Connecting the Christian Faith with Children (part eight)

8. Contemporary Childhood

Children today live in a different world to the one we grew up in.[1] They watch interactive television programmes, they play handheld computer games, they surf from image to image – from video to video – on the internet. They are surrounded by text and sound and moving image, bombarded with subliminal messages, obsessed with minor celebrities and fashions. And while that may be an oversimplification, it does help us to understand why the Christian church has become effectively alien to the vast majority of youngsters and children in the UK today. There are so many other things clamouring for their attention that we should not be surprised that the church regularly loses out to its ‘competition’.

In fact, for many children, the church presents no competition at all. They don’t even know we exist (unless perhaps they are brought by their parents). They have no understanding of the Christian message, no recollection of the stories of the Bible, and no reference point whatsoever with regard to the Christian faith. This is, in (small) part, due to the marginalisation of Religious Education in schools. But the church must take its own (much larger) share of the blame.

Increasingly, families have other priorities than church at weekends. Where both parents work long hours, Sunday may be the only day for the family to be together. In single-parent families, Sunday may be the day children see their other parent. In the busy life of many modern families, Sunday might be the only time available for visiting distant grandparents, playing sport, or even doing the weekly shopping.

Dallow asks all those involved in work with children within a Christian setting to be “aware of the social world in which today’s children find themselves. We also need to understand how children’s thinking develops, so that what we offer children is real and relevant.”[2] Take note of some of the following trends, “characteristic of life in the UK in the 21st century”[3]:
- fall in number of married couples and increase in cohabitation
- rise in divorce rate
- rise in number of lone-parent families (22 per cent with dependent children are lone parent families)
- increased access to leisure-time activities
- increase in fast food and reduction in families who regularly eat meals together
- increase in homes where children have their own televisions and access to a personal computer
- increase in children living in families where the income is below half the contemporary average income (1.4 million in 1979; 4.2 million in 1992/3)
- 100,000 under-16s run away from home each year
- 42 per cent of young people brought before magistrates courts have been excluded from school
- one in six children between 11 and 15 use drugs. They are five times more likely to truant and be excluded from school and be in trouble with the police
- only one in five of all young people feel part of their local community.[4]

However, while the culture of the world outside of church is changing rapidly, our churches have failed to keep pace with that change.

[1] Nick Harding’s book, Kid’s Culture (2003: Scripture Union) is a useful resource for understanding the world that shapes our children.
[2] Dallow, Touching the Future: A handbook for church-based children’s leaders (2002, The Bible Reading Fellowship), p.58
[3] Dallow, Touching the Future: A handbook for church-based children’s leaders (2002, The Bible Reading Fellowship), p.64
[4] Dallow, Touching the Future: A handbook for church-based children’s leaders (2002, The Bible Reading Fellowship), pp.64-65