Connecting the Christian Faith with Children - section nine - training needs

9. Training Needs

In all of this, there is an urgent need to support, affirm, encourage and train all those involved in working with children in our churches.

Sunday School teachers / Children’s Workers

The largest area of concern must be for our Sunday School teachers and children’s workers. They are a great resource. They are highly motivated and committed. And yet for too long in many of our churches they have been neglected. We urgently need to give them the support and affirmation, the budget, and the training that they need.

Many of our workers would welcome the opportunity to share resources, to find out what other churches do and what works well for them, to get fresh ideas and creative prayer ideas, to refresh their skills. Perhaps we just need to put on a series of events like that with the main aim of affirming what they do.

Some have asked, too, for some more specific training. How can we understand what faith means for children, and how faith develops in children? How can we get to grips with the needs of modern children who live in a very different world from previous generations? How can we disciple our children? How do we provide pastoral support to children?

Church

It’s not just the children’s workers, though, who need that sort of training. Our church congregations, too, need a better understanding of how children can fit into church family as equal members. How to integrate children and church, and what are the practical implications of that.

I suspect that the attitude of our church members towards children is the single main issue we need to address if we are to effectively reach and keep children in our churches: “In a time of rapid cultural change, older Christians must be prepared for the fact that ways of expressing Christian thought and feeling which they have found meaningful and satisfactory may not be equally meaningful and satisfactory to their children.”[1]

So, the question is not only (perhaps not even), “‘How shall we prepare our young people for Church?” [We must] take with the greatest possible seriousness the question, ‘How shall we prepare the Church for our young people?’”[2]

Ministers and Church Leaders

Our ministers and church leaders need to be challenged, and reminded, that children are enormously significant both in the biblical narratives and in God¹s purposes. A brief survey of the way children were included in the worshipping communities of the Old and New Testaments challenges all of us to rethink the place of children in the activities of God’s people today. “Children are not the church of tomorrow; they are the church of today without whom there will be no church of tomorrow.”[3] Similarly, an examination of the emphasis on children’s ministry by many major figures through church history must challenge our ministers, in particular, to rethink their priorities, and their involvement with children’s ministry in their own context. At the very least, we must be encouraging our church leaders to ask whether their “church budget for children’s ministry expenses include leadership training and adequate materials and resources?”[4]

Passing on the faith to our children is one of the primary activities of any faith community. But I think it needs to be given a much higher profile, again, in the Christian church. And whether or not it is a minister’s specific gifting, it is certainly his or her responsibility to ensure it is happening effectively.

There has been an adult bias in every aspect of Christian thinking for the last 2000 years, and “a lack of training has resulted in poor practice at church level and an inadequate knowledge on the part of church leaders as to the needs of those working with children.”[5] Perhaps there needs to be at least a module on ‘connecting the Christian Faith with Children’ included in the ministerial courses offered at our Baptist colleges, because our churches are all built around the needs and desires of adults, and children have been shockingly marginalised in mainstream Christian theology.

Parents

Perhaps we also need to try to shift the emphasis away from Sunday morning worship being the main focus of Christian activity. In the faith communities of the OT and NT, the main focus of the faith was the household. And there are a number of people arguing that we need to recapture that in today’s church.

“Judaism … is a faith in which family and children play a central part.”[6] The home is “regarded as the focus of religious activity”[7] and “the family plays a role, not only as the basic unit of social life, but also as the primary milieu of ritual expression.”[8] A significant number of the Jewish festivals “were home-based and often involved the participation of children.”[9] “The covenant community was striking for its lack of separate institutions for the education of children.”[10] Rather, “responsibility for the education of children into the covenant community rested with the parents,”[11] “and not with the worshipping community, although the festivals and cycle of the year helped them in their task.”[12] The early Christians, too, regarded the home as “the principal area of Christian nurture and instruction.”[13] And modern Judaism still “places a high priority on family life.”[14]

