Sometime back (years rather than months) I was involved with a family which moved from one fellowship to another because they, "Wanted their children to become Christians!" Whilst the dog-collar was most understanding and even supportive of their moving away, there was a real feeling of loss and disappointment at their leaving.
Here in the Vicar's palace we have been dealing with the desire to see our children grow up with a reasoned, real and responsive Christian faith and realised long ago that the roots of this were to be found in the home,not the church or the church school they attended (all four have been in church schools for their primary education). In fact I can honestly (and sadly) say that I don't think the schooling was as much help in developing and nurturing a Christian faith as they could have been. To be honest some of the goings on, coupled with an increasing non-Christian school family population (the problem with 'successful' faith schools is that they attract the children of aspiring, yet non-believing, parent and this can result (especially if the school ethos is a 'limp' or nominal Christianity) in something bland and distinctly non-evangelistic or faith-building - and this is damaging to the potential of a mature faith later!
So the basis of a Christian faith is what happens inside the walls of our homes. The wonderful days of 'a hug, a kiss and a prayer' and bedtime stories and praying with them. That wonderful moment when the child talks about Jesus being in heaven and in their heart {because He's died for them on the cross) and the other peaks that rise through the crests of life's little wavelets all conspire to come together and form an embryonic faith.
Church, in the guise of that place we attend on a Sunday, cannot 'make' our children Christian but it can help by placing the right thinking and telling the right stories, asking the right questions and avoiding too simple a faith (something that needs to be challenged and modified when they come to early adulthood, often with the most detrimental of outcomes). My take on it is that any church which fails to cater for children, and so many do as they offer their childminding service which they laughingly bill as Sunday School or whatever!!! If it isn't engaging with the children from the very start then it needs to be challenged and if the challenge is rejected then so too should the church be! As I see it, ideally church should provide support and reinforcement for the family's work with their children. It isn't there to 'make them Christian' but to support that task as it is carried out in the homes (and this includes helping the parents to engage with this in a sound and realistic manner).
I have, sadly, often found that Church schools to be less 'Christian' than some of their secular counterparts. One school I have known had all the children recite the Lord's prayer after I had prayed at the end of assembly. I have never seen this in any of the church schools I have worked with! Often, interestingly in the tougher areas, I have found Christian staff members who have sought to create an ethos that was supportive of the many faiths around them and looked to Christianity in particular.
We must never look to our churches or other bodies to 'make our children Christian!' But we must ask the questions and choose carefully so that the places we take our children and the teaching and examples before them do not hinder our task as parents. To present childish (and theologically incorrect) models as incontrovertible truth is only to help our teenagers assume that if thse truths were tosh then so too is all of it!
It is tough but we need to stand with, and allow access to our children, only those who would assist them join the dots and develop a faith that will stand and will stand up for itself and others who might think (or believe) differently. To do this we need a place of honesty, encouragement and orthodoxy. Anything else is to sell the Gospel short and to condemn our children to a flimsy and impotent faith which is destined to fail (and fail them).
Pax
2 comments:
Faith begins in the home and family.
The Hebrew scriptures clearly lay the responsibility for a child's spiritual development on the parents, and the home is the focus of religious life. The wider community aspects (synagogue, temple, pilgrimage) are also very important, but without the basis and support of the home are less meaningful.
We started with the "hug, kiss, prayer, bedtime story" when ours were very small. And amazingly (minus the kiss) kept it up until our elder son got a part-time evening job in sixth form college. This in spite of our telling them after primary school that they could give it up whenever they chose. But there increasingly need to be places and situations where that development can take place independently of parents, especially during their teens, and I think this is where the wider church comes in. At that age they need slightly older mentors who can demonstrate the relevance of Christian faith in the adult world and help them see how that faith can be lived out.
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