Remember that in each chapter of Children's Spirituality there's more treasure to be had than just the things I'm blogging about.
"...[C]hildren's religious beliefs affect and are affected by their families, religious background and other aspects of the sociocultural context...These conceptualizations of children's spiritual development as profoundly social are consistent with recent sociocultural theory and research in developmental psychology, which emphasizes that children are born into relationships, families, and communities that shape and are shaped by his/her development." (CS p. 110) . Sometimes "social" in worship or religious ed is considered disruptive. How can we make this work for us, not against us?
Children are also born into a cultural, "social, and historical context" (CS p. 111) She says that "religion and spirituality may illuminate the mysterious quality of 'resilience (Garmezy, 1985)" Historically, African-American faith has made them a "resilient" people, a people "able to find meaning in their lives even in the face of extraordinary hardship." Other people groups are also wonderful examples of this. (CS p. 109) What is the historic/cultural/social context that your children have been born into? Why is it significant?
She concludes saying "Even in early childhood, youngsters combine fragments of stories and images given by their cultures into their own interpretations of God and the sacred. The question of how children develop their spirituality 'in conversation' with others - both adults and children, during everyday routines and special activies deserves serious consideration from Christian educators, parents, and scholars." (CS p. 117) Another intriguing question. Remember that passage in Deuteronomy "as you rise up and as you sit down and as you walk along the way" ?
Wednesday, January 04, 2006
Tuesday, January 03, 2006
Social - cultural context pt. 1
Dividing these just makes them shorter. I don't get a whole lot of comments on epic posts but blogging is helping me wade through this book ...
Wendy Haight* is specifically focusing on the affects of social - cultural context on children's spirituality - another rope pulling to hold the tent up (not the best metaphor perhaps but until I can think of a better one…)
Studies show that spirituality, even in children, is something that is highly valued in African- American faith communities. Children are encouraged to share their personal spiritual experiences and adults affirm to their children that these are significant and very real. (CS p. 114) Think of a time when a child shared with you a very real, very personal spiritual experience? Did it sound childish or impossible? How did you respond?
Haight describes "positive, stimulating, and rich socialization practices within anAfrican American Baptist Church
Although there are exceptions, contrasting this to European - American church cultures that they studied, "Interactions between adults and children are characterized as highly structured and adult-centered with a one-way flow of communication from adult to child. Children are discouraged from questioning, speculating or extending presented material." (CS p. 109) The last sentence here is also intriguing. How can we encourage rather than discourage "questioning, speculating, or extending presented material," not to distract us from the text but to pull us deeper?
*Wendy Haight is the PhD program director at theUniversity of Illinois , Urbana-Champaign in the School of Social Work
Wendy Haight* is specifically focusing on the affects of social - cultural context on children's spirituality - another rope pulling to hold the tent up (not the best metaphor perhaps but until I can think of a better one…)
Studies show that spirituality, even in children, is something that is highly valued in African- American faith communities. Children are encouraged to share their personal spiritual experiences and adults affirm to their children that these are significant and very real. (CS p. 114) Think of a time when a child shared with you a very real, very personal spiritual experience? Did it sound childish or impossible? How did you respond?
Haight describes "positive, stimulating, and rich socialization practices within an
Although there are exceptions, contrasting this to European - American church cultures that they studied, "Interactions between adults and children are characterized as highly structured and adult-centered with a one-way flow of communication from adult to child. Children are discouraged from questioning, speculating or extending presented material." (CS p. 109) The last sentence here is also intriguing. How can we encourage rather than discourage "questioning, speculating, or extending presented material," not to distract us from the text but to pull us deeper?
*Wendy Haight is the PhD program director at the
Winds of Change pt. 3
Rebecca Nye's research suggests that children have an even greater capacity to ask questions and let the scriptures affect them than adults. She suggests that children have a greater capacity to question categories and play with language until they become personally meaningful. (CS p 98)
She suggests that it's important to the spiritual development of children that they be allowed opportunities for the "data of powerful story, action and symbol [to] pull them about."
