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.)
