Children and Membership Pt 1

And welcome back to the Bluecast. I'm your host, Tim Dukeman, here with Pastor Dave, our producer Martin, and Timothy Deaton. And today we're going to talk about what children's membership looks like. And we've got a two-part episode, so part one's going to be about how other churches do it, and maybe some of the reasons that we don't do it that way. And then the second part will be about how... Our church does it and the reasons behind that. And so, to kick us off, Pastor Dave, what's one of the big themes of how other churches approach membership for children? And how would you summarize that? I wanted to talk about dragons first. Oh, okay.

Maybe why we're doing these episodes at all. Okay. So, tell us about dragons. Yeah, yeah. Let's talk about it. What's it called? The Legend of Obadiah? Yeah, The Legend of Obadiah. Okay. So, here's a little picture into children's membership at Clear Note Church in Indianapolis. We've been doing children's membership interviews recently, the elders. And a handful of little girls in our church, little being like eight. to 12 maybe, got together and they were talking to my daughter who was going to be interviewed and they told her about Obadiah. You might be wondering who Obadiah is. Well, this is not the Obadiah from the scripture. This is her long lost oldest brother who was interviewed by the elders and did not pass. And at that point when...

The reason, just my children are the ones that shared this story. He didn't just not pass, or she answered every single question incorrectly because of her desire to see the ghost of Obadiah, I guess. So, she had to answer all the questions wrong. So, they're telling my daughter, if she wanted to see the ghost of Obadiah, who happens to be her long-lost older brother who failed his membership interview, she would have to answer all the questions incorrectly because… That's what Obadiah did. He failed. And as a result, the elders turned into dragons. They turned into dragons? Turned into dragons. And breathed fire at Obadiah and killed him. And so this is a story that little girls who read too many princess books, too much George MacDonald, come up with.

So my daughter was quick to assure us. Actually, I didn't know about the story until after her interview because she actually told the story during the interview to the elders. But she was quick to reassure them that she knew that it was not a true story and that they had all drawn pictures of it. I have yet to see these pictures. And so this is a legend of Obadiah. This sounds like an episode of art. So yeah, children's membership in Dragons and how to avoid being eaten by them. That's what we're going to be talking about over the next couple of episodes. But really, how does children's membership in church work? Well, there's a couple of different ways that it can work. Some of them I'm more aware of than others or have more experience with. So I'm going to rely on some of these other guys to sort of explain how it works in other churches.

The thing I want to start with is sort of this idea of membership. What is the relationship between membership, the sacraments, and being saved or a profession of faith? I think a lot of churches, in varying degrees and different ways, separate all of those things. They would separate the Lord's Supper from a profession of faith. Or they would separate baptism from church membership. And they would say, you can be saved when you pray the sinner's prayer. And you can have the Lord's Supper without being baptized. But you get baptized when you profess your faith, which may have happened here, there, before, after any of these other things have taken place. So you end up with kind of a mess of understanding and practice with regard to these things.

So I want to start by talking about or actually asking you guys to talk about the age of accountability or this idea that there comes a point where kids need to profess their faith or expected to because they've basically the training wheels of salvation have come off and now they're liable for their for their actions before God. Yeah. So to put. I would say like a more generous construction on age of accountability. They're trying to grapple with the fact that there typically has, like for us in our understanding of sin, there has to be some sort of cognitive element that there is in the same way that like faith requires a certain amount of cognition. Sin would also require a certain amount of cognition because before that there's maybe just a desire, but.

There may not be an actual sin. And so basically the argument would be that there comes a point at which a child becomes capable of sin. And so especially – like there's different versions of age accountability. You could also say that – like another version might be saying that if you have a child who doesn't yet possess the cognitive capacity for understanding sin and salvation and redemption, that they're not – necessarily um required to actually have faith in christ yet because they lack the ability to understand what's going on um and then the um like those are kind of the two i would say that the bigger models where like one's putting a gate on when it whether it's possible to sin and then putting the gate on whether it's possible to be saved and basically that god looks upon children differently until they reach that age. And that age can be different for each kid, but where there's a level of understanding, and so God's interaction with that kid is based on their understanding. Sure. The interaction is whether they will go to heaven or hell. Right. And the idea is that children are born saved, and they lose that.

