West Port Experiment

As Reformed people, we are deeply committed to the covenant. We have a solemn responsibility to our children—who after all are not ours, but the Lord’s. We as parents and as pastors have a sacred trust. As pastors, we require solemn vows of parents as they present their covenant children for holy baptism. As parents, we take those public vows in deep, humble gratitude for the manifold grace of God in ‘spreading His skirt over our little ones.’ With faith, we lay hold of the gracious promise, yet with a real trembling for the stewardship that is ours to raise them up in the “fear and admonition of the Lord.”

And yet, while our covenant-tradition is clothed with solemnity and gravitas, the lighter side of life shines through (or, it ought to!) as we endeavor to light the flame of faith in our children. There is a place for play; and, in fact, there is great promise in it. I’m increasingly convinced after twenty years of pastoring, twenty-five years of parenting, and now almost two years of grand-parenting, that one major ingredient of parenting and, yes, even pastoring, involves play. And I believe this is all the more vital in small, first- and second-generation Reformed and Presbyterian churches who lack the longevity of larger multi-generational churches. The margins are smaller and the risk of losing our children greater. Especially in our circles, the imperative to do all we lawfully can to create a home and church environment where our covenant children will naturally want to profess faith, commune, marry, bear children, and put down deep roots in our rootless world.

But whether your church is large or small and your subculture more fragile or more robust, these children are still ‘ours to lose.’ Yes, the Holy Spirit must regenerate. Enculturation is a barren womb without free and sovereign grace. But our responsibility, in giving and taking baptismal vows, is not just to catechize and keep good order in home and church. We may and must, if I may put it this way, “win” our children winsomely. And so I say, let us play.

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