Children's Ministry in the Way of Jesus by Csinos David M.;Beckwith Ivy;Westerhoff III John H.;

Author:Csinos, David M.;Beckwith, Ivy;Westerhoff III, John H.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Published: 2013-10-04T00:00:00+00:00

Janice, Emilio and Tory are three pastors who regularly meet for conversation over coffee and pastries at a local donut shop in the downtown core of their city. Each Tuesday, they share their pastoral concerns with one another, celebrate recent accomplishments and offer mutual encouragement and advice.

On one particular Tuesday, Tory arrived late and looked especially frustrated when he sat down at the table.

“What’s the matter?” Emilio inquired.

“You look like I do when I come home from our parish board meetings,” joked Janice.

“I’m at my wit’s end,” Tory responded. “Two weeks ago we discovered a colony of bats living in the church’s attic. We’ve tried everything to get them out: we climbed on the roof after they left for the night, hoping to plug the entrance they discovered. But we couldn’t figure out how they were getting in. The administrator called an exterminator, but whatever he did didn’t seem to work, because they were back in the attic three days later. I just don’t know what to do anymore.”

“Oh, we had the same problem a few years ago,” Janice replied. “There’s something about old, dusty church attics that seem to attract the little critters.”

Tory perked up. “Well, how did you get rid of them?”

“Easiest thing in the world: we baptized and confirmed them. They never came back to church again!”

This humorous fictional story points to a reality that far too many faith communities face. No, it’s not bats in the attic. It’s the mass exoduses of young people when they reach adolescence and adulthood. Whether a church practices infant baptism and confirmation or infant dedication and believer’s baptism, ministers see the truth of this joke as attendance rates for young people drop off as children become teenagers and teenagers grow into adulthood.

For many faith communities, this trend of a high dropout rate for adolescents and young adults begins in Sunday school, as children join one another in church classrooms to learn about Scripture, seasons, sacraments and what it means to be Christian. Of course, learning about these and other common Sunday school topics is fundamental to the development and articulation of Christian faith. What we learn in Sunday school often becomes the building blocks for the faith that forms and reforms throughout our lives.

But there’s an inherent problem with Sunday school as it is commonly practiced: in order to learn about the basics and fundamentals of the faith, children are often sequestered from the rest of the faith community. This is particularly true if Sunday school (or children’s liturgy or whatever a children’s program might be called) happens at the same time as a congregation’s worship service. In essence, in our efforts to nurture Christian faith in our children, we end up creating a separate community that is distinct and often isolated from the wider body of believers who participate in worship services and other core practices of the faith community.

Now, imagine a child who has grown up in the church but has never really been a part of the core community.

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