Or they're covered by the – I can even tell you a story from my own background where I wasn't raised in a background that like nobody practiced infant baptism. I'm Baptist, not Presbyterian myself on that aspect. I don't baptize my babies. But a particular pastor was telling me about a time that he baptized an infant. It was because there was a young couple that they weren't Christians. Even professing Christians, they weren't attending the church in any way, but they had had a stillbirth. And they approached him and asked that their baby be baptized, and he did it. And he explained to them the gospel as he did this, that their baby had gone to heaven, and if they accepted Christ, they could go to heaven as well. But it just turned everything on its head because he wouldn't ordinarily baptize an infant, and yet he baptized the baby of unbelievers.

which we wouldn't do at our church, even though our church does practice infant baptism, but we wouldn't baptize. And that's just part of that mentality. The mindset is all children are saved. All children, we can speak with certainty, are saved until such time as they're not born sinners. They're actually born. And that's, there's some confusion there around original sin, just some different ideas. And that's just an illustration of some of the confusion that exists outside. Yeah, there's a lot of confusion about, How salvation and baptism and professions of faith and the sacraments all fit together. We'll get to our position on it particularly, but at this point, I think it's probably just worth saying we think all of those things are connected and in a particular way that the sacraments are dependent upon, at least the Lord's Supper, if you're Paedo-Baptist.

that are dependent upon a profession of faith and that church membership is tied to whether you've been baptized and whether you've been admitted to the Lord's table. So when we start treating these things as a la carte, where they happen independently of one another, we can kind of get into a mess. I don't, when you guys are talking about age of accountability, the sort of the theological, outworking of it, I'm like, there's so much to talk about that. I don't know that that's, I know that that's not what we're here to talk about today, so we're not going to spend a bunch of time on that. But the idea of bringing it up was to say that there's really a wide breadth of understanding and practice in American churches about how to sort out what children's membership is. I think there's a lot of churches that just don't have a concept of membership.

You get baptized if you want to, you profess your faith when you want to, and you take communion when you want to. But the idea of any sort of formal membership is just not really a concept. It's sort of a whenever, wherever, however you want to do these things. When we have people transfer in, transfer their membership from another church, or we ask them, are you a member of another church? Do you want to transfer your membership in? Most of the time, unless they're coming from some sort of a Presbyterian or sort of Reformed Baptist-y type church, the concept of formal membership is just, it doesn't exist. They're like, well, we went to this church for 10 years. I'm like, well, were you members of it? And they're like, well, I suppose, yeah. But in terms of there being a transfer of authority from one church to another over the care of that soul. They've just never been taught that. And so, then when it comes to kids, it gets more complex because there's even less instruction about what to do and how these things all fit together. And so, it becomes if you want to do it, you can do it. That's one end of the spectrum. Yeah, and I think what you're getting at is that the reason that many churches are loosey-goosey about membership and the reason many churches

are loosey-goosey about the sacraments is the same reason, which is that instead of viewing church membership and the administration of the sacraments as ways to regulate and exercise the authority of a church upon a congregant, these churches simply don't have any doctrine of church authority, and so there's no need to have like a plan for church membership or rules surrounding the sacraments because there's no authority being exercised there in their view at all. It's just like a buffet. And if you want to come get some, come get it. Yeah, and get the part you want and leave the part you don't. Right. So that's one end of the spectrum where it's, you know, to use Tim's term, loosey-goosey. It's just not structured. It's not thought out. It's not ordered.

There's another end of the spectrum which says we're going to tie all of these things together. And there actually is, it is possible to fall into error on that end of the spectrum where you put profession of faith, the Lord's Supper, full membership, baptism all together at one place. And some of that is, that may be more familiar with people in Reformed circles who have been in Reformed circles for a while. The thing I'm talking about is paedo-communion, where you have a profession of faith, but it's the parent's profession of faith, which is typical Presbyterian understanding of baptism, is that the children of believers are to be baptized based upon the profession of the parent's faith. Because in the Old Testament, it was the...

