When last we spoke we were discussing what we should be doing in response to the survery of children who attend our churches that we carried out as part of the planning for Capital Vision 2020. When we asked children what was good and bad about church two words came up again and again; in the positive column ‘biscuits’ won the day but the most used negative word was ‘boring’. In fact, boring was used more than any other word in the whole survey!

An easy response to this is to think that children need to be protected from the dullness of church and whisked away into their own groups to be entertained and educated in age appropriate ways. However I’m not convinced that’s the answer so in this half of the piece we look at what the opposite to this boredom in church might be. [Read more...]

Easter somehow seems like a good time to face this, and it’s something that most of us who work with children are already aware of but still let’s say it and name our issue; most children who go to our churches think it’s boring. In fact when we carried out a survey looking for the views of children who go to churches in our Diocese boring was the word that was used the most, just for the record biscuits came second and was the most used positive word!

So am I about to write a blog where I advance a theory as to how many biscuits a child must consume to in order to compensate them for how boring church is? Could we imagine that two biscuits would compensate for a botched all-age talk whereas a bucket of chocolate biscuits would be required for continued readings from the book of Lamentations? This of course assumes that any amount of biscuits could compensate us for having to listen to Lamentations. However, the opposite of being bored is not eating biscuits and the problem of bored children won’t go away with if that’s our solution.

So what is the opposite to boring? This week I’m going to suggest some things that it isn’t and next time we’ll look at what it is.

The opposite to boring isn’t entertainment.

One of my great bug-bears in the world of children’s ministry is how the initiatives that are seen as ‘flagship’ programs are trying to solve the boredom problem with entertainment and fun. However, by doing that they are generating a group of young Christians who are passive consumers of church and who are expect everything to fit to their needs.

The opposite of boring isn’t separate services.

Children need to be part of a wider worshiping community where they get to worship and share life with adults. They need to be surrounded by role models who can show them what faith looks like by their actions and to see what it means to be an adult Christian. They need to share in the rituals of this community and find their own sense of belonging to this wider group. Running an entirely separate program may hide children from the boring bits of church but it also teaches them that church is something that is boring and not for them.

The opposite of boring isn’t pace.

Bored children will misbehave and so one solution to this is to ensure that our programs rattle along without a gap for any potential problems to occur, problem solved. Well yes but; where is the space for a child to think, pray, reflect, find God in stillness or just take a break from the busyness of life?

Be honest – which of these has happened at your church?

1. Parents dragging screaming toddlers from the sanctuary.
2. Children told to stop “bothering” the grown-ups when they are asking a question or making a comment about what’s happening.
3. Parents coming to church a bit late and sitting at the back, where their children can’t see anything.
4. Parents and children getting the stink-eye from other worshipers.
5. Children told off for touching things in church.

Even in churches that have Sunday School for much of the service, these can be a problem – before and after Sunday School, during All-Age Eucharists, over the summer break, and so on.

The problem is neatly summed up by Gretchen Wolff Pritchard, who writes, “In many churches, there seems to be an unexamined assumption that worship is for grownups and the children are there only because there’s nowhere else to put them – that they are, basically, accidental and unwelcome guests at an adult event.  People then become annoyed at children for ‘interrupting’ something that is “for ME,” not for all of us.  Parents who are trying to be considerate of others will admonish the child for ‘bothering people’ but not intervene in ways that actually help the child join the worship.”

It doesn’t have to be this way.  Yes, a toddler will occasionally throw a screaming tantrum at the quietest part of the service.  That’s inevitable, and it’s important that churches have a place where children can be taken when this happens.  But there are ways, with parents’ help, to eliminate some of these problems entirely, and minimize the rest.

This is by no means a comprehensive list of solutions – that would take at least an entire book.  But here are some ideas to get you started on helping children and parents worship together.  These ideas enhance children’s ability to engage with the service, which in turn cuts down on disruptive behaviour – most of which is due to simple boredom.

One idea is to have a children’s area in the church.  Our “Pray and Play” area at St. George’s has been a lifesaver.  It is situated within sight of the altar, and contains spiritually imaginative toys that connect both to the Christian story and to Christian worship.  Young children who are starting to fuss sitting still in a pew can come to the Pray and Play area, where they will be free to move and play, but still connected to the experience of worship and to the symbols of the Christian faith.  All you need to get started is a rug or quilt, some baskets, and some toys – a Noah’s Ark, a Nativity set, a shepherd and sheep set, a toy church (Playmobil makes one), and some books.  You can also have a small child-size altar with a wooden cross, an unbreakable goblet and plate, and, if you like, candles or an icon or fake flowers.  You can then add to your Pray and Play area as funds and ideas become available.