She asks, how do we enable children to engage and interact with the strange contradictions that we find "at the heart of faith"? Can we equip new generations to go after God this way and love it? (CS p. 98)
Is this important? If so, how do we do it? This is not the same as having someone tell you how to think and how to believe. It's not the same as someone giving you the answers. I believe she's talking about encouraging our children to actually interact with God's stories and His words and wrestle them.
There's an implication here that not questioning our religious language and our religious boxes breeds complacency. The implication is that this kind of wrestling, having personal faith experiences, and being able to put them into words or pictures is critical to our making faith our own and maturing in faith.
We want our children to make faith their own but to think about giving them room to wrestle with God and His stories and His words is a scary thing and not without risks. The thought of just listening without always telling them that this is the answer, just accept it so you don't have to wrestle with God is like breaking the shell open for an emerging chick.
She says that our questioning and engaging God's story and letting it interrogate us helps us grow and mature in our faith. (CS p. 98) The same being true of children.
If I understand her right, she says that modern education, science in particular - western culture in general, teaches us to ask questions. Yet when we approach the scriptures asking questions, the faith community immediately goes on the defensive. The guided-discovery approach to education and hands-on learning are ways that the educational community uses to help children make learning personally meaningful. That kind of learning generally involves the whole child. Asking our own questions is a way that learning becomes personal.
She says that when a child comes asking questions and finds "problems" with something like a miracle story in scripture, children come with stronger emotional tools. Adults come with complex counter-arguments pulling rank with intellectual explanations. As we play this game of superiority, an adult's more powerful intellectual tools undermine the emotional and intellectual tools of a child. Nye says that this "interaction with children [is] perversely unrepresentative of Christian spirituality. . ." (CS p. 99) The more powerful overpowering the weak.
She says that we need to recognize that when a child comes asking hard questions it means that God's story is affecting them! Shouldn't we be excited about that? What if, instead of giving them intellectual answers and explanations, we encourage them to ask questions and wrestle, and let the scriptures make them uncomfortable? "It's wonderful that the Word is affecting you like this!" and another day, "Do you have anymore thoughts about that?" She says that perhaps we need to communicate to them that wrestling with their questions is what really matters, not just knowing the right answers. I would go alittle farther to ask if allowing children to seek God, or go after God matters more than giving children (or adults) the "right" answers (CS p. 99) but that's pretty radical.
She says that, "placing the focus on how the data has affected the child in this way, the intimacy of subjective engagement with Christian material is protected and affirmed, and it will be easier ... for the child to discover that what matters in the end is what this miracle [or scripture] asks of people, rather than objectively analyzing it..." (CS p. 99) (My bold print.) She says that focusing on how the word personally affects a child protects and affirms a child's intimate, personal, subjective interaction with God.
When your kids are in that seeking mode part of you is happy that they're going after God to make faith their own, but the other part of you wants desparately to see them get it over with and get on with life ... When they're seeking God we're desparately afraid that they'll get lost. After all, they're only children. They don't know what we know...
Allowing this approach into any ministry seems an incredibly risky thing to do. It would radically change the church to be always seeking God, never assuming we have all the answers. It would require an incredible amount of faith to bring this approach into Children's Ministry. It would make us more dependent on God because it requires that God interact with our children with or without us. Yet what a wonderful thing to be able to say to someone, if you seek God with all our heart, He'll let you find Him and see it happen. Children are especially ripe for this.Children still love both the seeking and the finding. A child's faith still believes that God keeps promises. We're the ones who are afraid.
She suggests that it's important to the spiritual development of children that they be allowed opportunities for the "data of powerful story, action and symbol [to] pull them about."
She asks, how do we enable children to engage and interact with the strange contradictions that we find "at the heart of faith"? Can we equip new generations to go after God this way and love it? (CS p. 98)
Is this important? If so, how do we do it? This is not the same as having someone tell you how to think and how to believe. It's not the same as someone giving you the answers. I believe she's talking about encouraging our children to actually interact with God's stories and His words and wrestle them.