The children of Israelites were circumcised. They were given the sign of the covenant. That's what baptism is. And so they say in the New Testament that same should be true, that the child doesn't make a profession of faith, but that the parents, having made profession of faith, have their children baptized, marked with the sign of the covenant. And that at that point, they become members of the church because they're members of the covenant. They bear the sign of the covenant. That's all typical. Presbyterian understanding of profession of faith, baptism, and membership in the church. A typical Presbyterian would say that child, though a member of the church, is a non-communicant member of the church. And what that means is they are not permitted or allowed to take the Lord's Supper yet. They're baptized. They're a member of the covenant of the community of the church. But there is still something that yet needs to happen, which is that they will need to profess their faith, that the child in due course will profess their faith. The Pate of Communion says no to that. The child doesn't need to profess their faith to be admitted to the Lord's Supper, but they gain access to both baptism and the Lord's Supper based on their full membership in the community, in the church. They receive the full benefits of

of being in the church. I believe that that is an error. There are a lot of ways in which it, I think it confuses the gospel and disregards Paul's particular warnings in 1 Corinthians 11 about what's required to come to the Lord's table. So, let me play devil's advocate for a second, because I think the thing that someone who wants to practice little babies, what they would say is that, well, do we believe these children are in the covenant or not? And if we do, then why would we withhold the sign and seal of the covenant from them? Well, I don't know that they – they wouldn't withhold the sign and the seal. They wouldn't withhold baptism from them. What they're asking is why we would hold the Lord's Supper from them. Right. Well, I think they would argue that that's also a sign and seal of the covenant.

It's worth noting right now that everyone sitting at the table is cradle Baptist, not only talking about pedo baptism, but cradle, but a pedo communion as well. And I think that the idea of like, well, why would we withhold one if we're not withholding the other? That's your, your question. Yeah, that's, that would be the rejoinder, I think. Well, I think that the, so I think that pedo communion, I think the thing that, that takes pedo communion down theologically is the warnings that Paul gives. in 1 Corinthians 11, pertaining to participation in the Lord's Supper. That there are things that are required of the participants that young children are incapable, whether they have faith or not. And that's an important point. Whether they have faith or not, they are incapable of doing those things. They're not able to remember the Lord's death or to proclaim it because they don't understand it.

they are not able to examine themselves. In 1 Corinthians, it says that we are to examine ourselves, and in so doing, we are to partake of the body and the blood. That that is a positive requirement of participation in the Lord's Supper is that you be able to examine yourself. And until such time as one is able to examine themselves, they ought not to partake of the Lord's Supper. And that doesn't only prevent young children, that would also have a potential application with people who have diminished capacity, which is one of the, it's, it's one of the things that gets brought up. So you don't think that people with this, you know, with, with down syndrome or some other disease, some other genetic abnormality who are not able to articulate or examine themselves, do you think they shouldn't take the Lord's supper? And my response has always been, do you like, for one, that's, that's, those are extraordinary circumstances.

And we shouldn't be basing our approach to the thing as a whole on extraordinary circumstances. We should process them as extraordinary circumstances. My question back is, do you believe that that person's salvation is in any way compromised because they are not able to take the Lord's Supper if they're a Christian? And if they say, well, I think it is, then we start having a conversation about sacramentalism. But my response is there is a lack. It is a means of grace that they are not able to participate in. But there is also a warning of eating and drinking unworthily and their inability to express their faith doesn't remove the warning from them, whether that we're talking about children or diminished capacity. That warning exists. It stands.

Those who partake need to heed that warning, need to hear that warning. And the argument that I've heard men in favor of paedo-communion make is they don't want to talk about 1 Corinthians 11, they want to talk about 1 Corinthians 10. And they want to say, well, you know, when there was one bread and there was one drink and all, all, everyone ate. and drank, talking about the Israelites and their travel through the wilderness, and that all were baptized in Moses, that everyone traveled through the Red Sea as a type or a shadow of baptism, that everyone participated. And so now what you're doing is you're introducing in the New Testament sacrament of the Lord's Supper, you're undoing this it's for everybody thing.

