If you have been part of a congregation where children are present during worship, you have probably heard someone comment about the “noise” of children. The truth is that children make sounds, and their capacity for quiet voices and movement is often lower than the capacity of most adults. However, no gathered body of people is truly silent.

A Small Experiment

The next time you are listening to a lesson or sermon at church, tune in to the full soundscape of your worshipping community. Grab a pencil or the notes app on your phone and jot down what you hear. Does the air conditioning or heat in the church turn on suddenly? Is anyone coughing? Can you hear anything from outside the building?

Reflect

As I have tuned in to the sounds of the gathered faithful during worship, I’ve begun to notice lots of potentially distracting sounds—from the oxygen tank of an elderly parishioner to cell phone ring tones and a preacher’s microphone cutting in and out. You can see my own list of sounds heard during the reading of the first lesson on May 4, 2025 in the picture attached to this article. And yet adults seem to respond to these auditory distractions differently. While I have heard people comment on “how distracting” it is when someone’s cell phone goes off in church, people seem to have a much more sustained and emotional response to the sounds children make during worship. I wonder why. I also wonder how leaders can gracefully walk the line that validates the real frustration of those who want to hear the content of worship while promoting the gift of being together as the body of Christ, a reality that involves the sounds of a gathered group.

Stories from the Roots & Wings Community

The above reflection on “The Sound Factor” of intergenerational worship first appeared in the May 2025 monthly newsletter for Roots & Wings: Intergenerational Formation Collaborative. Below are a few of the stories I received by email in response to that newsletter.

Even Some Adults Need to Move and Make Sound in Worship
“At one congregation where I was serving as the director of children and family ministries one Sunday, I was attending the more formal morning service where sometimes, but not always, children were taken out to a chapel service for part of the service. I did not have kids at the time, but I was sitting with a family with kids who were moving around a bit and making kid sounds. I can’t remember exactly at what point but probably during the readings, an older adult wandered into the church service, and we made room for this person in our pew. The person brought one of the church newsletters in with him and during the sermon was loudly turning pages and looking through the newsletter while often clearing their throat or coughing. I realized I was very distracted by this behavior and frustrated at the person’s lack of social awareness and the loud noises they were making while I was trying to pay attention to the sermon.

“I have since reflected on this often as this person’s behavior was much more distracting to me than any child noises I’ve heard in worship. I’m guessing the reason for that is that I recognize that children are going to move around and make noise and have less capacity than most adults to keep their voices lower or sit still during worship. But when it is an adult moving around a bunch and making noise, I feel they should know better. Now looking back, I wonder if there was something going on with that particular person that I didn’t know about, maybe, maybe not. Either way, I recognized the need in myself to be more understanding that even some adults need to move around and make noise during worship.”
By Suzanna Green

Tears of a Child Bring Us to a Fuller Embrace of Our Own Humanity
“Good Friday 2024, at Saint John’s Cathedral in Denver. The exceptional choir at the cathedral, made up of both paid professional and amateur parishioner singers, sang the most beautiful Good Friday mass I’ve ever heard. It brought worshipers directly into the story of Jesus’s passion as if we were walking alongside our Lord from supper to the garden to Caiphus to Pilate. We felt the lashes of the whip, the pierce of the crown of thorns, and we felt the devastation of witnessing the degradation and pain of our remarkable and beloved friend. And just as we stood at the very foot of the cross and heard him utter “It is finished,” a small child, well-known and beloved by this congregation, began to cry. And my first thought was, yes, dear one, it is time for tears and lament.

“After the service, I went to the mother to assure her that her sweet little one’s tears had in no way distracted or interfered with our worship, but had lifted it, connecting us with our own tears and lament, our own grief. We must walk the way of the cross before we can truly grasp the joy of resurrection; sometimes, the tears of a child bring us to a fuller embrace of our own humanity in all of its flawed beauty.”
By Christina (Tina) Clark

Featured image is by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay