How Quiet Will Our Churches Be Soon?
by Abigail Browka
When I saw my son using our Pastor’s therapy dog as a pillow during Jeff’s sermon -- I wasn’t sure it was kosher.
He was sprawled out on the floor, his head resting on Lily, completely at ease.
My first thought was that it wasn’t “right.”
My second thought has stayed with me all week.
“I’ve often heard in the church something along the lines of, “Kids these days.””
“When I was young, we were quiet and sat still in church.”
The unspoken ending of that sentence is, What’s wrong with kids today?
But watching my son cradled against that dog, completely at peace in worship, I started thinking about it from the other direction.
What if more “sit still” children had grown up experiencing church this way?
Warmly. Lovingly. Safe yet free to move. Would there be more adults in our churches today?
I haven’t heard anyone ask it that way. The inverse. We talk about why people are leaving. We talk about what’s wrong with the culture. We talk about screens, schedules, sports. But we don’t often look back and ask the harder question:
If church had been more loving, warm, and embodied for kids in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s — would more of those people be in churches today?
If children had experienced church as a place of belonging rather than a place to sit still and be quiet — what would the landscape of the church look like today?
I’ve gone to church my whole life. I’ve worked at churches since I was eighteen. And still, when I moved to a new town, I felt the awkwardness of not being ‘one of the regulars.’
I know the hymns. I know the liturgy. I know where to sit and when to stand. And I was still an outsider.
Now imagine that leap for a person or family who hasn’t been to church in a while. Or ever.
Is the “Sit Still Church” going to be their thing? Will the sacred stillness, the hymns, the liturgy, the traditions that are maybe the norm for us — be meaningful to them?
I’m not saying those things don’t have depth. They do. The stillness is real. The traditions carry centuries of meaning. But if the front door of that experience feels like a performance you don’t know the script to, we have to ask who are we building it for?
I know my kid wandering after a therapy dog in worship may not be your thing.
But right now he is the only kid in worship. The only one.
If he doesn’t ‘like church’, how quiet and still will our churches be soon?
That's not a threat. It's an invitation to look at what we've built and ask: who can actually get in? Not who's "welcome" in theory. Who can actually walk through the door and feel like they belong, before they know the right words?
Maybe the question isn't "why won't they come?"
Maybe it's "what would church feel like for them to be-long?"
Rev. Abigail Browka is the Director of Innovation and New Faith Communities in the Upper New York Conference of the United Methodist Church.