They'll sit with you. There's no children's church, no second service down the hall, and nobody who will collect your kids and take them somewhere while the adults worship. Your children stay in the room with the rest of us, and here at Christians in Honesdale that's very much on purpose.
So Where Do the Kids Sit?
In the row, next to their parents. Bible study is a separate hour from worship, and at plenty of congregations it meets before the assembly on Sunday. Ours meets right after, at 11am, with another study online on Tuesday evening. The worship hour itself is the whole congregation together, babies included.
The practice has a long history behind it. When God's law was read aloud to Israel, the little ones were standing there for it: "There was not a word of all that Moses commanded that Joshua did not read before all the assembly of Israel, and the women, and the little ones, and the sojourners who lived among them" (Joshua 8:35).
A note on the Hebrew: "little ones" translates taph (טַף) — a word the Old Testament reaches for when it means children too young to travel or fend for themselves, the ones who have to be carried or led by the hand rather than march on their own. When Joshua gathered "all the assembly" to hear the Law read, that word was doing real work: it meant the toddlers and nursing infants were standing there too, not left back in a tent because they wouldn't understand it anyway.
The Hour Through a Child's Eyes
Singing comes first, and it's the part children take to fastest. No band, no choir, just everybody in the room singing together, so a child hears real voices on either side of him and picks up the melody in a hurry. Paul named it: "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God" (Colossians 3:16). Children often know the songs well before they can read the words.
A note on the Greek: grammatically, the singing in that verse is the teaching, not something alongside it — Paul isn't listing two separate activities. The congregation instructs itself by the act of singing together, in every kind of song it has (psalmois, hymnois, ōdais pneumatikais — the three words pile up for emphasis rather than marking off strict categories). A child absorbing the tune before he can read a word of it isn't a pleasant side effect of the hour. It's the verse doing exactly what it says.
Then prayer, heads bowed. Then the Lord's Supper, taken here on the first day of every week. The trays travel down the row, and a child who hasn't been baptized simply passes them along. Nobody watches, and nobody asks about it afterward.
Then the sermon, generally 25 to 35 minutes, from a text the preacher will tell you where to find.
The Stretch That Tests Them
That sermon is going to sail over a young child's head for a few years. The final stretch is the one that tests a child, and the families here know it. Bring a quiet book. Paper and a pencil works too, or something soft for a toddler to hold. A small child will not track an argument from Romans, and nobody here is measuring how still your kids sit.
A crying baby isn't an emergency either. If you need to step out, step out, and come back when you are ready. Every parent in this room has made that walk.
Why We Don't Send Them Off Somewhere
Because teaching a child about God belongs to his parents first, and a class can support that work without ever replacing it. That charge is older than the New Testament — it's the assignment God gave Israel long before there was a synagogue, let alone a nursery: "You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise" (Deuteronomy 6:6-7).
A note on the Hebrew: "teach diligently" translates one verb, from a root (shanan) that literally means to sharpen or whet, the way a blade is honed against a stone. Moses isn't picturing a classroom lecture. He's picturing repetition with an edge to it — words gone over so often, in so many ordinary moments of an ordinary day, that they cut deep enough to last. An hour on Sunday morning is one more of those ordinary moments, not a stand-in for the rest of them.
Paul spoke straight to fathers with the same charge: "Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord" (Ephesians 6:4).
A note on the Greek: "discipline and instruction" translates two words Paul often pairs — paideia, the shaping that comes through correction and formation over time, and nouthesia, the spoken word placed directly in front of someone's mind. One is what a father does; the other is what he says. And "provoke... to anger" (parorgizete) is a warning against an ongoing pattern, not a single bad moment — a home where a child is corrected but never taught, or talked at but never actually raised. A father who sings, prays, and sits still through a sermon beside his son is living out both halves of that verse at once.
A child who watches his mother sing and his father bow his head is picking up something no lesson can hand him.
There's this, too. Children can know Scripture early, and it does its work on them: "and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus" (2 Timothy 3:15).
A note on the Greek: "from childhood" softens a stronger phrase — apo brephous, "from infancy." Brephos is the same word Luke uses for John the Baptist leaping in his mother's womb (Luke 1:41) and for the newborn Jesus lying in the manger (Luke 2:12). Paul isn't telling Timothy his religious education started in grade school; he's saying it started before Timothy could talk. Whatever a two-year-old takes in during an hour he doesn't fully understand yet, Timothy is proof it isn't wasted.
We'd rather your kids sit through something a little above them than be entertained in another room while the congregation worships. As for baptism, that waits on the child. He has to be old enough to grasp what it is and ask for it on his own (Acts 2:38; Acts 8:36-38). Nobody here will push him toward it.
Ask Us About Your Child's Age
We're a small, independent congregation, so the honest thing is to ask us directly what's meeting for a child that age on the Sunday you're planning to come. Call or send a message, and we'll tell you straight. Parents ask us this all the time, and we'd much rather answer it in advance than leave you guessing in the parking lot.
One More Thing Worth Knowing
Bringing children on a first visit is a normal thing to ask about, and asking costs you nothing. Worth knowing while you decide: we're an independent congregation with no denomination or headquarters behind us, so arrangements for children genuinely differ from one church to the next and we can only tell you about ours. Ask whoever you're visiting. Take your time.
Bring the Whole Family
Come as you are, kids and questions and all. If you'd rather start with a Bible open across a table, we're glad to do that too, at whatever pace suits you. Set up a free Bible study whenever you're ready, read a little about who we are, or drop us a line first so we know to watch for you.
Our schedule:
We're in Suite D at 416 Main Street, Honesdale, PA 18431. Park behind the building. The rear door is the one to use.