10 Tested Ways to Promote the Spiritual Lives of Kids

Marcia Bunge takes kids' spiritual lives seriously. A decade ago, few people could make that claim. There had been no systematic study of how the Church as a whole regarded children, no critical analysis of what we were teaching kids and why, and only a handful of studies to substantiate best practices for nurturing spiritual and moral development. Now, however, the field of research into children's spirituality is growing. The question is, are churches and families listening?

Because, for so many years, there was no cohesive theology of children in the Church, it was relatively useless to hone in on any best practices because if you don't know where you're going, the route you take or the way you travel doesn't matter much. Christian thinkers certainly had written about children, but their theologies (and therefore approaches) varied. Some saw children as bundles of wild impulses that needed to be trained; others saw them as pure, innocent, and unspoiled; while others held babies to be blameless, but saw the sin nature as something that took hold of the child as they grew. Some regarded childhood romantically, while others saw it as a stage to grow out of as quickly as possible.

Christian thinking today toward children bears the marks of all of those philosophies, especially insofar as they influenced the development of educational theories, all of which begin with an idea about the learner. If I believe, for instance, that the primary purpose of schooling is to teach kids to restrain their own impulses, and that content mastery is secondary, then I'll assign lots and lots of seatwork, much of it mindless, and impose harsh discipline on those who don't complete it. If I hold a positive view of a learner's potential, I might allow kids to choose their own project to research; but if I believe kids' minds are basically lazy and need to be trained in rigor, I would probably assign the subject myself, believing that the student isn't up to that task.

Bunge directs the Child in Religion and Ethics Project at Valparaiso University and is the editor of such works as The Child in Christian Thought (2000) and the forthcoming The Child in the Bible. She acknowledges that the study of children and work with children was and is marginalized, as if it's not territory for serious researchers, who should be studying adults. Next year she'll speak at a triennial conclave that draws together children's researchers who are in pursuit of a common goal. You can read about the work of the Children's Spirituality Conference here.

The field of child spirituality research has a ways to go in hammering out a definition of "what we want". After all, some studies have examined practices that produce a "spiritual" child. But that's not necessarily the same thing as a spiritually mature Christian. "Spiritual" people believe in the supernatural and in the individual's ability to connect with unseen powers; being spiritual is a start, but it is incomplete. Others measure "faith maturity", defined as meaningful engagement in the life of one's church. Does church involvement translate into spiritual vitality? Ideally yes, but that's an assumption that needs to be acknowledged and further explored.

The second task for researchers is to gain the attention of the practitioners - the churches and parents - for whom this research is intended. It is by no means a given that because an idea is research-based that it will be embraced by Christian educators or Christian parents. We all have biases towards what we "feel" is effective. We all look at our own experience as normative: "It worked for me; it should work for them." We're all, to a degree, nostalgic for our own childhood and fearful of abandoning traditional practices because they just feel right. This inertia should not be underestimated. People who work with children - parents and professionals - are busy, wary of quick fixes, and pragmatic. It isn't greatly helpful to tell people only what doesn't work without giving them a workable alternative.

With that said, here are ten best practices highlighted by Bunge at a recent appearance at Bethel Seminary's San Diego campus:

1. Reading and discussing the Bible and interpretations of it with children.
   
2. Worshipping with a community; and carrying out family rituals and traditions of worship and prayer.
   
3. Introducing children to good examples, mentors, and stories of service and compassion. Bunge rightly pointed out that our kids know the Bible characters, but how many could tell you anything about Dietrich Bonhoeffer, William Wilberforce, or John Wesley?
   
4. Participating in service projects with parents or other caring adults; teaching financial responsibility. The side-by-side aspect of service is key. It's not enough for parents to send their kids away to an afternoon at a homeless shelter or park clean-up. And as to finances, Bunge says it is one thing churches never talk about with kids (if they even talk about it with adults), mainly because so many parents are embarrassed by their own credit card debt and don't feel in a position to lay down any guidance. As a result, Christian kids grow up with the same worldly desires and worldly spending habits as everybody else - and accrue the same sort of debt soon after leaving college.
   
5. Singing together and exposing children to the spiritual gifts of music and the arts. (Blogger's note: Go see Prince Caspian with your kid.)
6. Appreciating the natural world and cultivating a reverence for creation; attending a "family camp". The fact that a camp takes place outside is huge; programming delivered at a resort or conference center or over eight weeks at the church doesn't have the same effect.
7. Educating children; and helping them discern their vocations. Bunge sees a problem when parents only focus on the education of "their" child without regard for the education of all children. After all, children will grow up into a culture populated by - surprise - other people, who were either well-prepared or ill-prepared for the future by their early education.
   
8. Fostering live-giving attitudes toward the body, sexuality, and marriage. This is the other topic that Bunge says is taboo in churches, and as a result, churched folk suffer through as many relationship difficulties as non-churched people. Rectifying this means talking about sex, yes, but also relationships in general: how to date wisely, how to choose a mate, how to resolve conflict. (Considering the degree to which money and sex shape California culture, we would all do well to take heed of #4 and #8.)
9. Listening to and learning from children. This includes having the humility to admit when we don't know and when we've been wrong, genuinely valuing kids' insights and opinions.
   
