My daughter, her friend, and I ran into someone the other day who finds it hard to hear messages at her church with a babe in tow. Together the five of us probably covered three or four generations.
My youngest daughter is a senior in high school now. She was somewhere in the middle of those generations. She said, you know it's really good for kids to do things away from their parents. They have a chance to build relationships with other kids without their parents hanging around involved in everything. Her implication was that Sunday school isn't neccessarily a bad thing. The opportunities for peer leadership and initiative, opportunities for group projects and discussions are all potentially positive.
As far as group dynamics go, from my perspective, kids play before and after multi-generational activities, and that gives them time for peer social dynamics. But adult supervision is usally better in a classroom situation.
I think most of the long-lasting peer relationships in my kids' lives came more through the people they played with regularly house to house, than the people they only saw at church or school. But maybe that's just us.
Ecclesiastes implies that there's a time and a place for everything. For me it's about taking the time to think about what you're doing, why you're doing it, and what you're growing. That's why I started blogging about kids and faith.
When you're building something new, you have opportunity to rethink all the old things most people take for granted. You have a chance to look at the big picture and ask what's working, what isn't, and why. You have a chance to be deliberate about the choices you make.
Maybe it's about recognizing the need for new wine and new wineskins without sacrificing the benefits of the old, and finding ways to make it all work together. It's about creating a place where God wants to be and a faith home where kids want to be, even after they've grown.
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