Everyone

Modern church can work like a school: nursery, kids' church, youth group, college ministry, young adults, seniors — everybody in a room with people their own age, and the generations rarely meeting. Age-specific teaching has its place. But the church is the whole body, not sections of it, and that's where we start.

In Scripture the whole assembly gathers — "men, women, and children" (Deuteronomy 31:12; Joshua 8:35; Nehemiah 8:2–3). Paul's letters were read aloud to whole churches, and he addresses children and slaves and fathers directly in them, which means they were in the room (Ephesians 6:1–9; Colossians 3:20). Psalm 145 assumes that the way faith survives is one generation declaring God's works to the next. You can't do that if the generations never meet.

Big Rapids is a college town wrapped in a rural county. Every fall, thousands of students arrive who are, many of them, away from any church for the first time in their lives. The usual answer is a college ministry: a room full of nineteen-year-olds led by a twenty-four-year-old. We think that's a loss for everybody.

A Ferris student needs to sit next to a retired farmer who has followed Jesus for fifty years. A young mom needs a grandmother in the pew behind her. A ten-year-old needs to hear the same sermon as his dad and ask about it on the drive home. TheWay is a church that a lot of students will be part of — not a student ministry with a church attached. That's the point.

It looks like the whole body gathered together. Kids are in the service with everyone else — singing, praying, hearing Scripture read — because the best thing we can do for a child is let them grow up inside the worship of God's people, surrounded by adults who know their name.

That doesn't mean children never get teaching prepared for them. As the church grows, we expect to offer a children's Sunday school during the preaching on most Sundays — Bible lessons and stories at their level — with a regular family Sunday when everyone stays together for the whole service. Kids gather with the church first, then go learn; they're never a separate church down the hall. Galatians 3:28 says we are all one in Christ Jesus, and we'd like the room to look like it.