Dear friend,
I am behind on a host of letters, but this one caught my attention since it’s an issue pastors deal with and that little has been said about this topic. You know who you are, so if I don’t capture the essence of your question, please feel free to correct me privately.
As I understand it, your question can be easily summarized as, “Should I ever listen to my young son/daughter about where to go to church?” In sum, your teenage child wants to go to another church because it offers certain benefits for him.
Let me tackle this in two ways:
First, assuming your child is in his early teens, it’s important to know carefully what his/her intentions are; why are these “benefits” so significant for him? For instance, if your child had someone mistreat, harm, abuse him in any way, I urge you to listen carefully to his concerns. There may be deeper issues involved where other people need to be involved. Perhaps the issue is not so much the church, but concern for his well-being. Therefore, I wouldn’t outright refuse to listen to the desire to attend another church. I would ask questions regarding motivation and dig as deep as possible, especially if the child expressed a normal attitude towards the congregation just some weeks prior. If you are part of a large church with lots of programs, I’d accompany your child to these programs to have a better understanding of his situation. Better yet, I would re-consider the overly programmatic church. But that’s a question for another letter.
Second, we trust our children on lots of things, especially if our hearts have been given to them often in their upbringing. But we do not trust children to make ecclesiastical decisions for us. Parents lead the home. Dad and mom decide things pertaining to theology and doctrine and practice and potlucks.
I will be honest: I have yet to see parents pleased when they allow their children to make ecclesiastical decisions for them. Don’t give them that responsibility. If they have 30 friends in the church next door and only two in your current church, then you need to re-orient his view of friendship to those two. Friendships, at that age, are utterly unstable. It may be that the hard thing is the better thing for your family. It may be that you stay in a more faithful church where your children are not quite fitting in, instead of going to some “happening-hip” congregation where your children fit in quite nicely.
Young teenagers don’t need to fit in at this stage, they need to stay in, so they can mature in, and grow into something greater than themselves. Do not allow young teenagers to determine from whence Christian nurture comes.
Sincerely,
Pastor Brito
