What would you do if a divorced parent you knew came into your church armed and with the intent of doing harm?
It is sad to think we have to worry about protecting our children at church. However, it is a must if you want to provide a safe place for children. There have been cases where an armed person or a shooter has walked into a church building with the intent to do harm. Churches can become targets for people of rage, divorce, discontent and those on some sort of substance.
- Some of these people are trying to make a statement.
- Some are getting back at the institution of “church” perhaps from something from their past.
- Sometimes it might be due to a mental illness
- Sometime it might be a parent in the midst of a divorce
With the stress in our world today and coming into the holiday season where even more people will be stressed, now might be a good time to evaluate your church’s policies and procedures. It is especially important to think through possible scenarios regarding children of divorce.
Have you ever had a child get attached to you? I’ve had children who I knew were connected to me emotionally. I always hated it when I had to move and leave those kids behind.
If you have ever worked in the nursery at church you have observed altruism in the very young. Babies who can crawl and toddlers will do their best to comfort a crying newcomer. They will do this by crawling over and handing the other child their pacifier or their blankie. You might say they extend the hand of welcome to newcomers who are distraught.
When my grandson was three years old, I moved into my daughter’s house and lived there for a year while she was deployed to Afghanistan. One thing I noticed is the three year-old had a smile all the time. This little kid was one happy little guy.
Many times when one reads articles or post about kids of divorce, we read about hurting children. However, we have hundreds of children in our churches that are healing from the devastation of divorce. These are kids whose parents have kept them in church. Have you considered allowing children of divorce to disciple and minister to other hurting kids?
We don’t usually think about little children having a heart attack. The kind of heart attack I’m talking about is affecting thousands of children. It is the emotional and spiritual heart attack they experience when their family falls apart. The family could be a divorcing family or a never married family. To a child, it makes no difference if their parents were legally married or involved in a co-habitation situation.
Unfortunately children of divorce have a lot of questions to ask but many times they don’t know whom to ask. When they do ask, many are told lies or maybe not really lies but half-truths. Children need the truth not lies or made up stories.
One time I was working with the cutest little single parent family. There were three children. Michael was the middle child in between two bossy sisters. One morning he was really grouchy. Nothing was right. His clothes bothered him. He didn’t like his breakfast. His paper kept moving around when he was trying to draw a picture. He was mad at both sisters and people were just getting in his way and bothering him.
Many divorcing single parents seem to get stuck in dealing with finances, in relationships, in the past, in helping their children and in many other ways.