And you say, okay, but what about the children who are not capable of this self-examination? They'd say, well, it's not applicable to them until such time as they're capable of doing it. In some ways, it bears some resemblance to an age of accountability. It's like, well, we're going to take into account the capacity of a child in their admittance to the Lord's Supper. If they can't do it, then... I don't worry about it. Same thing that, you know, it's not consequential to them. And I don't see in Scripture, I think that's bad exegesis. I think it's a misreading of the text. Right, because what you're talking about is that 1 Corinthians 10 where it says they all ate the same spiritual food, that's talking about all without distinction, not all without exception. That all the people who were actually part of the people of God ate the same spiritual food. It's all of the elect, all of God's chosen, not literally every person on the planet. In the same way that we can say that, like, Jesus died for all but didn't save all, right? It's the same kind of distinction being made here. Like, that's how they're misreading this passage. They're trying to make it almost universal. I don't think you're right.

I don't think that's what they're doing. I think they're failing to recognize the difference between those who were externally members of the covenant and those who were internally members of the covenant. Meaning, Paul says, not all Israel is Israel. That all have circumcised foreskins, but not all have circumcised hearts. This idea that, yes, they all bore the external sign, but not all of them went to heaven. even in 1 Corinthians, where he says that they were given to us as an example so that we would not become like them because with many of them, God was not well pleased. And the most basic understanding of that passage, that phrase, with many of whom God was not well pleased, is that they didn't go to heaven. That they were a part of the nation externally. They were circumcised. They ate the manna.

They traveled with them. They went into the promised land. But when it came down to it, their hearts were not circumcised. And as a result, they were not members of God's family in heaven. So, the visible versus invisible church. Well, in the sense that the visible church has both elect and damned people in it. Yeah. And so, I think that there's a very – when you come to paedo-communion, I think that there's a very – covenantal and federal or corporate way of looking at it. I'm not here to say looking at things covenantally or with federal headship is the wrong way to look at things, but there are places where it does come down to individuals need to do things. We need to be able to hold both and live in the tension that that presents.

I'm baptized. Okay, good. That does not guarantee that you're a Christian. Judas walked with Jesus for three years. He wasn't saved and then lost his salvation. He was wicked. And he was wicked when Jesus chose him. And he remained wicked, though he walked with him. He was a thief. He did all kinds of other things that Jesus knew about and nobody else knew about. He was not, in the end, what he seemed like he was during that time. And I think we have to be willing to hold that tension and not work to dispel it at the cost of denying what the Scripture teaches. Pete And are you saying the danger that's present in paedo-communion?

Scripture teaches us about in 1 Corinthians 11. But those who say, no, that's not really what it's talking about, what ends up happening is people don't take those warnings ever for themselves. It's like, oh, well, I'm okay. Because I took communion when I was a little tiny baby, therefore I was a Christian. Therefore, I'm still a Christian today. Yeah, there's a different sense with – in paedo-communion, when it comes to They would not believe in people losing their salvation. They would talk in terms of people being covenant breakers. They would think in terms of you're in until you demonstrate that you're out. Okay. They blur the lines of the visible and invisible church. Like, they're one and the same. Yeah, they're collapsing the distinction. The visible and invisible church are the same thing. And as far as, I think what they say, to be fair, I think they would say, as far as we know and are concerned.

that we're going to operate, we live in a physical world, we've been given physical signs, we are going to operate according to the terms of the covenant, and we're going to trust that God will sort out the mysteries, the hidden things. I don't think they would say, and we know for sure that this is exactly the case. I think that's a straw man. I think they would say, there's just things we don't know, and we're going to operate based on the clear what's clear about the covenant. I was speaking more in terms of how it functionally works itself out in the lives of young people, not necessarily that that's their intention for it to work itself out in that way. I was just saying that's one of the dangers. Yeah, and I've asked the question of proponents of paedo-community, at what point do you then expect them to examine themselves? Like, when do you teach them that this now is a requirement for you?