10. Taking up a Christ-centered approach to discipline, authority, and obedience; recognizing that in the Christian tradition, parental authority is always limited. Jewish tradition: we do not teach kids to obey parents, but to honor parents. We only obey God. Christians, she says, tend to obscure the line between "honor" and "obey", as if they were the same thing. In the Jewish tradition, parents are to be honored, but only God is to be obeyed, a mindset that has huge ramifications for discipline and parenting.

What's striking, but not surprising, is how many of these practices are rooted in the home, with the church playing a supporting role. Bunge calls these not only "practices" that promote moral and spiritual development, but "responsibilities" too. Such a view casts parenting as a calling, with a set of obligations toward society for the growing child they will someday turn loose on it. How are we doing at these? How are you doing? This list has really set the gears in motion in my own head, and given birth to one crazy idea - a bit of an experiment - that I'll share with you next week.

Is the Church Really the Family of God?

The other night I came across a journal that I kept my senior year in high school (which is now half my life ago!), a required assignment for English class that traced the ups and downs of life in my year before college. Some of the entries are funny and immature, some are surprisingly deep, and others are just surprising. One such entry recalls that and friend and I spent a particular Wednesday night Bible study picking on another girl in the group, "then went back to my house and played Atari and ate cheesecake."

The flippant tone of that entry now staggers me. I apparently saw no contradiction between the setting - a Bible study - and the company - other believers - with what we were doing to amuse ourselves, which was mean and divisive. My friends and I were "good" kids. We prided ourselves for staying on the straight and narrow, but when it came to our own obligations toward Christian community, we remained worldly. What we needed was for the light to be shined uncomfortably inward - not inside our own selves, but in towards our own group, to be challenged to consider how we treated one another. After all, other entries from that journal recount that I had jealousy and rivalry toward that same friend who was my comrade-in-arms at youth group. Wow, what hypocrisy.

Is the Church really the "family" of God? Or is that just a hope or a lofty word picture or a recognition our common ancestry? If churches are (individually and collectively) a family, why does it not feel that way much of the time? More importantly, what are we doing to socialize new believers, and kids especially, into that reality?

There are benefits to a church calling itself a family. It evokes warmth. It reinforces traditions. It lends an air of familiarity to the relationships there. It reassures people that they belong. It allows us to carve an identity grounded in practices: "In this family, we do things this way." But if there are benefits to calling yourself a family, there are also risks, the biggest being that when you say it, no one will believe you. Some churches don't resemble the type of family anyone would want to be a part of. Another risk is that a church or ministry unintentionally erects a barrier to entry: "We are a family…and you're not in it." And that same impulse to define the family by "the way we do things" can become an unreasonable obstacle to change.

The phrase "family of God", a common modern expression, appears only once in the Bible; but, other references to God's family (believers in Christ "are Abraham's seed" (Gal. 3:29), numerous references to the early Christians as "brothers" throughout Acts, we are all "sons of God through faith in Jesus Christ" (Gal. 3:26), etc.) substantiate the idea. We enter this family initially through the adopter, and subsequently we become related to the adopted. We don't "join" a church or group, we are joined to God, and as a result, we inherit a family, the fellow members of God's far-flung adopted brood. The job for us is to figure out that second relationship, how to become what we already are: the family of God. It's easy for a church or ministry to say it is a family, but quite another to transform itself into one.

The church is, after all, a family, but it is an adoptive one, not a natural one, and all of us bring to it the vestiges of our family of origin (our carnal, pre-salvation existence). So, long after appropriating the label, we continue to deal with one another's hurts, hang-ups, dysfunctions, and shortcomings - in a word, one another's sin. Sinful people who've been forgiven are still sinful. This is a rude shock to anyone who's been wounded in a church or by another believer - they aren't supposed to be like that! But the key to family living lies not in others' perfection but in our own God-given ability to offer superabundant grace to one another.

I thought about all of this as I heard about other pre-teen ministries at the conference I attended and how commitment-phobic we all are and how hard it is to forge deep, lasting relationships in a mobile and overscheduled and transient and individualistic culture. I don't think nostalgia is the answer, because the world has changed too much and none of us wants to wear a suit that fit ten years ago. But there is some value, I think, in intentionally cultivating the idea of family in every church and every ministry, large and small. For one thing, families are committed to one another and require commitment…looooong term commitment. Secondly, we learn to forgive one another in families because like it or not, we're stuck with each other. The easy, too-common alternative is to simply bail. Third, because we're committed to the long term and because we learn to forgive, we also learn how to overlook what really doesn't matter - in other words, we give grace. And by teaching kids commitment, forgiveness, and grace, what are we equipping them for? If you said "a successful marriage," pass GO and collect $200. On the other hand, when we fail to socialize kids into the family of God, or we propagate the myth that church family life is happy and ever conflict-free, we miss a teachable opportunity.

