One of the things I love most about Orthodoxy is how, in every service, everyone is there together — young and old, men and women, children and babies. That can lead to chaos sometimes. I remember once, during the Divine Liturgy, a child got loose and ran to the central icon stand. He gave it a push, and the candles came crashing to the floor. A few adults jumped up to fix things while our priest just smiled and said, “It’s Lent!” Seeing him so unbothered filled me with a kind of reverence — I thought of Christ blessing the children in the Gospels, and how the disciples tried to keep them away until He said, “Suffer the little children to come unto me.”

It can feel like a trial having rowdy children in church when you’re trying to “worship.” When I was an evangelical, children usually had their own service — age-appropriate teaching, a space where they could actually follow along instead of sitting through a forty-minute sermon meant for adults. There’s real wisdom in that, and honestly, I think it’s necessary within that framework.

But I’ve come to appreciate being in a church where everyone is in the same room for the whole thing — even the babies are taking communion. I used to think of a good church service as something where I could focus: on God, on what I was singing, on the sermon. That idea of focus was explicitly encouraged — we’d hear things like “Let’s really focus on God as we sing this song.” But now I find myself moved in unexpected ways. I’ve seen a service turn genuinely chaotic — candles falling, kids banging plastic toys off the wooden pews, running and yelling — and been brought to tears by the beauty of it anyway. I wouldn’t trade the chaos away. And to be clear, most Sundays run pretty smoothly.

This video shows scenes from Orthodox services that include children and families. It’s a beautiful reminder that church is for all of us.