Tuesday, September 15, 2009

THE NURSERY

In every church we have belong to the past 30 years or so, we have served in the church nursery or "extended worship" as some churches call it! When we first started to attend church in a new city when our kids were little, Steve and I taught 2-year-olds. We would have up to 15 two-year-olds......big church! We loved it.


I have always loved keeping the nursery, mainly because I love babies and little children, but also a way of getting to know the young families in our church. Also I feel young parents need to know they can bring their children to church,knowing they are loved and cared for when they come to worship our Lord! Nothing feels closer to Jesus than a young child!

I also feel honored to keep the nursery because I always felt like if I can keep other people's children(and grandchildren) and love on them, then someday someone would keep my grandchildren and love on them!

I don't understand able-bodied people who will not serve their Lord by keeping the nursery. It's always been a mystery to me, but then, they are missing a blessing!

My dreams came true this past week-end when we got to attend church with our kids and I got to go to the church nursery and pick up Harper after church! I had tears in my eyes ....I was so happy!

These sweet ladies above were taking care of Harper when we got there. Harper was happy to see her Mama (and I hope us too!)!


I thank these ladies for the wonderful care and love they give all the babies in their care and especially Harper because she is getting the "separation anxiety" when she's away from her Mama. It's all right, though, she will get over it! Almost every parent goes through that!
I remember my son would hang on to my clothes when they tried to pry him out of my arms!



We took them to lunch after church and Harper told us all about what a great morning she had at church and you can see she really enjoyed her lunch!!

Do you take a turn in your church's nursery?? If not, I would urge you to sign up immediately and see if the Lord doesn't bless you richly!!

17 comments:

Melissa Stover said...

i'm in the nursery half the time. tess has extreme separation anxiety. if one of her siblings isn't with her she freaks out. so i'm either with her or she's in church with me.

Jess :) said...

I do actually serve in my church nursery one Sunday a month. I've done that for the past 4 or 5 years, I believe, and LOVE IT!!! :) As I'm pretty sure you already know, I just adore children, especially babies. They bring such JOY to my life and I'm blessed that I have the opportunity to serve my Lord and His precious children in the nursery!

I just loved that blog post and felt touched just reading it. :)

So glad you were able to go to church with Scott and Kelly and pick Miss Harper up!

Heather said...

It's so funny that you wrote about this, because I thought it would be a lot longer before I left Avery Kate in our church nursery, but the reason I decided to is because there were three ladies like you working in there!! They wanted to love on my sweet girl and they take wonderful care of her! What a blessing to a momma! Thanks for your service to those moms and dads....and to the Lord.

jill said...

ms. judy,

thank you SO MUCH for the advice on our bedroom! i love it! i'm definitely working on finding 3 pretty frames to go behind the bed ... and the rest of it sounds great! i feel like i've gotten a celebrity's autograph since you left me a comment ... ha! yours is such a precious, precious family, and i love reading about all of you guys! oh.. and i've served in our church nursery since i was in college ... it's WONDERFUL! lots of love! thanks again. :)

Mrs. Joyce said...

At our church we are "rockers and huggers" once every 6 weeks. Love it.

Lauren said...

Awww, I love those sweet pictures!!! :)

Bear Girl said...

Hi Judy, I worked for 12 years in the 4 and 5 year old class. I am currently taking a break because I was over-extending myself with choir and being on the women's ministry committee. I love the kids and really wish more parents with children in those classes would help out. I think some really take the help for granted. They could really be blessed themselves if they would pitch in even once a month. Blessings to you. Genah in Indiana

O'Dell Family said...

I do volunteer regularly in our church nursery. Thank you for this post! Can I just say AMEN! You are so right. We have 3 little ones who are in the nursery every time the doors are open because their daddy is the pastor:) We are having a tough time at our church finding enough volunteers to work. Oh, if only all had your same sweet spirit about volunteering. Thank you for your sweet thoughts about this important ministry!

Yoli said...

That is the sweetest post. Thank you for encouraging us to serve and reminding us what a blessing it is.

Laurie said...

I am like you, I LOVE working in the nursery. I work in bed babies. Our church has great nursery workers! I always felt so comfortable leaving my girls in that room. Good to see you Sunday!

Jennifer said...

Josh and I work in the nursery once very 6 weeks. We really enjoy it and because our church is so large, we are able to meet parents of children that are Brody's age that we wouldn't know otherwise!

Harper is a DOLL! We had the best time at lunch with them Monday. Both those girls are sugar sweet!:)

Julie said...

Bryan and I have served in the church nursery and we have loved every minute of it!!! I usually pretend they are my babies!!!

O'Dell Family said...

Hi, again! Thank you for your comment on my blog. Yes, David is from Arkansas. He grew up in Little Rock and went to Arkansas Baptist. His parents live in Bryant now. We met in Charleston , SC at MFUGE where I was on staff one summer and he brought his youth group. We served together for almost 3 years in NEA, Marmaduke to be exact where he was a youth minister. We left there and went to New Orleans for seminary which brought us to ATL for a one year internship at First Baptist Atlanta and from there to a church outside ATL as the family pastor and now to our current church in another suburb of ATL as the pastor. We long to say we have been somewhere for 25 years!! Thank you for the encouragement you are to other pastors' wives!

Pigtails & Pearls said...

I remember putting Chloe in the nursery for the first time! She loves it! She tells me daily, at 2 1/2 that she needs to go "Sing about Jesus!" It melts my heart everytime!

Mike, Kacy & Wells said...

It was good to see you too! Wells is the first baby I've ever really been around, so working in the nursery has been very good for me. I love watching the babies & toddlers interact and "play" with each other (or near each other). I always peek into Harper's room to see how cute she looks!

real estate agent from Vancouver said...

Hi,
good job you are doing to all mums who need to go back to work - they can be sure kids are safe and loved.
Jay

KE II said...

Hi Judy,
I LOVE serving in "kids church" as we call it in our church. Normally I am in the preschoolers group 3-4 year olds, you're right, it's such a blessing to serve and the joy I get from the children is way more than what I give.