Children Matter 1a

Let me highly recommend this book as a starting point for group discussions for leadership teams at churches, children's ministry teams, a combined group of children's ministry people and parents. The authors created the book because they needed a textbook for seminary students but don't let that scare you. Their conversational style makes it very readable for the rest of us. Gather a group and take 15 weeks and explore the ideas and then make the changes that you need to make. Even 30 weeks (2 sessions per chapter) would be time well spent. ANY amount of time would be time well spent.

Here's some meat to chew on:

Chapter 1 compares some of the metaphors we use when we think of children as learners, and adults as teachers, with metaphors from scripture. The metaphors from scripture are more "active" metaphors. The authors say, "...teaching provides learners with continual interaction with the learning environment. It recognizes that children learn best through experiences they can make sense of and reflect on, and that they need to feel valued and accepted. We want children to realize that the Bible is a real book about God's involvement in the lives of real people whom he created and loved, who did real things at a real place at a certain time. These concepts are pilgrim-like. Learning in which teacher and learners are fellow pilgrims looks somewhat foreign, however, to most people involved in children's ministry." (CM p. 10)

"If we think about what we 're trying to do- to help children want to become followers of Jesus- we need to see them as pilgrims, different from sponges. Pilgrims are people on a journey that has a high purpose. Christian's purpose is to be lifelong followers of Jesus. If we view children as sponges, we expect them to sit still with their hands in their lap and their mouths shut while they "absorb" the Bible. If we view them as pilgrims, we will help the children enter into the story and interact with it in any number of ways. These differences matter because not only do we want children to love the Lord Jesus, we also want them to love his story - the Bible." (CM p. 6-7)

The traditional Sunday school model was built on the traditional "school" model but they ask, If our purpose is "mainly to introduce children to the Bible and Jesus Christ...[i]s this purpose really achieved through schooling methods? Could it be that the School model unintentionally treats the Bible like a textbook from which children extract information, just as they learn the names of rivers and oceans from a geography text?" (CM p. 11)

From my perspective, another thing about making the time we have with kids to nurture their relationships with Jesus like "school" is this. If children are having trouble with school, if they struggle with reading and writing, if the school environment and their experience in the classroom is negative or always hard for them - why would they want to go somewhere that resembles "school" on their day off? Why would they want anything to do with the God who lives there? The flip side is that kids might find reading and writing more enjoyable when they get to interact with something (or someone) they love.

Mentally jump with me a little. In Children Matter they list scriptural metaphors (agricultural imagery) for learners like seed, vines, sheep, pilgrims, disciples). We could say, God used that imagery because He was interacting with an agricultural society. But what if God intentionally gave us that imagery to keep every generation connected to the outdoor world He created? Yes, there are metaphors and images in our computer/entertainment/technological generation available to us that other generations didn't have. Maybe this imagery is stronger than the old, or maybe it just seems that way because we're just more intimately acquainted with the technology of our age than we are with the outdoors.

But what if growing a seed or raising a grape vine or watching the sheep on a farm will not only tell us something about God that technology can't but trying to understand it will keep us connected to the living world He made full of timeless images?

God is spirit and He became flesh and blood and we know Him as the Living God. He's not mechanical or man-made. We can learn more about Him through any of the sciences (natural and physical) if we observe all that He's put into motion. We can learn from our own technology but the living, interactive, relational something that happens between living things is different. Learning, whether it's technical or natural science, is something alive. Discipleship was like that and still is however old or young you are.

I'm rambling.

I'm still in chapter 1 and as usual I'm reading more than 1 book at a time (slowly) but I'm loving the way these ladies think. They're asking the right questions. Sooo exciting! Know what? I don't even want to blog about this book because I won't be doing it justice.

Another sidebar: Do you know why we need to keep asking questions and examining the ideas that drive us? Scripture says (I think it's in Proverbs) as a man thinks, so is he. And that has everything to do with faith and learning and following Jesus.

:)