Northwood United Church

Ministering To Children

Isaiah 9: 2-7
January 27, 2008
Gaye Sharpe

Many of us share a dream - a dream that our children and grandchildren will be a part of a Christian faith community- a community where people care deeply for one another and reach out to a world in need. Maybe, like you, I want a church where my grandchildren will be affirmed and nurtured as they grow in faith, where my daughters will be called upon to use their spiritual gifts and supported as parents, where my family will laugh and find joy, where they will receive comfort in times of sorrow.

I dream my children will be practicing Christians with a base in the church. (Larissa prayer candle) The reality is, if you are around my age or older, most of your children and grandchildren have not found this kind of community. They do not even look to the church to fill their community, faith or spiritual needs, even though they have profound spiritual questions and experiences!

Larissa first came to our church 3 years ago. Her grandmother had been bringing her older brother for a number of months. She made it clear it was finally her turn! Each Sunday she lights a prayer candle for her great gran who died over a year ago. Larissa typifies many children in our communities of faith and those in our secular communities.

My ministry with children has taught me that children bring a wealth of spiritual experience into our communities. They yearn for ways of deepening this experience in worship and play. They actively seek out relationship with the Holy. They, like us, search for the light God promises. (annual mtg. art) The hard truth of it is that today's children and their parents, on the whole, did not and do not find the "Great light" Isaiah speaks of in our churches. Our churches have been failing children for decades and, as my husband would say, this is what we are pretending not to know. But when we face it we know it's true -because our children and grandchildren just aren't here. If church had made a great difference in their lives and if they felt it would make a great difference in their children's lives, our churches would be over flowing. The truth is our ministry with children is broken.

Our ministry is broken when we teach the Bible as if it were just another book of moral fables or stories of great heroes. Yet this is what children learn in most of our church schools, camps and vacation Bible schools.

Our ministry is broken when church leaders see children's ministry as a marketing tool to get their parents in. (It's the biggest worry that I have about Emerging Spirit - that we will use parent's love for their children to lure them back to a church that is not offering anything more substantive than before.)

Our ministry with children is broken when we trivialize God to our children. We so easily speak about God to children as the one that can make everything "all better"- even when we know life is much more complex.
Let me read you part a letter from Heather age 13.

Dear God, Here are a few questions: Why do you let good people and families suffer? Why do you let people get addicted to things? Why do you let friends break apart? Why do you let men hit their wives?

Heather had over 40 questions for God. She had an idea of a fairy-godmother God who could wave a wand and fix it all. When she started to experience life in all of its shades of gray, this idea of God no longer fit. She felt betrayed by what we had been teaching her or maybe more accurately "not teaching her" all of these years. Heather left the congregation not long after writing this letter. (mystery in sacred space) Our children's ministry is broken because we've become dependent on an eighteen century schooling model forgetting that much of a child's spiritual formation is experiential, active and intuitive. Astonishing things happen when this model is transformed.

We were exploring the story of Joshua sending spies into the city of Jericho. The Grade One and Two class disguised themselves and planned to crawl on their bellies into the sanctuary and spy on the adults. Unfortunately once all the final preparations were made, the secret signals practiced and instructions about the key function of surveillance emphasized, the only activity to observe was the sermon. The children played their role perfectly. Not a sound was made. They spread out on their bellies into the sanctuary and paid close attention to the preacher and the congregation. Once the 'leaving signal' was issued, they crawled out of the sanctuary and headed downstairs to debrief. I asked, "What did you see?" One of the children said, "I saw Keith (the minister) telling the adults about God." Angus responded, "I think that people should figure it out for themselves." Another child said, "I saw Keith teaching people about how God wants them to live." Angus piped up, "I think that people should figure it out for themselves." I asked Angus, "Do you think that it is possible for some people to know more about God than other people?" He said, "Yes." I asked, "Angus, do you think that it is possible that Keith might know some things about God than other people don't." Again he responded, "Yes."

Then I wondered out loud, "Angus do you know some things about God that Keith doesn't know." He said, "Absolutely!" "What do you know about God that Keith doesn't know, Angus?" "I know that God is alive in the earth and the trees."

Angus's experience of God, his wisdom, calls for our respect. It also calls for us to offer a wide array of opportunities to expand and nourish his experience and knowledge.

Our children's ministry is broken when we depend on our programs and curriculum to introduce children to God - rather than working with families and communities to carry a significant proportion of this ministry.

Between the ages of 6 and 18 children watch on average 16,000 hours of television. If a child attends church 3 times a month for an hour for all of these same years it would add up to 432 hours. That's one fortieth of the time! If we speak only in terms of time, we have a challenge to be a major influence in the lives of children if their only contact to Christianity is through Sunday School.