There's an implication here that not questioning our religious language and our religious boxes breeds complacency. The implication is that this kind of wrestling, having personal faith experiences, and being able to put them into words or pictures is critical to our making faith our own and maturing in faith.
We want our children to make faith their own but to think about giving them room to wrestle with God and His stories and His words is a scary thing and not without risks. The thought of just listening without always telling them that this is the answer, just accept it so you don't have to wrestle with God is like breaking the shell open for an emerging chick.
She says that our questioning and engaging God's story and letting it interrogate us helps us grow and mature in our faith. (CS p. 98) The same being true of children.
If I understand her right, she says that modern education, science in particular - western culture in general, teaches us to ask questions. Yet when we approach the scriptures asking questions, the faith community immediately goes on the defensive. The guided-discovery approach to education and hands-on learning are ways that the educational community uses to help children make learning personally meaningful. That kind of learning generally involves the whole child. Asking our own questions is a way that learning becomes personal.
She says that when a child comes asking questions and finds "problems" with something like a miracle story in scripture, children come with stronger emotional tools. Adults come with complex counter-arguments pulling rank with intellectual explanations. As we play this game of superiority, an adult's more powerful intellectual tools undermine the emotional and intellectual tools of a child. Nye says that this "interaction with children [is] perversely unrepresentative of Christian spirituality. . ." (CS p. 99) The more powerful overpowering the weak.
She says that we need to recognize that when a child comes asking hard questions it means that God's story is affecting them! Shouldn't we be excited about that? What if, instead of giving them intellectual answers and explanations, we encourage them to ask questions and wrestle, and let the scriptures make them uncomfortable? "It's wonderful that the Word is affecting you like this!" and another day, "Do you have anymore thoughts about that?" She says that perhaps we need to communicate to them that wrestling with their questions is what really matters, not just knowing the right answers. I would go alittle farther to ask if allowing children to seek God, or go after God matters more than giving children (or adults) the "right" answers (CS p. 99) but that's pretty radical.
She says that, "placing the focus on how the data has affected the child in this way, the intimacy of subjective engagement with Christian material is protected and affirmed, and it will be easier ... for the child to discover that what matters in the end is what this miracle [or scripture] asks of people, rather than objectively analyzing it..." (CS p. 99) (My bold print.) She says that focusing on how the word personally affects a child protects and affirms a child's intimate, personal, subjective interaction with God.
When your kids are in that seeking mode part of you is happy that they're going after God to make faith their own, but the other part of you wants desparately to see them get it over with and get on with life ... When they're seeking God we're desparately afraid that they'll get lost. After all, they're only children. They don't know what we know...
Allowing this approach into any ministry seems an incredibly risky thing to do. It would radically change the church to be always seeking God, never assuming we have all the answers. It would require an incredible amount of faith to bring this approach into Children's Ministry. It would make us more dependent on God because it requires that God interact with our children with or without us. Yet what a wonderful thing to be able to say to someone, if you seek God with all our heart, He'll let you find Him and see it happen. Children are especially ripe for this.Children still love both the seeking and the finding. A child's faith still believes that God keeps promises. We're the ones who are afraid.
Monday, January 02, 2006
Winds of Change pt. 2
Though a researcher, it appears (much to her credit) that Ms. Nye sees her work observing and learning from children as more than data and statistics.
One of the unexpected findings that came as the result of Ms. Nye's research was the profound sense of disappointment and grief the children felt when they discovered that their series of interviews with her was drawing to a close. (CS p. 104) The best of children's ministers, Christian educators, camp counselors, teachers, coaches, adult friends listen to children. But despite her role as researcher, Ms. Nye became someone unlike other adults in their lives. She became someone that the children could trust to listen to and help them articulate their spiritual experiences. I'm not just talking about the "salvation experience". When she suggested other people the children knew that she thought could fill that role as well as she, the children scoffed.
