A few posts back, I requested input on children’s ministry in churches which are using structures best described as “alternative” to the establishment. I didn’t get much of a response (a couple of others who are curious like me!), and I’m still interested in hearing what you all are doing. Perhaps if you know of someone doing something, you could forward this or the previous post along?
I do have some thoughts to share on the subject. There seems to be an attitude that small churches cannot develop a quality ministry to children and therefore will have difficulty attracting younger parents. This critique appears valid on the surface, but it assumes the programmed nature of children’s ministry in the established church is the right way to go.
A quality alternative to traditional children’s ministry would be to focus on the parents of children. By this, I mean your children’s ministry finds its heart in equipping young parents to raise their children. This includes but is not limited to providing materials which young parents can easily introduce to their children. But merely making parents substitutes for sunday school teachers and other children’s church leaders would fall short of the potential smaller churches have to make a genuine impact on the lives of children.
Another method for assisting parents would be to give them some time off! A weekly (Friday or Saturday preferred) kid’s night at someone’s home or on church property if its owned would provide a date night with free babysitting. While to some of you this may seem like dumping the children off at the church, it’s a much better break than for parents who do this on Sunday mornings. It has the potential to strengthen marriages by providing time away from the children for the purpose of just being together. This should be embedded into the minds of the young parents. The kid’s night is as much for them as it is for the children.
A smaller church focused on relationships provides a backdrop making this a likely reality. Encouraging parents to spend the “kid’s night” time together should be central to this ministry. Developing healthy Christian marriages will produce a higher quality children’s ministry than we can currently imagine.
Another possibility for ministry to children is having several families with children get together one or more nights a week to share meals, pray, worship, and engage in family bible study together. When we share the responsibilities for raising children in the Church, everyone benefits, especially the children.
Any other ideas? I fear that children are most often dumped to the wayside in favor of our looser structures. It’s easy to do nothing, especially when your church consists mostly of twenty-something singles. It doesn’t have to be this way, and I believe the ideas above and others that emerging church persons can come up with will actually develop a higher quality of ministry to children than we currently see in the established church.
Added:
Scot McKnight has just posted on some children-related issues, not necessarily exactly what I’m talking about here, but it regards raising children in the faith.
I don’t have answers but I know some people who are working on them. Two are Lorna Jenkins is Asia/Australia and Daphne Kirk in the United Kingdom. I’ve learned a lot about studying them.
The churches trying to explore different forms of child ministry would do well to look at history and the homeschooling movement. Many alternatives to age segregated classrooms led by teachers (our current “traditional” model) are explored in these two resources. I particularly like the apprenticeship model where children are paired with adults who are not their parents for discipleship. I also like training parents in the apprenticeship model so they can be the primary disciplers of their children.
My preference for the apprenticeship model mirrors the deficiencies from my traditional church upbringing. When I left home for a Christian college there were many things I didn’t know and understand about living the Christian life and growing in maturity even though I’d been in church and youth group my whole life. Part of that was caused by the church separating me as a child from growing adult Christians in age segregated Sunday schools and activities. I’m not saying that children and parents should never be separated. I am describing a system, for instance, where children are exposed to the real needs of the community and family, asked to pray about them with and for adults, and can rejoice as God comes through for his people. I’m also describing a system where families are encouraged and trained to be the primary spiritual support for each other and children are encouraged in the use of spiritual gifts for the benefit of the Body. I think this jives well with the overall heart of the emerging church.
Fleshing out the application of the apprenticeship model or any alternative child discipleship model will be as individual as the kinds of people calling themselves “emerging” and will require concerted effort to revise our vision of what children’s ministry can look like.
Karen
January 17th, 2007
Sorry, rereading your post gave me more thoughts. Here’s what happened to us.
We started attending a church plant every early in its life. The church was full of twenty something singles and a few married couples. Soon enough the married couples had babies (pretty much all at the same time). There was no children’s ministry but it didn’t matter for babies so we hired professional babysitters for the kids during the service. The moms had a weekday Bible study and hired a babysitter then as well. Those who visited who had older children left because we had nothing for them. We saw that as ok for a while because we knew we needed time to be ready to do a real children’s ministry. The singles started pairing up and getting married. Then the second crop of babies came along.
One of the young moms took on the job of creating a formal nursery with profession and congregational leadership so that we could grow and visitors would feel more welcome. Lorna Jenkins, Daphne Kirk, as well as others were researched to define a philosophy of children’s ministry. A model for older children was put in place that with a few modifications is still used today. Largely though the church has gravitated towards known models of children’s ministry and away from more adventurous “non-traditional” models. It is hard to see anything other than the way it has always been done as a good children’s ministry. And how do you explain it to visitors who only know the ways they grew up with?