Now, I'm one person. I've never gotten a satisfactory answer to that. I've never said, okay, well, this is what we do at this time. It's just left as we need to focus on being, doing, like, we are, the question of are we members of the covenant? Like, do we have circumcised hearts? It's just not a focus. It's not a question. And that they spend much time thinking about. I don't think. I think they say. We've done all that we know to do. We've baptized. We partake of the Lord's Supper. We gather to worship. We sing. We pray. We read the Bible. We sit under preaching. We seek to live our lives in obedience to the law of God. And we don't think anymore about that. Unless someone demonstrates that that's not what they've got going on. Then we deal with that. And we say, you've broken covenant with God.

I think that paedo-communion, as I said, I think paedo-communion makes sense if you didn't have to deal with 1 Corinthians 11. And I think that there's an exegetical error in saying we're going to take passages that are not about the Lord's Supper particularly, but that were types and shadows and pictures of the sacraments in the Old Testament. I think we should prioritize what Paul says about the Lord's Supper directly. The commands and the requirements and the warnings that attend that passage of Scripture have more weight and authority than the types and shadows and pictures of what came before. I'm not saying those things aren't true or that the picture is bad. I'm just saying I don't think we should discount a specific requirement of Scripture based on a more general story. So, to kind of build off that, I think one of the arguments they might make from the text would be that the Lord's Supper is the fulfillment of the Passover feast. And that the Passover feast wasn't gated.

There was no membership interview before a kid was allowed to eat the Passover feast. And so, since there's a continuous covenant of grace going through the whole scriptures, therefore, we should give communion to children now without this membership interview. Yeah, I think the idea of removing hurdles to people coming, growing up into Christ is important to them. It's important to a paid communionist to say, we don't want to remove those hurdles. We don't want to say, hey, you're a Christian. Hey, you're a part of a Christian family. Hey, you're all this, but you can't have this. They would see that as being contradictory or contrary. They want the thing, like I said, they want it to be just working its way through the gears as the kids get older. And what I think about paid communion and as it relates to church membership is that on paper, if you could get rid of 1 Corinthians 11, or actually, or deal with it faithfully, it works great. It actually works great. Like, am I like, no, let's throw a bunch of hurdles in front of these little kids. I don't know. Jesus told us not to do that. Right. You know. Let the little children come. Yeah. And, you know, woe to them who cause any one of these little ones of mine to stumble. Better for him to have a millstone tied around his neck. You know, like, there actually is biblical precedent for not making things hard on kids. Sure. But.

When we're talking about kids, we're talking about children. When we're talking about kids in that passage, we're also talking about those who are young in the faith. Like, I'm not in favor of making life hard. There are people when it comes to church membership, even with adults. Like, there are churches, we didn't decide to talk about this, but there are churches that just say, we don't do kids membership. You can't be a member of the church as a kid. Like, perform Baptists that can get really... stiff and rigid. We love you, Reformed Baptists. Well, but when they put such a high bar on church membership, they say, no, we will not have a distinction between invisible and visible. Yeah. We had friends years ago that went to a little Reformed Baptist church. They liked everything about the church, and when they wanted to become members or to take communion, they practiced closed communion at that church. And when they wanted to take communion, the church was like, no. They're like, well, you need to be a member of the church. I'm like, okay, well,

We've become members of the church. They're like, no, you need to attend for at least a year before we even consider that. And these were adults. And they were like, no, you can't. We're going to set the bar for membership so high that we have to get to know you for a long time before we're sure that you can partake. So there's this idea about kids, especially kids that haven't really gone through their late teens, I think in Baptist circles, where they're just like, until you've had to deal with sexual temptation, we're just not going to even consider letting you be a Christian, be a member of the church, get baptized. Like you're going to have to do, like you've got to make it through this thing, this gauntlet of temptation and difficulty before we're willing to have it. And so there's lots of places where people try to deal with this issue, this tension, this issue. And I don't think it's helpful to try to