There is a need to recapture the historical Christian notion that “parenting is a serious calling and a significant spiritual discipline”[15]:

· Chrysostom considered parents to be “‘artists’ who sculpt statues with great precision … helping to restore the image of God in their offspring.”[16] He described parents as “teachers of their children, ”[17] and the family as “a ‘little church’ or a ‘sacred community”[18] wherein “adults and children rehearse for membership in the kingdom of heaven.”[19] He spoke of the obligations of parents to their children, such as “reading the Bible … praying with them, and being good examples.”[20] Chrysostom considered that “in the churches far too little discussion is given over to the vocation of parenthood.”[21] And he claimed that “when and wherever there is a crisis of childhood there is also bound to be a crisis of parenthood.”[22]

· Luther exhorted parents to “baptise their children, expose them to the Word and the sacraments … teach them about the faith, provide them with a good education.”[23] He claimed that “father and mother are apostles, bishops, and priests to their children, for it is they who make them acquainted with the Gospel.”[24]

· Calvin frequently makes the point that “the primary obligation of parents … is to teach godliness … all parents have the duty of communicating what they have learned from the Lord to their children.”[25]

· Menno Simons made the “careful, intentional, aggressive, and vigilant nurturing of children in [the] Christian faith”[26] absolutely imperative, and gave the primary responsibility for such nurturance to the children’s parents. “Christian parents are to be ‘as sharp, pungent salt, a shining light, an unblamable, faithful teacher, each in his own home’.”[27] Anabaptist children were “urged to love one another, bear with one another, do honourable work, not be prideful, flee from evil, fear God, and follow the example set by Christ. Making lifelong commitments of discipleship rather than momentary decisions for personal salvation is what was essential … [and baptism] was construed as a beginning, not an end.”[28]

· In the early 18th century, Franke claimed that “true piety is fostered in children … by reading the Bible and exposing them to the Word through the teachings and practices of the church (learning the catechism, singing hymns, praying, and worshipping),”[29] and he encouraged “parents … to begin this approach right away with young children in the home by reading and discussing the Bible, teaching Luther’s catechism, praying at mealtimes, beginning and ending the day … with a prayer and a hymn, worshipping together, and preparing for worship on Saturday by reading the text for Sunday’s sermon.”[30] He also encouraged families “to read through the whole Bible every two years and Luther’s catechism every four weeks.”[31]

· Most church leaders in Wesley’s day, too, believed that “religious education did play an important role in the training of children, and that parents were important in the process.”[32]

· Jonathan Edwards “was a loving parent who took pains to raise his own children as faithful Christians. … he prayed with them, quizzed them on the Bible and the Westminster Shorter Catechism, and discouraged ‘frolicking’.”[33] He urged the parents in his congregations to do the same, to “lead family prayers every day, and serve as examples of Christian virtue.”[34] He urged them to be “as Carefull About the welfare of [children’s] souls as you are about their bodies.”[35]

· Friedrich Schleiermacher considered the Christian home to be the “first and irreplaceable school of faith, ”[36] “a center of worship and Bible study in which children could … experience the full range of Christian religious affections and come to a living faith in God.”[37] He argued that it was only after such initial nurture that the clergy were able to “properly train young people to think about their faith in doctrinal terms.”[38]

· Horace Bushnell claimed that “the ‘atmosphere’ of a Christian home – the ‘manners, personal views, prejudices, practical motives, and spirit of the house’ – played a determinative role in the child’s religious formation.”[39] He warned parents about “the dangers of ‘ostrich nurture,’ of allowing to forge his or her own way to heaven, ”[40] because, for Bushnell, the family rather than the church was the “primary agent of grace … [and] Christian nurture took its deepest root in the daily routines of family life … as the child absorbed the Christian atmosphere of the home and observed the tender, upright example of Christian parents.”[41]

· Karl Barth gave parents guidelines about their “ambassadorial function … to attest to their children a divine promise,”[42] and to “communicate to children that their lives ‘are under the guardianship and guidance of the One who really undertakes for them.”[43]

