Churching with a baby – Crèche v’s Crying Room?

Crying rooms are convenient in the short term, settling a baby/toddler into crèche is better in the long term.

Crying rooms serve the parent with a crying baby, but not the other people who also want to hear the sermon with a babe-in-arms. Other parents will have gone there to feed without the distractions of church or give their child a quiet place to sleep. Both of these are undone when a crying or unsettled baby enters. My experience has been these crying rooms (with the sermon wired through to speakers) end up being a place where parents chat and don’t actually listen to the sermon anyway.

Crèche rooms, set up with toys and activities to entertain a clean and fed baby/toddler, allow them to be noisy and entertained. Carers often will sing songs, read books and play with the children while Mum and/or Dad can be involved in the church meeting. This time will help babies develop socialising and motor skills, exploring more of the world God has made for them.

Can the two be merged? Is it successful having an audio feed into a crèche? Here’s why I think it doesn’t work:

• the kids will now have an adult voice filling the audio space instead of kids music, significantly altering the mood of the room,
• the kids will still be noisy, so a parent will have a lot of trouble listening anyway,
• most parents will have conversations with the carers and/or other parents and not listen to the sermon anyway.

If listening to the sermon is the goal, I’d suggest investing the time to settle your child into crèche with other adult carers and listening to the sermon during the week*. It may take a few weeks (or months for some) but it will not be forever. Another option to find the content of the sermon if you cannot listen to it later is to ask your spouse to summarise the talk and discuss it over a coffee/dessert after the kids are in bed. Trust me, this will NOT be detrimental to your marriage!

If listening to the sermon IS the goal, then this post may be helpful.
Churching with a baby – Is is worth it?

* Modern technology means we barely have to make any effort to find and listen to sermons at a time we can concentrate.