Create a system where the tension doesn't exist anymore. And so with paedo-communion, they say, well, we're just not going to have any tension. It's just going to be a smooth transition on up. This is where you belong. This is who you are. You were born, God bless you, you were born in a Christian home. You're being taught the gospel, and this is what you are. You are in Christ. And all of these things are... available to you as someone who is in Christ. On paper, that sounds really good. In practice, you run into the problem that Martin brought up, which is like, well, when does the warning, when do the warnings apply? Because I think in practice, it ends up that they don't apply. They just don't apply. Or it's presumed that when you examine yourself, you'll always repent. And I don't think that's true.

of Christians, at least not in the moment. Eternally or in their life, yes. In the moment, no. No. Christians hold on to their sins. Christians hide their sins. Christians justify their sins. And I know as a pastor, you hear people, they come and they confess this sin of their own volition. They didn't get caught. And you're like, how long has this been going on? They're like, it's been going on for five years. And you're like, and you took communion the whole time? And they're like, yeah, I didn't know what else to do. I didn't know. And we're like, well, I don't think you should have been taking communion. Like you weren't repentant. You were not repenting of this sin. You were hiding it. You were justifying it. You were continuing to pursue it. There's a danger here. Like there was a failure of self-examination. And if you say, well, that's just not necessary. You don't need to examine yourself. It takes away the, it sort of, it just denies the sinfulness of man. That we actually need warnings. We actually need to be reminded of danger.

when it's the wrath of God that we're being warned against. Right. And so I think the discussion about the – you said that what separates – the reason that maybe paedophilia might work if there wasn't 1 Corinthians 11. And I think what you're getting at there is that 1 Corinthians 11 separates – like creates a distinction between the sacraments. That baptism and the Lord's Supper are actually different sacraments. There are important differences between them, and we can't treat them like a package deal. Yes, and that they have different requirements for participation. When an infant is baptized, if you're paedobaptist, when an infant is baptized, it's passive. There's nothing active in it. They're babies. They just receive a sign. Yeah.

And when you partake of the Lord's Supper, all of a sudden there's a profession of faith. There's a proclamation. There's a remembrance. There's a self-examination. There's all these active things that you as an individual have to do or be capable of doing and then do. So, there are differences. Yeah, and baptism only happens once in Presbyterian doctrine versus over and over again in the Lord's Supper. Yeah, this is – I mean, we're talking about church membership. Don't forget. There are a lot of differences between the sacraments, between old and new, like in the Old Testament and the New Testament. There are also differences between the Lord's Supper and baptism. And so we have to have in our minds that actually not everything translates from the Old Testament to the New Testament with regard to the sign. The people are different. For instance, baptism. Women get baptized.

Women never bore the sign of the covenant in the Old Testament. They weren't circumcised. They couldn't be circumcised. So there's a difference. And so we have to have a category of there are differences from old to new, and we have to have a category there are differences from one to the other, from baptism to the Lord's Supper. An infant receives it passively. You partake of the Lord's Supper actively. And so when it comes to children's membership in the church, there's... I would say you want the children to come into membership of the church and that you don't want there to be no instruction for them and their coming or no warnings. By instruction, I mean warnings that they are not made to consider. You also don't want those warnings to be beyond them, what they're incapable of attaining to or doing.

On the other hand, you also don't want to get rid of the tension that exists surrounding church membership. People get disciplined. People get said no to. I said in a previous episode, in an excommunication case we had, I remember saying to the man, I said, I want you to know what this means. And what it means is, you should have no expectation. I know you don't agree with us, but what I want you to understand is that God said that has said that the things that we bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven. And what that means is that the judgment that you're now under is not subject to your opinion of whether it's right or wrong. If you die in this condition with this judgment outstanding against you, you should have no hope of going to heaven. That's how serious this is. And so you bring people in, you put people out. This is church life. We're just talking about the front end. How do people come in? And on the one hand, we don't want to say,