· Many contemporary feminist theologians state that “to learn to nurture through the act of parenting is to acquire an essential human virtue and even to perfect one’s own life of faith in Christ. To care for all children, and not simply one’s own child, … becomes key to the good Christian life.”[44] Further, “parenthood is a vocation for both women and men, not an avocation or a pastime.”[45]

However, many people in the church today believe that it is the “programs offered in their congregations [that] provide the primary place for the faith formation of children, and congregational leaders themselves have erred in allowing the focus of faith development to shift away from the family and to become centred in the congregation.”[46]

“Since the biblical model is for children to receive spiritual nurture first and foremost from their prime care givers in their own homes, there is a need for churches today to help and resource Christian parents to carry out their role.”[47] It seems obvious that “the best vehicles for the transmission of faith to children are family rituals, family service projects, and meaningful conversations with children in the home.”[48] So Dallow suggests that all Christian families should, “tell and retell Bible stories and share stories of faith experience; celebrate faith in everyday life; pray together; listen and talk to each other; [and] be involved in acts of service and witness together.”[49]

Others argue that “parents … should work as God works, bringing up children in the ‘nurture and admonition of the Lord’ (Ephesians 6.4) through appropriate caring and nurturing relationships in the discipline of the family.”[50] Such nurture will be primarily “non-verbal, implicit … passing on the Christian character and spirit through living together and parenting.”[51]

Sarah Johnson’s book, Daring to be Different: Being a Faith Family in a Secular World (2004, Darton, Longman & Todd) offers encouragement, practical advice, and suggestions for lively ways to build faith into daily family life.

But if this shift is to take place, the Christian family will need the help “of a supportive, serious, nurturing congregation to offer three things: a wider perspective, a less fraught and forced set of relationships (sometimes), and a Christian context that is more explicitly related to the Jesus story.”[52] Our churches need to be giving “greater attention to parent education, including the psychology of children and the practice of Christian education in the home,”[53] and in this way we can complement and complete “the Christian nurture started in the home, taking the child on to new explorations of discipleship.”[54]