You can also help children engage with worship by teaching parents to sit where their children can see, and that it’s okay to whisper to them in church.  Carolyn Carter, who writes the “Worshiping With Children” blog, has some fantastic advice on whispering.

“Whispering is good,” she writes, “because it connects children learning to worship with their adults who know how to worship.  Parents can no more worship “beside” their children than they can eat “beside” their children.  Instead they must worship and eat “with” their children coaching them along the way.  During childhood both are team sports and whispering is how the coaches and players communicate in the sanctuary.”

Carter then goes on to describe different types of whispers, including: calling attention to something that is coming up, connecting to something at home, suggestions about things to listen out for, and so on.  The full blog post makes a great handout to parents, and can be found here.

Many churches provide resources for parents and children in the pews.   SPCK’s book Pray, Sing, Worship is a good guide for literate children, and can be included in a bag with some paper and markers so children can draw.  You could also present children with a page showing pictures of different items in your church, and they can see which ones they can spot from their pew.  You can also have a sheet with different phrases from the liturgy in a square table, and children cross them off when they hear them – like bingo.  Younger children can have toys, like a small shepherd and sheep set, or finger puppets of Mary and Joseph (available from Hope Education).  You can also make Liturgy Boxes for parents to bring into the pews with them, or make flags with pictures that show different things we do in worship (pray, sing, listen, shake hands, etc.) and children can wave them at the appropriate times.

None of this is easy.  Parents are busy and it’s not always easy to get them to adapt to the use of new resources.  Many worshipers are set in their ways and will never see children in anything more than a “seen but not heard” light.  But with time and patience, these ideas can make a difference in doing as Jesus said and letting the children come to him.

As a society, we have dozens of rites of passage, some more noticeable than others.  Leaving school, getting married, becoming a parent, retiring – these are obvious and important ones, and I wrote my last column on how the church could be better at celebrating the rite of passage from childhood to adolescence.

But there are many smaller rites of passage in the lives of children and young people, which we could take the opportunity of celebrating.

By marking children’s rites of passage, we send the message that what’s happening in their lives is important to God, and to the church community.  We treat them as members – not members-in-waiting – of the church family, the Body of Christ.

Here are some milestones in the lives of children, and some ideas for celebrating them.

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I was very challenged by something that I heard the other day when I was at a meeting discussing how we could assess a child’s spiritual development. I thinks it’s suffice to say that there wasn’t much agreement in the room. The main spilt was between those who basically said that spirituality is un-measurable as it’s an internal process of ‘meaning making’ and therefore it would be impossible to externally asses and those who felt that spiritual development was linked to a developing Christian maturity and therefore any spiritual development would be revealed in more ‘Christian behaviour’.

My suspicion is that one of the reasons the conversation got so tricky was that what most of us were saying is that we thought that both of these statements were true and all we were really debating was the finer points of nuance between the two positions! I’ve not made this meeting sound amazing have I? [Read more...]

Four children bounced up and down on the chancel steps. They had returned, just the day before, from a week-long residential Christian holiday, with 45 other 8-10  year old boys and girls.

“What was the best thing?” I asked them.

Without hesitation two of them said in unison, “The theme park”, followed by “Messing around in the dormitory” and “The food”. Then one boy said, “Actually, everything!” [Read more...]

On Tuesday, I attended a seminar with Brian McLaren.  Brian is the author of A New Kind of Christian, and he was discussing with a group of children and youth leaders from Anglican, Methodist, United Reformed, and other churches, how we might apply the principles of his work to children and young people.

One topic he brought up was rites of passage.

Most cultures have a ritualised way of recognising the transition of children from childhood to manhood and womanhood. Rites of passage follow a predictable pattern – from “initial status” (childhood) through a marginal or liminal period, and then a return to society with your new status (source).  For the passage from single to married, the honeymoon fulfills the role of the marginal period, where the couple withdraws from society before returning as an established married couple.

Our society is notably lacking in a rite of passage for coming of age.  Is it possible that one reason our teenagers are looking to sexuality, drinking, partying, and other behaviour that can be destructive when one is young and naive, is because they are seeking, in some way, to mark their entrance into the adult world?  Is it possible that because we have failed to honour this transition in them in a productive and celebratory way, they turn to a hedonistic and destructive way of honouring their newfound “adult” characteristics?