If you have a Christian heritage, you're in. Because not all Israel is Israel. We also don't want to say, you're such a sinner that we're not going to let you in because once you're in, we can't get you out. You're going to let the tares in with the wheat. They're going to grow up together. And when it becomes necessary and apparent, you're going to get rid of them. Yeah, and something that I think that... people who want to promote pedo-community and have to answer for is, if you're willing to say that we can't have a distinction between communicant and non-communicant members, are you then saying that you're willing to excommunicate a toddler? Yeah, I mean, I think that, I mean, I understand the point rhetorically. I don't think it's helpful in the argument, that question. Because, of course not. No church is excommunicating. I mean, are you willing to excommunicate a 12-year-old because they're committing incest?

Are you willing to even bring them up on charges? Are you willing to treat them as an adult? Our civil system wouldn't treat them as an adult. But would the church? They might go to juvenile hall, though. I mean, like, you know, there would be real penalties applied. I'm not arguing that there wouldn't be consequences. I'm just saying we have to take into account. The reason I don't think it's a good question is because it just says there's no difference between a 2-year-old and a 22-year-old. And I'm like, yeah, there is. Yeah, but what I mean is that like once they've been accepted into full membership, wouldn't they be subject to possible excommunication given – Yeah, this is another thing where rhetorically, yeah, sure. Yeah, they should be, right? Right. As anyone in full membership in a church should be. We could theoretically excommunicate any of our Communicate members, right? Theoretically. Like it probably wouldn't happen. Yeah, but better to – I would say better for us to set up a better system on the front end to keep them out and to make sure they're capable of –

of what scripture requires of them. So yeah, theoretically, yeah, any Communicate member could be excommunicated. Is anyone actually going to excommunicate the 10-year-old for being disobedient to their parents? Well, in the Old Testament, what happened to kids that were disobedient to their parents? Well, they could be stoned. But I, and I've not read enough Jewish history, but I suspect that there were not 10-year-olds that were getting stoned. I expect there were grown, older kids who were notoriously wicked. That's like the height of what their discipline could come to. And so, when it comes to children's membership, I don't think the children are harmed by being told there's more yet still that is required of you, both in knowledge and spiritually. And we love you. We tell kids no in their lives. They get told no all the time. I mean, If you're having a beer and your kid was like, your six-year-old, seven-year-old was like, hey, dad, can I have a beer? Would you give him a beer? Maybe you'd give him a sip. And he'd go, oh, that tastes terrible. That's what everyone does when they first try alcohol. They're like, this tastes terrible. Would you let him have a sip? Well, maybe. Well, maybe not. I won't put you on the spot and say whether you're breaking the law and all these things. But if he was like.

If you had two beers and he was like, oh, I want one. Would you just hand him a beer? Like, yeah, you can have a beer. And then when he drinks that one down, would you just give him another one? Like, no, I mean, that's perfectly fine. You tell him no. Like, I want to stay up and watch a movie with you and mom. No, it's your bedtime. Why can't I stay up? Because you're eight. You're not grown up. You need sleep. You're no fun when you stay up late. We tell kids no all the time, and it doesn't mean they're not members of our family or that they're somehow missing out on the good stuff. There's other things that go on. There's other things that they're not privy to and they don't participate in yet, and that's okay. And so I think it's a bit of a sentimental argument when it's said that kids are being denied something they're entitled to. They're being confused. Kids understand being told no. If they get told no in their lives, kids accept that way better than adults.

Because they get told no all the time. Do this, do that, no, you can't have that, put that down, clean that up, put that away, go to bed, eat this, wear that. Their whole life is being told no. And yes, it's adults who really don't like to be told no, or really aren't accustomed to it. So I don't think we're doing the kids any harm by saying, no, you can't. You can't partake yet. I think it's a bit of a silly argument to make. So I don't know how much more to say about, about paid of communion. I kind of want to move into talking about what we're, what we do at our church, how we sort of negotiate these waters, but that's a discussion for another day. Yeah. So tune back in a couple of weeks and we'll, we'll talk about how our church and some of the synopsis of clearing out. Thanks.