In her Christianity Today article, "Faith Like a Child," Scottie May reviews two books on children and faith: O. M. Bakke's When Children Became People: The Birth of Childhood in Early Christianity, and Rich Lusk's Paedofaith: A Primer on the Mystery of Infant Salvation. In the process she offers some challenges for today's churches as they seek to integrate children into the life of their community.

When our children were young, we willingly let them leave the worship service and follow the mob of other young people to what was called Children's Church. This practice has long been common in Presbyterian-like churches, where no one wants to subject children to a 40- to 60-minute sermon. (Whether or not adults should have to endure a lecture of that length is another issue, but at least it's easier to bear without having to deal with one's frustrated offspring at the same time.) To my dismay, however, even liturgical churches, with their shorter sermons and plenty of action to keep children participating, have embraced the idea of shunting them elsewhere for at least part of the service.

(Young parents will criticize me for changing my thoughts on Children's Church only after our own children were too old to participate, and of course I can't answer them, except to say that if I could start over I would put more effort into finding a church that views children differently.)

At first my primary concern was that churches not follow the world's practice of separating children from their families. Thanks to Dr. May, however, I'm RETHINKING our whole approach to teaching children about God.

The church seems to be looking around more and more at cultural practices for ministries with children. Generations ago, contests and prizes were introduced into children's Christian education. More recently, children's ministers have begun to emulate contemporary media in order to attract children to their church's programs. In many settings, the leadership now realizes that a "wow"-filled program for children is an effective way to entice parents to attend, often resulting in rapid church growth. All too often, this is an uncritical adoption of current cultural practices with children.

Christian education adopted a schooling model a couple of centuries ago, and this model implicitly teaches that knowledge is essential to faith. With Lusk's explanation of faith as "relational trust," that relationship is somewhat of a mystery, defying intellectual explanation. "One doesn't understand a mystery; one experiences it." On this point, Lusk concurs with the findings of several researchers in children's Christian spirituality—that children need to know God, to experience God, before (or at least at the same time as) learning about God. What might this mean for parents and church ministries? Evangelical churches are experienced in teaching children about God, but do these churches help children experience God?

What I think this means is that we should RETHINK our approach to Children's Church, and to Sunday School as well, not just for children but also for adults. Yes, we need classes that are attractive to newcomers, and classes that deal with specific problems and relationships, and most definitely we need classes in theology and the truth about God. I'm not against reason and knowledge; in fact, I would have our studies be a lot more rigorous and intellectually challenging that they usually are.

However, I think our greatest need is for something along the lines of an apprenticeship model. Our children need to see our faith in action much more than they need to know the facts about our faith. What does it matter if you know the grammar and vocabulary of a language, but can't communicate with your neighbor who speaks that language? First, learn to communicate; after that, the grammatical studies will make much more sense.

What does the Christian life look like? What does it mean to be a Christian, not in terms of what one professes to believe, but in one's actions? What does it mean to love God and our neighbors? Our children need, not classes, but to engage life with the church in such a way that they see us worshipping, praying, confessing, forgiving, struggling, and serving. They need to be beside us, as the weaker of us need to be beside the stronger, so that they can take their own tentative steps in an environment that is both supportive and real.

Perhaps the model we should consider for Christian Education should be less a school and more a Gypsy band, where the young child is merely given a small-sized instrument and welcomed into the group. His beginner's squawks are not loud enough to affect the sound of the band; they are overwhelmed by the strength of the more mature players. But as the child listens and experiments in this safe enviroment, he learns more about making music, and faster, than if he'd been confined in a class with other beginners until he was considered old enough to join in the real work.

Perhaps hardest to deal with will be our own painful awareness of how inexperienced we are at making this kind of faith music. All the more should our children see us working to do better. We're not fooling them, anyway.

(As to our own children, who know all too well how poorly we implemented this philosophy in our own family, I can only ask forgiveness, and remind them that a child's job is to build on what his parents did right and improve on what they did wrong.)
Posted by sursumcorda on Wednesday, May 24, 2006 at 9:01 am | Edit
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This is a good thing to think about. We have enjoyed having Jonathan in the service with us, or at least outside the doors listening, preferring that over putting him in the nursery.Jon has had a couple of long conversations with the Children's Ministry coordinator, mostly stemming from our request to not be automatically put on the "volunteer" rotation just because we are parents. It takes quite a rethinking for someone to accept that we "don't believe in Sunday school." I would think homeschoolers would more readily accept it, already knowing the desire not to have someone else teach their children. It is true that there are many in our church that would be surprised to discover that we don't agree with all its theology! We haven't done a complete boycott of Children's Ministry, one because Jonathan has discovered that he likes playing with the toys in the nursery, and two because we have agreed to be substitute volunteers when necessary. However, I think we do have to do some more thinking on exactly what we want to do when November comes and Jonathan will technically graduate to the next class.

Posted by joyful on Wednesday, May 24, 2006 at 6:43 pm
And to my parents I say "Is't God wonderful?" Despite the fact that you discovered "too late" how important it is to live your faith in front of and with your children, God has loving called both to be faithful servents! What we lost from not having such experiences as you describe God is building in us now. Praise the Lord!

Posted by Harp on Thursday, May 25, 2006 at 8:42 am
One of the things we do at my church is have Sunday school after the service, and it is indeed divided by age, approximately, and in very small groups. However, public worship itself is never divided (save perhaps temporarily for the occasional temper tantrum and subsequent discipline...I'm sure you can relate). As you point out, a big reason is because the younger folks need to see the "how" and "why" from their parents. To take a trivial example, it seems to me that it is very helpful for a child to see his mother and father thanking God for all their blessings if a child is really to understand that all blessings do, in fact, come from God. To do otherwise has the danger of appearing hypocritical. (In general, I think we underestimate the power of worship itself to evangelize the young and old alike--that's the whole point of Daniel 6. I worry the the modern evangelical approach makes evangelism something separate from worship. I'm thinking of Rick Warren here....but I digress). There is certainly biblical precedent for this keeping one body of people worshiping together--God didn't send Moses down the mountain twice, once for the adults and once for the children! One has to understand that this is a pattern that is preserved from the old to the new covenant, though we assemble elsewhere (Heb 12:18-24). In addition to Sunday school, Pastor puts some family discussion questions in the bulletin for us to use in our own family devotional time during the week as they relate to the morning and evening sermons. Much of this is built around the idea that Mom and Dad are the teachers, and with so many homeschooling families this works very well to bring unity to the whole church. For those of us college students, we usually get together and discuss the sermons on our own using this as a point of departure. I guess what I'm trying to say is that the idea of Sunday School itself isn't a bad thing as long as it doesn't get in the way of God's assembly talking with God (through prayer), and God talking to his people (through His Word). I worry this is what a separate "children's church" does. Our Sunday school differs from the Worship service not in subject matter but rather that the focus of our attention is different; Sunday school is dialogue amongst the assembly about God. Of course, this isn't some kind of hard and fast line, as elements of both the "horizontal" and "vertical" aspects of the Christian life are present in both, but I find it to be a helpful distinction to consider when it comes to matters affecting what we do on the Lord's Day.

Posted by Andy on Wednesday, May 31, 2006 at 12:18 pm
Thanks, all! This is the kind of input I'd hoped for when I started this blog. Discussions, ideas, debates, exchange of information, and all that good stuff.

Posted by SursumCorda on Wednesday, May 31, 2006 at 4:30 pm
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