Because of tensions in the church and because the families with young children (preschoolers and babies) had to create and plan for themselves almost everything child related, they became exhausted quickly. This contributed (along with other factors) to some leaving the church, but the church gained new families and the children’s ministry grew. I think a key difficulty that we faced, and any church of young people will face, is the lack of needed input and mentoring from older people/parents and the lack of understanding that the community has some responsibility for the care of the community’s children. If others without children had stepped up (and some did but more were needed) to care for the needs of the young children and their parents, the parents’ burnout might not have happened.
Daphne Kirk especially addresses how difficult it can be to transform from the mentality of the traditional model (people good with kids/called to children’s ministry are responsible for child discipleship) to a more community model (I have a responsibility to develop relationships with children because we are good for each other’s spiritual growth). Most adults see children as a prohibiting factor to worship and spiritual growth. So each community must explore the right balance of adults and children working/growing together but I think a good deal of retraining and changing of mindset is in order too.
Karen
January 17th, 2007
Thanks for the input, Karen! I’ve checked out the website you linked to. Interesting material. I’ve bookmarked it in del.icio.us to give some of her material a better read through later.
Alan
January 18th, 2007
Did you get the book recommendation I posted too. It had three links so I wonder if it was deleted.
They were:
Marva J. Dawn – Is it a Lost Cause?
Gary L. Thomas – Sacred Parenting
Robbie Castelman and Ruth Graham Bell – Parenting in the Pew
Not that I agree with everything all of these authors (including Kirk and Jenkins) say, but they have influenced my understanding.
Karen
January 20th, 2007
Ahhh, it probably went into the Akismet spam filtering. I never really check that, sorry about that…
Thanks for reposting your comment.
Alan
January 20th, 2007
We need a paradigm shift in children’s ministry… one that moves from age-segregation, and the systematic isolation and separation of children from mature Christian influences to one which (A) integrates children and adults together and (2) demands and challenges those other adults in the church to full Christian maturity, taking up their calling and responsibility to be the church.
We cannot do children’s ministry as we have been for much longer – what are the results? A church in decline, children and young people who (despite years and years of our programming) fall away and cease to be in church; parents who are alienated from their children – at least spiritually – week after week after week after week after pitiful week. And somehow we so TWIST the truth… we have a backslider who comes to church after mis-spent young adult life… they remember a few Sunday School songs and we say “Praise the Lord” what a WONDEFUL ministry that Sunday School was, sowing seeds that brought this child back to God…. STOP. THINK. Perhaps it was that ‘Sunday School’ that caused that child to wander and get off trackin the first place…. perhaps our beloved age-segregated children’s ministry was USELESS; in fact it may have been positively harmful in that it prevented that young person following the path God intended in the church.
I know several families who LONG, absolutely LONG for children’s ministry as we have known it to TERMINATE. That is PLEASE stop Sunday Schools, church nurseries, youth groups and all those other man-made inventions. STOP! These people are NOT emergingn church – they are mainstream.
Whether you are in the emerging church or the mainstream church children do not need isolation and segregation; systems that perpetuate the conditions where child abuse thrives just cannot be justified (even if we tag children and vet volunteers these do not change those conditions where children are exposed to other adults outside parental supervision and where children end up getting hurt).
By all means mentor and guide adults – especially parents of children – but children are vulnerable; they need a special mentoring that is always under parental supervision. Some parents may learn something about how to relate to their children if they see a mature Christian model spiritually guiding that child. BUT DO NOT repeat those awful conditions of isolation and segregation where child abuse thrives; or put children into relationships with other adults outside the family. Of course abuse happens wtihin families and ‘mentors’ may spot that and help children in abusive family situations – but segregation and isolation should be out of fashion. And every church ‘should’ be doing whatever it can to terminate the things it is doing that either (a) isolates children from parents, or(b) isolates the family from the church.
As the old road safety adage says ….STOP. LOOK. LISTEN. THINK. As we transition from Christendom to something new firstly STOP – stop those Sunday Schools and church nurseries and youth groups; secondly look, listen and think – at what the BIble says, what theology days, what the world about you says, how the church has been compromised by the world, and then search like you have never searched before, search for what God wants. Please just do not offer prayers for more Sunday SChool teachers (or people to run the nursery) and assume you have the answer to life the universe and everything.
Of course folk will for many years have the mindset of ‘dropping off the kids’; people will truly believe that they are best supported as Christian parents by pretending that they don’t have children for an hour or so while they ‘do worship’; people will for many years look to the church to provide free Sunday childcare and “religious education” (as if Christianity was just any other subject that we could teach in an artifical peer-based classroom); it will take many years for the mindset to leave the church. BUt please as the church guide people into the right way. Don’t just pander to their whims… by all means support them as parents by giving them a break – but in the life and mission of the church do not compromise worship and teaching by separating adults and children any longer!
Copyright Susan George
http://www.churchbaby.info
susan george
January 27th, 2007
Yes, Susan, this is what my research also led me to conclude. The transition to these alternate forms of thinking about children’s ministry. The transition will indeed be difficult.