But perhaps most important, our children's ministry is broken when the church helps parents to believe that we are the prime spiritual nurturers of their children. In this we have misled parents and allowed them to abdicate their responsibility in the spiritual formation of their children.

I turned over my children's Christian education to Sunday school. I trusted that learning to pray; engaging Biblical stories, questions of theology and justice would not only be taught but encouraged and practiced. (This was of course before I started working in children's ministry.) My adult children now upbraid me for their lack of Biblical knowledge, for the absence of visible prayer and conversations about our faith in our home. They are right!

A church program itself cannot spiritually form a child, but a family living in an intergenerational community of faith can. This is why we need to start imagining and dreaming together a new way/ a new future/ a new expression of the Light for our ministry with children. (Betty & Tahah) This may be hard to hear. Many of us are the ones who created these programs; we've been the Sunday school teachers and the camp leaders. We invested in this model of church with our time and money.

Yet maybe God is gently and maybe not so gently, lighting a new path, a new ministry with children and their families.

The dream of a church that my children and grandchildren would like to be a part of is emerging in little pockets, in many places.

I see children with significant power and responsibility in their congregations - power over space - like their church school rooms, like their art being framed and placed in the narthex and, yes, even in the sanctuary. I see children deciding how their offering is allocated. I watch children impact Joint Needs Assessments. I have received spirit-filled pastoral care from children.

Many congregations are trusting children with the Bible -taking their questions and insights seriously, not limiting scripture to the sanitized version of the story (as we often do with Noah's ark.) Children are not only telling/dramatizing our stories in worship, they are learning how to play and think theologically.

Some congregations wrestle with what it means to be a truly intergenerational community - a community where people share more than a good morning or a cup of coffee after church - a community where people of all ages share their lives together.

I believe the greatest sign of hope is in the families coming to our churches. Most of these parents are not willing to just hand over their children to us. They feel coming to church is serious business and they carry significant expectations of our communities when they arrive at our doors. They expect to be treated with courtesy; they expect we will teach them how to behave in church, they expect their children to be treated with respect and receive quality programming in a safe and clean environment. They expect to be given the opportunity to offer their ideas and opinions.

I wonder when they arrive if they will find a way to learn and to serve. I wonder if they will feel the presence of God in worship and if they will have challenging conversations about Christian parenting with resources to help along the way. I wonder if they will hear what we believe and why. These hopes and expectations don't seem unreasonable. What makes them so very reasonable is that they are built on the firmest of foundations. They are built on the promise that we as congregations make to each baptized child and to their parents. We promise to provide Christian nurture for the child and support to the parents as they raise the child as a Christian. Our church declares that something profound, mysterious and Holy surrounds baptism. We enter into this mystery through our words and our actions. May our promise be trustworthy!

Meeting the reasonable expectations of parents and children is also grounded in the actions and words of Jesus. The Gospel of Mark tells the story of Jesus putting a child in the midst of the disciples. With his arms around the child, Jesus says, "Whoever welcomes a child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me, welcomes the one who sent me." Jesus directs his disciples, now us, to welcome children in his name and, when we do, we welcome God. What an incredible opportunity to invite God into our midst!

Having witnessed the fruit of this promise in my ministry with children I can testify, without hesitation, that the bounty is without measure. Let me conclude with a final story. One Sunday Leah, eight years old, arrived at the church. She came on her own - being dropped off at the door by her parents. She knew no one and no one knew her. Every week Leah would come charging through the doors, smile at the ready. Shortly, she knew everyone and everyone knew her.

After a year Leah came to me wanting to know if she could be baptized. The challenge of course came from the fact that, even though her parents brought her to the congregation each Sunday, they were not a part of the community and had no interest in church. Leah clearly declared her desire, even yearning, to be a baptized member of the church.

Our Session wrestled. We decided that Leah would be baptized on Easter Sunday with the congregation making the parental vows.

With a raging fever of almost 40, Leah arrived sporting a new white dress, a cross (a gift from her parents) and her mom and dad. She radiated joy and love of God. The congregation proudly declared their faith and their intention of nurturing Leah as she grew in her faith. The Spirit of Jesus was so palpable in the sanctuary we could declare with utter confidence that "Jesus is risen; he is risen indeed!"

Our ministry with children is not the responsibility of the few people that can be cajoled into teaching Sunday school, or the parents, who feel that they have no other choice but to volunteer. This ministry is a precious gift, given to all disciples of Jesus.

When we nourish family and children's ministry, we nourish the Body of Christ and we glow with the Great Light that was gifted to us those thousands of years ago.

Thanks be to God.

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