How the Underground Church Discipled Children Under Communism - Yuriy Kravets

The way that the persecuted church, uh, found to keep children and youth plugged into the church. So let's remember the context: you have an atheistic government that, uh, is bent on destroying Christianity, and, uh, under the communist regime, the church that was faithful needed to find a way to keep their children. And when I say faithful, I say it's because there was a church that wasn't faithful, as history has shown, uh, to Christ and was under the authority of the government. And an interesting story is my mom actually remembers when, as a little girl, going to such a church with her mom and being held up and not allowed to come in, as these government-sanctioned churches were not supposed to have children in the service.

And so right there at the door, there were deacons or other ministers, and they were letting the adults come in, but the children had to stay out. And the way my mom described the situation, it was tragic. It was—it was terrifying. She had was basically told to separate from her mother, but, uh, the situation was such—I guess there was some kind of a fuss involved, and they said, "Okay, you can go sit somewhere in the back, hidden from you," and that kind of thing. But just imagine that kind of situation coming to a town near you.

So the faithful church said, "No, our children will be with us during the service," and they were persecuted for it. So under time persecution, where it's hard to do any kind of evangelism, uh, you're—you're left with the question of, well, what are you going to do with your children? How are you going to plug them into, uh, your faith and make sure that it becomes their own? And their solution was involving the children and young people and encouraging them to participate in the service beyond just congregational singing.

Right? So if I think about the Anabaptist context today at our time, how do the children and young people participate during the regular worship service? And, well, there's Sunday school, right, for churches that have, uh, Sunday school that provides some level of interaction, participation. But I'm thinking of just the general worship service, the extent to which they can do something, uh, is sing with the congregation, and I'm not aware of much else.

So the persecuted church took this approach. Their belief was that there was a legitimate way for children and youth to express themselves in the spirit of 1 Corinthians 14:26, which says, "Whenever you come together, each of you that has a psalm, has a teaching, has a tongue, has a revelation, has an interpretation, let all things be done for edification." So they were encouraged, these children and young people, to share scriptures, Christian poetry, and songs during the service and be integrated in that way to the worship experience.

And this added dimension of involvement is something that I see sadly missing from a lot of the Anabaptist contexts in our conservative circles. And I think that's one clear area where we could learn from the experience of the persecuted church and to see how can we facilitate the integration of the generations into, uh, the worship service and into Christian life in general.