Unfortunately we are attending a church where the cry of my heart for my children is squashed. Yet I have full confirmation that is where God wants us to be now. So being in the awkward and frustrating situation of knowing how I long for things to be and what God has given me to work with, I ask him, “What am I to do?”
I think many churches, leaders, and parents are in this place too. Stuck in transition. The whole Church is experiencing growing pains right now. Where is God taking us? How do I live out being a “post-modern Christian” while going to a more traditional church? How do I live out the vision of family unity and spiritual growth while still attending a church that separates me from my children at every turn?
Not as a cliche but in reality I’m clinging to God making the difficult possible. For I am convinced, based on God’s history with his people, that he does not need ideal conditions to bring about the holiness he desires in his people and the incarnational ministry he wants to give the world. In fact non-ideal conditions may serve his purpose better. I can do without the best forms. I cannot do without daily desperate dependence on Him.
I’m not disagreeing with what you said the church needs to do. (Good Stop, Look, Listen… analogy
) I just feel frustrated that reality is so complicated! I feel like it takes so much needless energy to circumvent the disadvantages of the old Sunday School system my children are in but that’s what I’m called to do for my family. I’m left with encouraging every parent and church leader I encounter to rethink the traditional ideas about church, children, and family. I am able to do that a lot because I’m in a more traditional church system. It just feels like the effort doesn’t produce results (yet?). More than that though these parents, myself included, need to depend on God more fully for ourselves and our children.
Karen
February 10th, 2007
Alan, no Trackback url?
I’ve posted some thoughts and resource links on this topic, picking up on the theme. More people need to be talking about this.
Gratia vobis et pax,
—Bro.M.
Brother Maynard
February 11th, 2007
Heh. Thanks for pointing out no trackback url, I didn’t realize this template didn’t automatically put one in.
I checked the post, and as my settings indicate it should, it allows pings.
So, do you set your wordpress to auto-ping when you link to a site? It should’ve trackbacked automatically if you do.
Also, adding trackback/ or /trackback/ (the former for my site), should ping the wordpress install and post your trackback. Did you try that? I think WordPress has that feature universally unless you shut off trackbacks.
And now, I’ll work on adding a trackback URL directly to posts…
Alan
February 11th, 2007
Alan,
I keep the trackbacks and pingbacks active by default on my blog(s)… I just double-checked, and that is the case, so a pingback should have appeared on this post, but it hasn’t. I thought of hacking the url for the WP default, but figured I’d just let the auto-notify setting attempt its thing, comment as a fallback ;^)
Could be an anti-spam plugin thwarting them too.
Cheers,
Brother Maynard
February 11th, 2007
“There seems to be an attitude that small churches cannot develop a quality ministry to children and therefore will have difficulty attracting younger parents. This critique appears valid on the surface, but it assumes the programmed nature of children’s ministry in the established church is the right way to go.”
Alan this strikes me as a very important realisation. The assumption that herding everyone into the age ghetto at church is the way to go is a deepseated one indeed. But I am becoming very fond of the idea of church for People rather than church for Market Segments.
My church’s ideal for the way we minister to people is: together when possible, separate when necessary. And we are discovering that it is possible to be all together a lot more than one might think.
My church is very new, so I don’t know how well what we are doing works, but I think it is quite good so far. I’ve just left a comment on Brother Maynard’s blog describing what we do: http://www.subversiveinfluence.com/wordpress/?p=1089
I have also written about why we do it on my own blog: http://www.d-train.net/article/158/youth-ministry-is-dead-long-live-the-family
One of the things that we want to do, but haven’t yet it to not just teach all aspects of parenting but also to model it. We are thinking about ways that we can DO good parenting in a setting that will attract others in the community to come do it alongside us.
Finally, Susan George, I found your views on this subject very thought provoking, if perhaps a bit strident. The history of Sunday School & children’s ministry on your blog was very helpful. Thanks.
Jeff Gill
February 20th, 2007
Hi,I am part of a team running a congregation in Bradford. We have a monthly schedule that we follow and we meet sometimes as adults, sometimes all-ages, and regularly in cells. We have peer-led kids cells, and different expressions of ‘cell’ for adults. We also have an intergenerational cell. Exploring worship all-ages together is one of our main values. Many adults have never done ‘sunday school’ and many of the kids lack significant adults in their lives who care about them enough to want to hang out with them. People coming in with no church background have no hang-ups about learning with their kids, and seem to enjoy the novelty (in our uk culture) of being some where their kids are allowed to run around and are loved and accepted. Sharing meals is really important too. We are still learning loads, but are enjoying the journey and are committed to learning together. I have learnt a lot about God and manga through my involvement with a cell made up of 9/10 year old boys and have been challenged in my faith by their committment to pray for eachother. I have also clock-watched and felt near to tears when I have failed to get them to engage with anything I am doing.
I have shed-loads of stories, all of them messy, but it’s well worth the ride! Cassie
Cassie Biggin
October 8th, 2007