[1] Understanding Christian Nurture (1981, a report of the Consultative Group on Ministry among Children, British Council of Churches), quoted by Sutcliffe (ed.), Tuesday’s Child (2001, Christian Education Publications), p.158
[2] Unfinished Business (1994, CCBI Publications), quoted by Sutcliffe (ed.), Tuesday’s Child (2001, Christian Education Publications), p.206
[3] Mark Russell, interviewed by Lake, Let the Children come to Communion (2006, SPCK), p.87
[4] Dallow, Touching the Future: A handbook for church-based children’s leaders (2002, The Bible Reading Fellowship), p.1450
[5] Dallow, Touching the Future: A handbook for church-based children’s leaders (2002, The Bible Reading Fellowship), p.8
[6] Francis & Astley, Children, Church and Christian Learning (2002, SPCK), p.3
[7] Francis & Astley, Children, Church and Christian Learning (2002, SPCK), p.3
[8] Francis & Astley, Children, Church and Christian Learning (2002, SPCK), p.3
[9] Francis & Astley, Children, Church and Christian Learning (2002, SPCK), p.3
[10] Dallow, Touching the Future: A handbook for church-based children’s leaders (2002, The Bible Reading Fellowship), p.28
[11] Dallow, Touching the Future: A handbook for church-based children’s leaders (2002, The Bible Reading Fellowship), p.29
[12] Dallow, Touching the Future: A handbook for church-based children’s leaders (2002, The Bible Reading Fellowship), p.30
[13] Francis & Astley, Children, Church and Christian Learning (2002, SPCK), p.13
[14] Francis & Astley, Children, Church and Christian Learning (2002, SPCK), p.3
[15] Bunge, ‘Introduction’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.20
[16] Chrysostom, cited by Bunge, ‘Introduction’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.21
[17] Chrysostom, cited by Bunge, ‘Introduction’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.21
[18] Chrysostom, cited by Bunge, ‘Introduction’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.21
[19] Guroian, ‘The Ecclesial Family: John Chrysostom on Parenthood and Children’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.62
[20] Chrysostom, cited by Bunge, ‘Introduction’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.21
[21] Guroian, ‘The Ecclesial Family: John Chrysostom on Parenthood and Children’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.62
[22] Guroian, ‘The Ecclesial Family: John Chrysostom on Parenthood and Children’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.63
[23] Luther, cited by Bunge, ‘Introduction’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.21
[24] Luther, cited by Bunge, ‘Introduction’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.21
[25] Pitkin, ‘“The Heritage of the Lord”: Children in the Theology of John Calvin’ , in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.171
[26] Miller, ‘Complex Innncence, Obligatory Nurturance, and Parental Vigilance: “The Child” in the Work of Menno Simons’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.207
[27] Miller, ‘Complex Innncence, Obligatory Nurturance, and Parental Vigilance: “The Child” in the Work of Menno Simons’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.211
[28] Miller, ‘Complex Innncence, Obligatory Nurturance, and Parental Vigilance: “The Child” in the Work of Menno Simons’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.210
[29] Bunge, ‘Education and the Child in Eighteenth-Century German Pietism: Perspectives from the Work of A. H. Franke’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.264
[30] Bunge, ‘Education and the Child in Eighteenth-Century German Pietism: Perspectives from the Work of A. H. Franke’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.264
[31] Bunge, ‘Education and the Child in Eighteenth-Century German Pietism: Perspectives from the Work of A. H. Franke’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.264
[32] Heitzenrater, ‘John Wesley and Children’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.280
[33] Brekus, ‘Children of Wrath, Children of Grace: Jonathan Edwards and the Puritan Culture of Child Rearing’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.311
[34] Brekus, ‘Children of Wrath, Children of Grace: Jonathan Edwards and the Puritan Culture of Child Rearing’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.321
[35] Brekus, ‘Children of Wrath, Children of Grace: Jonathan Edwards and the Puritan Culture of Child Rearing’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.321
[36] Schleiermacher, cited by Bunge, ‘Introduction’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.22
[37] DeVries, ‘“Be Converted and Become as Little Children”: Friedrich Schleiermacher on the Religious Significance of Children’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.333
[38] DeVries, ‘“Be Converted and Become as Little Children”: Friedrich Schleiermacher on the Religious Significance of Children’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.333
[39] Bendroth, ‘Horace Bushnell’s Christian Nurture’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.354
[40] Bendroth, ‘Horace Bushnell’s Christian Nurture’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.362
[41] Bendroth, ‘Horace Bushnell’s Christian Nurture’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.356
[42] Werpehowski, ‘Reading Karl Barth on Children’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.398
[43] Werpehowski, ‘Reading Karl Barth on Children’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.399
[44] Miller-McLemore, ‘“Let the Children Come” Revisited: Contemporary Feminist Theologians on Children, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.464
[45] Miller-McLemore, ‘“Let the Children Come” Revisited: Contemporary Feminist Theologians on Children, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.470
[46] Bunge, ‘Introduction’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.24
[47] Dallow, Touching the Future: A handbook for church-based children’s leaders (2002, The Bible Reading Fellowship), p.107
[48] Bunge, ‘Introduction’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.24
[49] Dallow, Touching the Future: A handbook for church-based children’s leaders (2002, The Bible Reading Fellowship), p.110
[50] Francis & Astley, Children, Church and Christian Learning (2002, SPCK), p.59
[51] Francis & Astley, Children, Church and Christian Learning (2002, SPCK), p.59
[52] Francis & Astley, Children, Church and Christian Learning (2002, SPCK), p.208
[53] Francis & Astley, Children, Church and Christian Learning (2002, SPCK), p.43
[54] Francis & Astley, Children, Church and Christian Learning (2002, SPCK), p.208