The world is big enough and choices abundant enough that we're really not bound to a church we're unhappy in. And that's ok. I'm not suggesting that one style of worship or church leadership structure or curriculum should be imposed across the board. But I am suggesting that the Christian world is a lot smaller than we think, that when we focus on the minutiae of what separates one church from another we're treading in territory that is hopelessly foreign to those who don't know Christ. Like it or not, those outside the Church see us as one body. We would do well to embrace that identity and be about the hard work of family life than to remain hyper-focused on what separates us from them within the Christian world.

What I Learned on the Mountain

There are oodles of ministry conferences: denominational gatherings, conferences on church growth, small groups, worship, youth ministry, children's ministry, family ministry. But there has been little for those who work with that emerging age group known as pre-teens - until now. Just this spring I've been invited to two such conferences, a recognition, I think, of the importance of this age group to the church and the wisdom of investing in kids prior to middle school.

Last week I was privileged to be part of Forest Home's first-ever conference for those who work with pre-teens. And what I learned up on the mountain, in my encounter with 21 others who are engaged in the same type of work I am, is that we don't have all the answers, but we're all asking the same questions.

It seems the decision to separate out pre-teens from children at most churches is based not only on a recognition that 9-to-12-year-olds are physically and cognitively different, but that many kids at that age are beginning to tire of traditional Sunday school. We deal with a lot of churched kids, who grew up hearing Bible stories and watching Veggie Tales and who aren't too jazzed about watching yet another puppet presentation on David & Goliath. As the conference progressed, one common theme emerged again and again: how do we go deeper with these kids, to give them something they will engage with and use? How do we get beyond the pat Sunday school answers these kids are programmed to give and teach to the things they're thinking and talking about?

Children's ministries are beginning to recognize that a bigger and better show isn't necessarily the answer for this age group. We will reach them with authenticity, not showmanship. At the same time these kids are wired for the BIG and EXCITING, there's a part of them that's able to see through hype, and in their hearts they can recognize whether they're being managed or ministered to.

Many of the folks I met are beginning to write their own curriculum. I applaud that. If great teaching is that which answers the questions kids are already asking, how close can you come to that if you're just executing something out of a box? To give kids what they need you have to know those kids, and listen to them, and take them seriously; otherwise your program becomes incentive-laden as you try to convince kids to do and say things they really aren't inclined to do or say.

To "be shepherds of God's flock", we who are in leadership over kids - staff and volunteers - must know the population we're working with. While books about development can give us general guidance, the family, school, and neighborhood a kid inhabits are what define them personally. So what's going on in each of those environments? We need to know. You don't have to watch "Hannah Montana" to work with this age group, but you do need to understand what's appealing about her. You don't have to be great at video games or even like them, but you do need to understand why they're a draw. To deny those things is to deny kids' experience at a time when their individual identity is being formed. Kids at this age have by and large moved beyond the "eager puppy dog" stage where they'll do anything to please an adult; pre-teens want to grow up and they want to know why: why are you asking me to play this game, or sing this song, or answer this question? I can bemoan that from now to eternity, but the fact is, that's the kids we're dealing with.

Better to meet them at the point of their curiosity: You want authenticity? We'll give you authenticity. And I got the sense that nearly everyone gathered at the conference was eager to do that. So there is one church that is pioneering dedicated nights of worship - with kids! Another challenging kids and parents to pursue service projects, locally, nationally, and globally. Another giving kids important work to do within the church, so they feel connected to the larger body.

And leading these varied efforts is a patchwork of big-hearted individuals who really want to get it right. Some of the leaders I met work full-time specifically with pre-teens, as I do. But many more were responsible for entire children's programs while some were dedicated volunteers, moms and dads, who'd agreed to take on the pre-teen challenge on top of the rest of life. For two days we got to visit and compare notes and share best practices. I was thankful that this wasn't the kind of conference where an expert stood up and expounded on "the way" to do pre-teen ministry. I think it's so new, there are no such experts yet. In another 10 years, there will no doubt be conferences like that, and that'll be a shame. Because the key to reaching kids during a life stage where they are forging their individuality is to remain small and agile enough to meet individual's needs.

Right now we have about 35 weekend volunteers. We could easily use 15 more immediately. When the new building opens, who knows? We try not to assign more than 8 kids to one leader at a time. Even at that ratio I fear there are weeks kids come through the room carrying substantial burdens and no one gets the chance to sincerely ask, "How are you?" As North Coast Calvary gets bigger, the challenge for us will be to get smaller!

And to this end, one of the reflections shared at the end of the conference has stuck with me, that a ministry is a family (a subject I'll write about next week), and that families, to thrive, need to engage deeply with one another. To put it another way, churches need to approach this age group as a ministry, not a classroom. Perhaps the strength of what's going on in pre-teen ministry right now lies in the fact that this isn't the first rodeo for most of its practitioners: ministry leaders either have years of experience in children's ministry or youth ministry, and that knowledge and skill set has accompanied them to where they are now. For many, it seems they didn't choose pre-teen ministry so much as pre-teen ministry chose them. And now it's gripping all of us in a mystery no one's solved yet. I'm grateful for the wrestling, because out of it I'm confident will come a model of ministry that's not glorified children's programming nor jr.-sized youth ministry. Pre-teen is a frontier, and it's rewarding to be traveling through that space.