Even if parents are given the tools to be primary spiritual mentors in a child's life (after Deuteronomy) and take that role seriously, will they naturally become the much needed confidants that children need, someone who will listen without judgements and take that child's experiences seriously, or will a child still need to look for someone else? Will a child look? There are probably people who can provide these opportunities to children but it isn't a job or an assignment, it will always be relational. If it happens, it's more apt to happen with someone trusted, available. and willing to listen.
What about children who aren't already part of a faith community?
How do you engage a child in this kind of dialogue? Most of what Ms. Nye learned seemed to be a result of just listening not just to talk about "spiritual" experiences and answering pre-determined questions but also listening to the everyday "chatter". (C.S. p. 93)
One child rejected the concept of God as an "easy answer" because in her mind an "easy answer" made the answer suspect. Another child found religious "church" language too weak to capture his experiences. "...it left no room for mystery and the unknown." (CS p. 95)
There is so much in this chapter. Maybe the things these conference presenters are saying can somehow be shaped to fit the existing paradigm of children's ministry but I'm guessing they'll be better used as tools to craft something new.
One of the unexpected findings that came as the result of Ms. Nye's research was the profound sense of disappointment and grief the children felt when they discovered that their series of interviews with her was drawing to a close. (CS p. 104) The best of children's ministers, Christian educators, camp counselors, teachers, coaches, adult friends listen to children. But despite her role as researcher, Ms. Nye became someone unlike other adults in their lives. She became someone that the children could trust to listen to and help them articulate their spiritual experiences. I'm not just talking about the "salvation experience". When she suggested other people the children knew that she thought could fill that role as well as she, the children scoffed.
Even if parents are given the tools to be primary spiritual mentors in a child's life (after Deuteronomy) and take that role seriously, will they naturally become the much needed confidants that children need, someone who will listen without judgements and take that child's experiences seriously, or will a child still need to look for someone else? Will a child look? There are probably people who can provide these opportunities to children but it isn't a job or an assignment, it will always be relational. If it happens, it's more apt to happen with someone trusted, available. and willing to listen.
What about children who aren't already part of a faith community?
How do you engage a child in this kind of dialogue? Most of what Ms. Nye learned seemed to be a result of just listening not just to talk about "spiritual" experiences and answering pre-determined questions but also listening to the everyday "chatter". (C.S. p. 93)
One child rejected the concept of God as an "easy answer" because in her mind an "easy answer" made the answer suspect. Another child found religious "church" language too weak to capture his experiences. "...it left no room for mystery and the unknown." (CS p. 95)
There is so much in this chapter. Maybe the things these conference presenters are saying can somehow be shaped to fit the existing paradigm of children's ministry but I'm guessing they'll be better used as tools to craft something new.
Sunday, January 01, 2006
Winds of Change pt 1
Back on the serious side... This post comes in 3 parts.
Based on her interviews with children, Rebecca Nye* defines children's spirituality as "relational consciousness." She says, "[it is] an unusual level of consciousness or perceptiveness relative to other passages for that child. . . this was often in the context of how the child related to things, especially people including themselves and God." (CS p. 9) It seems that the church, in general, has doubted a child's spiritual capacity.
She says, "My passionate concern at present is about preventing Christian nurture and education from suffering from . . . developing "parts" of a child's faith - her biblical knowledge here, her moral values there, plus a measure or two of supportive community ... Overlooking the primacy of spirituality develops, in effect a potentially life-long impression that faith involves just parts of the person, but doesn't really touch who people really are, and are continually becoming."(CS p. 91)
It seems that generically speaking "modern" thinking tends more to compartmentalize and "postmodern" thinking is tending to go more holistic. From what I've read, traditional Hebrew thinking seems to be more holistic.
"Ideally, spirituality has a relationship with religion, but in practice 'effective' religious education programs can develop religious characteristics that are disconnected from spirituality." (CS p. 92) ... a critical observation.
