Among my earliest childhood memories is that of attending church with my family. It’s one of those remembrances which, besides bringing a smile to my lips, continues to have a profound impact. I must have been about three or four years old, because I remember being old enough not to be relegated to the nursery, but young enough to still be able to sit on my father’s lap. This last bit of remembrance is important.

Important also in this memory was the congregation where my father’s family had attended; there was a history here. The congregation was rather large for a church of its day (or for that matter, today), and had a “high church” bent from a succession of clergy at odds with the popular piety from which it began. Chanted responses and prayers; weekly communion; an occasional whiff of incense; private confession encouraged; handbell choirs; chasubles and copes; choir graduals, versicals, and psalmody; cassock and surplice at evening prayer; liturgical deacons and subdeacons, acolytes and servers; pipe organ toccatas and fugues … and there I was, taking it all in, sitting on my father’s lap.

Sitting on my father’s lap is memorable enough in itself; it rarely happened. But there, in Church, it became the norm, something always done. And yet, what is memorable is not merely sitting on my father’s lap. There is something even more memorable. When I sat on my father’s lap, he had me mirror his movements and postures during the service.

When he sat, I had his lap to sit upon. When he knelt for the confession of sins, I knelt by him. When he stood, I stood. Or rather, he held me in his arms so that I could see over and around the heads in front of me to the funny-dressed people in the front.

When he sang, he pointed to the words in the hymnal (even though I could not yet read), and I followed along with his finger. When he spoke a liturgical response or the statements of faith, he pointed to the words as he leaned close to my ear voicing the words I should learn: …“And also with you,” (or rather the traditional “And with thy Spirit”) …“Amen” …

When he prayed, he held my small child-hands together for prayer between his extra-large adult-hands. And at a time when it was the habit of the church to leave children behind in the pews when those old enough to commune went forward, he led me by the hand to the table. Here, again, I knelt between his knees, his hands placing my arms across my chest, as I watched in awe and wonder as he received this wonder in bread and wine.

What my father did during those church services so long ago was to embody and model the very promise made to me at my baptism:

In Christian love…you should therefore faithfully bring them to the services of God’s house, and teach them…provide for their instruction in the Christian faith, that living in the covenant of their Baptism and in communion with the Church, they may lead godly lives…

Faithfully bringing me to the services of God’s house, my father was teaching me how to pray, as well as what to pray. Modeling participation in the liturgy, this proper work of the people, he passed on the faith and piety he knew and received from his family and the Church.

But this was different. My father was not taught this way. Nor was this the norm for fatherly expectations of the day. Nor was it the norm for this congregation or even the denomination. It was simply my father taking seriously this particular promise, as he did all the rare promises he made.

Various polls and studies have concluded that the single greatest influence on the continuing involvement of children in the life of the Church throughout childhood and into adulthood is the spiritual example of one’s father. That is an awesome (and often fearsome) responsibility laid at our feet. Yet it can also be one approached with great joy and playfulness. Not only for fathers or for grandfathers, but also for the whole Church gathered. To so embody the faith that we become spiritual models for our children. Shaping our children’s lives with the promise they received in Baptism.

And so it begins.