Connecting the Christian Faith with Children: some initial observations from my survey

So far I have only analysed 10 of the survey forms sent out by the Yorkshire Baptist Asociation to our churches to find out how they connect the Christian faith with their children. There are more forms to be looked at in my 'to do pile', and I know that it's not easy to come to any firm conclusions from a sample of 10. But some of the 'trends' are certainly interesting.

- 70% of our churches run a Sunday School / Junior Church on Sunday morning. 30% run midweek children’s clubs of various sorts. But that means that 30% of our churches have no contact with and no provision for children at all.

- In the children's activities offered by our churches, there seems to be a huge emphasis on instruction (most spending at least 50% of their time on it) and craft activities (up to 80% of the time). Prayer (maximum 10% of the time) and worship (maximum 20% of the time) are conspicuous by their relative absence!

- I deliberately asked each church to fill in two sets of forms: one for the minister and one for the main children's worker. And the differences between the answers on the two forms are telling! Most ministers don’t actually know what happens in Junior Church or how much time is spent on anything (although they did try to ‘guess’, most got it wrong)!

- In 20% of our churches there is no link between what the children and the adults do on a Sunday morning. Only 30% (?!) say they try to maintain a link at Christmas and Easter. Only 20% of our churches follow the same theme for children as well as adults in all services.

- Only 50% of our churches have a regular children’s address or a time for the youngsters in the service.

- Only 20% of our churches allow children to participate in communion. Another 30% do not allow children to attend communion services. That means 50% of our churches allow children to be present but do not serve them with bread and wine: they may get a blessing, or orange-juice and a biscuit.

- Only 30% of our churches have a regular (monthly) All Age service. Another 40% have family services at Harvest, Christmas and other Christian Festivals.

- None (that's right ... none) of the churches who have so far responded have any clear idea of the purpose of their work with children (although only 10% are willing to admit that to be the case). In many cases, the children’s workers and the minister disagree about the purpose of the work! And (worryingly?) only 20% of the churches even mentioned ‘Safe to Grow’!

- 90% of our churches rely heavily on the children’s own parents to teach them in Sunday School. 7 out of the 10 churches who have so far responded say that at least 30% of their Sunday School teachers are the parents of the children in the Sunday School. For some churches, that figure is as high as 66%! (I wonder what that says to our families about how welcoming we really are to children? "We love to see the children in church, but we expect their mums to look after them in Sunday School.")

- The vast majority of adults who teach in Sunday school are female. (I think that is also worrying.)

- At least 50% of our churches also rely, for Sunday School, on members of the congregation who are also teachers. (Are they thereby abdicating any responsibility for providing appropriate training?) 100% of churches have had little or no training at all for their children’s workers.

- Only 40% of our churches are able to offer a rota system so the teachers can sometimes attend worship.

- 100% of our churches have little or nothing in the budget for children’s work or all age work. Although they did say that anything the teachers need is paid for. (What does that say about the churches' priorities? We don't actually have any money in the budget for you, but if you come to the finance committe cap in hand we'll pay your bills.) In 10% of churches, the teachers themselves pay for a lot of the materials (and the minister is not even aware of it).

- In only 30% of churches do the children’s workers feel sufficiently affirmed. In only 20% of churches are the workers annually commissioned. And in only 20% of the churches are the children and teachers prayed for before they go to their classes. When asked what further support and affirmation they would like, the overwhelming answer was simply that the teachers would like people in the church to say ‘thank you.’

- Only 20% of our ministers participate in planning meetings for the children’s work. Only 20% of them ever attend the children’s groups (and only the mid-week groups at that). And even fewer ministers ever teach in those groups.

I hope the remaining forms prove some of these trends to be false. But if the above really is an accurate assessment of where our churches are with regard to children, is it any wonder we're in a mess?