"It turns out that children, partly by virtue of their distinctive psychological characteristics, have an intriguingly rich capacity for spirituality, for a kind of religious knowing and being which is neither contingent on their religious knowledge nor moral accountability." (CS p. 93) Another critical observation.
We're discovering without question that there are overwealming challenges involved when we try to include our children in whatever ways we can in all the expressions of our walk with God in Christ for their formation and instruction. But at the same time, this particular researcher's observations about the nature of children and this kind of thinking supports our desire to do this.
I think that to minister to kids and families in a way that really grabs hold of what she's saying, looking for opportunities to help the whole child grow in each of us, we as adults have to see our own spirituality as the core of who we are not one of many compartments. I think that if we explore the implications, we'll find that thinking like this is more far-reaching than just finding ways to keep kids engaged during a single worship service or finding ways for them to participate. It's more far-reaching than providing separate age appropriate kid activities while adults are doing their thing. We're still seeing through a glass dimly here, but maybe the smoke is clearing.
The more I read, the more convinced I am that there are winds of change that are just beginning to blow that will shake Children's Ministry to it's core. I'm not saying that there aren't pockets of people thinking like this and I expect that the shift in paradigms is still a long ways off. I hope I live long enough to see it happen.
*Rebecca Nye is doing "ground breaking research" as a social scientist looking through a "Christian lens" at children's spirituality. She co-authored Spirit of the Child with David Hay, she is the research coordinator for the Godly play approach. She's coordinating a research intiative at Cambridge University. (CS p. 90)
Based on her interviews with children, Rebecca Nye* defines children's spirituality as "relational consciousness." She says, "[it is] an unusual level of consciousness or perceptiveness relative to other passages for that child. . . this was often in the context of how the child related to things, especially people including themselves and God." (CS p. 9) It seems that the church, in general, has doubted a child's spiritual capacity.
She says, "My passionate concern at present is about preventing Christian nurture and education from suffering from . . . developing "parts" of a child's faith - her biblical knowledge here, her moral values there, plus a measure or two of supportive community ... Overlooking the primacy of spirituality develops, in effect a potentially life-long impression that faith involves just parts of the person, but doesn't really touch who people really are, and are continually becoming."(CS p. 91)
It seems that generically speaking "modern" thinking tends more to compartmentalize and "postmodern" thinking is tending to go more holistic. From what I've read, traditional Hebrew thinking seems to be more holistic.
"Ideally, spirituality has a relationship with religion, but in practice 'effective' religious education programs can develop religious characteristics that are disconnected from spirituality." (CS p. 92) ... a critical observation.
"It turns out that children, partly by virtue of their distinctive psychological characteristics, have an intriguingly rich capacity for spirituality, for a kind of religious knowing and being which is neither contingent on their religious knowledge nor moral accountability." (CS p. 93) Another critical observation.
We're discovering without question that there are overwealming challenges involved when we try to include our children in whatever ways we can in all the expressions of our walk with God in Christ for their formation and instruction. But at the same time, this particular researcher's observations about the nature of children and this kind of thinking supports our desire to do this.
I think that to minister to kids and families in a way that really grabs hold of what she's saying, looking for opportunities to help the whole child grow in each of us, we as adults have to see our own spirituality as the core of who we are not one of many compartments. I think that if we explore the implications, we'll find that thinking like this is more far-reaching than just finding ways to keep kids engaged during a single worship service or finding ways for them to participate. It's more far-reaching than providing separate age appropriate kid activities while adults are doing their thing. We're still seeing through a glass dimly here, but maybe the smoke is clearing.
The more I read, the more convinced I am that there are winds of change that are just beginning to blow that will shake Children's Ministry to it's core. I'm not saying that there aren't pockets of people thinking like this and I expect that the shift in paradigms is still a long ways off. I hope I live long enough to see it happen.
*Rebecca Nye is doing "ground breaking research" as a social scientist looking through a "Christian lens" at children's spirituality. She co-authored Spirit of the Child with David Hay, she is the research coordinator for the Godly play approach. She's coordinating a research intiative at Cambridge University. (CS p. 90)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)