And is it possible that our churches could be doing something about that?

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A few weeks ago, I ordered a wooden church toy set online.  When it arrived, the Administrator and I immediately started playing with it.  We set it up for a baptism and for communion, and then for a high-church mass, with the priest behind the altar, facing away from the people.  I grabbed a plastic bag and hung it between the chancel and the nave.  “I made a rood screen!” I said.

Yes, this is just a bit of office banter, but I think it points to a profound truth – at the heart of spirituality, especially children’s spirituality, is play.  Play has been shown to enhance children’s emotional development, allowing them to develop empathy, explore stories from different perspectives, and provide a context for what they are learning.[1]  In a church setting, play allows children to achieve ownership of the stories they hear, explore them for themselves, and make meaning out of them.   It is essential that we give our children this space to master the stories for themselves, rather than seeking to impose our own meanings on them.

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I recently spent the day with a couple of classes of Year 2 children running an RE day with the following title; ‘If I could ask God a question it would be….’ The day covered many different aspects around this theme and towards the end of the day the children were able to fire their questions at me.

What questions could I expect? Would I have an answer? Could I explain the doctrine of the Trinity if asked or unpack the Christological mystery in appropriate language?

Those who have worked with children will instantly realise that these are not the questions that are important to a six-year-old, nor was it about having the answer or even an answer. It was about allowing the questions to be voiced, acknowledged and considered. The rules were simple, they could ask anything about God but I might say I didn’t know. The value of these times is in bringing into the open deep thoughts and questions about God that often haven’t been formulated into a one sentence enquiry before. As this is done so their presuppositions about God were revealed. The children were very happy to accept that God existed and that He could be everywhere, all the time, all at once. This concept was hard to visualise but fine to be believed. The issues for these children were based around how they could visualise God and understand His beginning.

Who made God?  was a popular question and What did he look like? Did he have golden hair? Where was he standing when he made the world? How old was he? These and other similar questions started to show what was important to these children. These are children whose thinking is still very literal and concrete. Fantasy and reality are all one and so their need to see God in ways that they had experience of and could relate to started to come to the surface. Seeing God in anthropomorphic terms – having two hands, two eyes, two ears etcetera helped them understand the nature of God and it was very apparent this was not an abstract idea of how they could characterise God but a literal way of thinking that God was like them. Once again it struck me how important it is to talk to children about Jesus and allow the stories of the Gospels to be told, as this is how children will see and be able to engage with God.

Six-year-olds are very egocentric. The world revolves around them and what they have experienced at home, school and the wider world is what they think is normal for everyone everywhere. The most striking question for me was voiced by a quieter child who was using their world view to imagine God.

Does God have a mummy?

The answer to this question doesn’t lie in considering the alpha and omega concepts of Revelation or in considering the inter-relationship of the Trinity personhood. The question is all about the importance of mummy to a six-year-old. The one who cares for them, protects them, provides all they need. The one who will comfort them when they are hurt and listen to them when they are afraid. So if this is their experience of mummy then who would do all of those things for God? It was beyond their ability to comprehend or accept that God didn’t have a mummy yet once again the powerful image of Jesus and his mother Mary were useful to these children to know God was OK and safe while still being able to be the creator and sustainer of the universe.

Maybe there was something I could learn from these young lives. Perhaps I should formulate my questions and speak them out to reveal how I see God.

Christians have volunteered to support local schools from the earliest days of formal education. In the 21st century they continue to make a difference in schools, whether as Christian parents with a vested interest in ensuring the school offers a good educational experience or as church members. We volunteer to: listen to readers; run homework, sports and breakfast clubs; become school governors; participate in fund-raising initiatives; lead specifically Christian activities such as assemblies, Bible clubs and RE lessons…dozens of opportunities which usually take place on school premises…‘your place’.

But there is another brand of volunteer activities which take place on church premises…‘our place’, when children come for an outing, a break from routine, to meet Christians on home territory, to discover something going on in their local community. For many children such a visit is a new experience, curiosity can be aroused, misconceptions about Christians and their faith can be altered. It is an effort for the school, but it ticks the boxes of ‘visiting places of worship’, ‘connecting with the local community’ and ‘meeting inspirational people’.

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Adam and Eve by Chris Cook

So what did I end up saying to Alice?

