritually—part of which is family worship in the home—our aim is to offer and emphasize the ordinary means of grace to all members in humble dependence on Jesus Christ for his blessing. Corporate worship is the weekly exercise of these ordinary means of grace—the primary means by which God’s people grow. Scripture teaches that God’s people are saved by grace (alone), through faith (alone), in Christ (alone). But the instruments, the tools of God’s grace to bring them to faith and grow them in grace, are the Word, prayer, and sacraments applied by the Holy Spirit. Therefore, we believe nothing else the church does in our ministry plan should detract from these central instruments of grace. Indeed everything else we do as a body of believers should promote and coalesce with them.

Moreover, the public worship of God by the church is a covenantal activity, a sacred gathering set apart from the rest of life, and governed by the Scriptures.

In public worship, covenant children are brought with believing parents as they are summoned by God to receive his good gifts and bring him praise and honor. God calls his people together in order to speak to them and feed them in Word and sacrament. His people respond to him in prayer, song and giving. Over time, the children of believers begin to see what is different about them: they are part of a covenant community upon whom God has laid claim. They are part of a worshiping people who are in the world, but not of the world. And nowhere is their other-worldliness more noticeable than the corporate worship service. Therefore, the spiritual impacts of growing up as a member of this worshiping covenant community are immeasurable. From their earliest years, covenant children are brought with their parents and other believers into the holy presence of God with his assembled people. They see their parents and others humbling themselves in submission and service to the Lord. They learn to sing the Psalms and hymns of saints who have gone before. They learn to confess their sins to God and rest in his pardon. They hear a message that they cannot receive anywhere else in the world. They recognize that this weekly event is unlike anything else they experience in the culture in which they live. But above all, they come under God’s ordained means of spiritual nourishment and the way in which faith is birthed and sustained.

Then as relationships are renewed within family life, in all probability we will begin to see relationally healthy families revitalizing churches that emphasize relationships which in turn impact our communities and our nation. Our church fully supports a return to a relational form of living, especially within the body of Christ.