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I just remembered a story that I think is related to the topic that I've been talking about lately, and I just wanted to share it with you. So this story comes from before we had planted the church that I was one of the elders at.
This was a number of years ago, and we were meeting as a group, and by the way, I'm not saying this is the best way to do this, so don't hear me saying that, but we were, the two elders, me, the other guy, and a few other of the families, like the core families that were planting this church, we met together to get details together on how we were going to do things, what the Sunday service was going to look like, what time it was, stuff like that.
Obviously, a lot of the details of the specifics were the elders only, but we were meeting and we were talking about the logistics of everything, and this seemed like obvious spiritual warfare to me at the time, because this thing almost derailed the entire launch of the church plant, and to me, it seemed like a small thing, and I couldn't understand why this was happening.
But basically, the other elder, his wife, was very upset, because we weren't going to have a nursery, because it was a very small group of people, and some of the families had young kids, but we just didn't have enough people to justify setting apart a nursery and having a nursery schedule.
That just seemed like way too much, and anyway, I believed that you should have your children in worship with you and things like that, and so we could have a room set aside if your kids are being loud and you want to take them to calm them down or something like that.
We could do that, but we're not going to have a staffed nursery. It just seemed like too much, considering the size that we were at. And I'll never forget the way this woman argued, because it struck me as just, tone deaf is not really the right word, but just her priorities were so jacked up to me, right?
And this was the kind of girl that she would always go to every Bible study, and she would always be at the church and stuff, and again, there's nothing wrong with any of these things, I'm not against Bible studies or whatever, but she was one of these people that went to every event, and so what she said was that she couldn't get anything out of the service if she had her child there with her, because he was kind of a finicky child, and he needed a lot of attention and stuff like that, and so she was like, if we don't have a nursery, I'm never going to get anything out of the worship service.
And to me, I was like, I couldn't even believe it. I was like, talk about priorities being messed up. Look, of course we want to hear the sermon, we want to be able to think about it and hear about it, and when I was a young man, my undivided attention would be on the pastor, and I'd be taking copious notes and stuff like that on the sermon, and all these kinds of things, but when you're a new mother, and you're nursing, or whatever it is, or maybe you just have a child that's a little bit more difficult, that's what God has for you, and God has commanded that you take care of and raise up that child, and so if that's going to require a little bit more attention, and maybe your service is going to get interrupted, maybe you can't pay as much attention to the pastor as you normally would have when you were a single woman or whatever, that's just part of the deal.
I never quite understood that mentality, where it's like, no, no, no, I have to do this the way I've always done it, even though now I have a child, or now I have two children, or whatever, they're going to interrupt it, I need to have a nursery, and it just seemed to me to be emphasizing not the right things, like yes, you should be at church, and it's good that you're there, and you're going to hear the Word of God preached, and you're going to be with your brethren, and you need to recall something that maybe you had to take out your kid to nurse them or whatever, you can ask your husband, because he's there, in fact a lot of times he's the one preaching, and stuff like that, it's just like, I couldn't fathom how your priorities could be so mixed up.
Yes, of course you should want to hear the sermon, you should want to sing with your brethren, all of these things are so good, but in the moment when your kid is freaking out, and you need to calm them down and stuff like that, that takes precedent, you've got to do that, and it's not like if I can't focus, I can't get anything out of worship if I'm taking care of my kid, that just seems so weird, it's like, no, maybe you're getting exactly what you need to get out of worship, this is not about you, this is about God.
So God has given you this child to take care of, and if they're freaking out, and they're fussy or whatever, they're having a tough day, that's what you need to be doing right now, this is about God, this is not about you getting all the information you need to get, I just couldn't fathom that.
I think that's a related story, I really do.