The other youth group leader began by explaining how all stories are products of their time.  He said that back when the story of Adam and Eve was first written down, men and women’s lives were much more unequal than they are now.  He said that every society asks questions about why the world is the way it is, and that every society answers them in ways that make sense to them.

I was glad he said this, because it’s so important and I often forget to say it.  But I think there’s more to it than that – yes, stories are products of their time, but I think this one has something to say to us, now.

Elaine Pagels writes in Adam, Eve and the Serpent that for the first four centuries of the Christian church, when Christians were an oppressed fringe sect, the story of Adam and Eve was seen partly as a confirmation of our free will.  It reminded us that we have the power to choose good and evil, and of the genuine consequences of our choices.  Only when Augustine got his hands on it did its dominant reading become one of sexual shame, in which Eve is punished for being a temptress by being told that she is now subordinate to men.  The subtext “and serves you right” is unspoken but present in this reading.

But the Bible doesn’t say that Adam needed any convincing in order to eat the fruit.  He blames Eve for leading him astray, yes, but there’s nothing that said she did anything other than “also [give] some to her husband, and he ate.”  The image of Eve alluringly pulling Adam from the straight and narrow is imposed on the text, not present in it.  And Adam blaming Eve is only part of the chain – Eve then turns right around and blames the snake.  It’s not a “j’accuse!” moment, in which the true culprit is identified and punished, but a pattern recognisable to any parent: confronted with a broken vase, your son blames your daughter, your daughter blames the dog.  The whole “the woman … gave me the fruit and I ate” is part of a lengthy process of scapegoating that is one of the first sins shown coming out of the Fall.

There’s also nothing in the Bible that suggests Eve’s curse is any more deserved than Adam’s.  Eve’s lot, and it is the lot of many women through history and today, is to end up enslaved by her own desire for her abuser.  Adam’s is to end up enslaved by the harshness of the world, the need to work in the sweat of your brow, in exchange for thorns and thistles.  Neither of these is portrayed as their just desserts.  They are both shown as the tragic result of our alienation from God.

Christian educator Gretchen Wolff Pritchard writes:

“The woman’s sin is not that she has been a temptress … the sin itself isn’t sexual at all … The story shows no more satisfaction at the fact that women suffer in childbirth than it does at the fact that men sweat in the fields.  The story exists to account for not just one evil but a whole complex of evils. Scarcity, hard labour, the inhospitability of nature, and the frequent dangerousness and difficulty of childbirth are obvious … evils, that any society will have myths to account for. The story identifies these evils and associates them as all stemming from alienation from God and our true selves … Less often noticed is the way this story associates patriarchy with the Fall. The [writers] looked around them and saw a society in which women not only suffered pain and risk from giving birth; they also suffered from their own self-destructive sexual desires and the abusive sexual desires of men who held power over them. But instead of saying, “This is how God made the world to be,” the ancient writer said, “This too has come about because of our abuse of our freedom, our spoiling of God’s plan.””

Man’s domination over women does not predate sin.  It is a result of sin.  If we were not alienated from God, there would be no sexual violence, no abuse, no revenge porn, no upskirt websites, no turning God’s daughters into objects and God’s sons into their consumers.  Which is not to say there would be no sexuality – theologians have often suggested that if there had been no Fall, our delight in sexuality would be even greater than it is now.  But it would be the sexuality of equals, rejoicing in each other’s goodness.

So here’s what I said to Alice.  I said:

“The people who were writing this story looked around and they saw a world in which men were beating up on women and the women were staying with them.  And they said, ‘this can’t be what God wants.  God’s plan must have been different.’  If you look at the story, you’ll see that all of that – the men ruling over women – that happened after they had to leave the garden.  God’s original plan was for men and women to be equal.  Sin is what messed it up.”  Maybe they got it.  Maybe they didn’t.

I wanted to add that Jesus himself reflects the equality of the garden – he never mocks or makes fun of women, never exploits them and calls them whores for allowing themselves to be exploited.  I wanted to add that all kinds of machismo, that devalue men and the women on whom they are encouraged to act out that machismo, can be included in that all-encompassing lament for our lost equality: “yet he shall rule over you.”  I wanted to launch into a speech on verbal and emotional abuse, on control and sexual humiliation.  But I didn’t want to overwhelm them with too much information or complex theory. I wanted the answer to be simple, memorable, and meaningful.

But there is one thing which, on reflection, I wish I’d said.  It is, “ultimately, this is a story that tells us that we have choices.  We can choose to treat each other as though we were equals in the garden or adversaries in the desert.  Which will you choose?”