Study shows kids who go to church aren't nicer than kids who don't. Now what?

You may have seen the recent news, reported somewhat gleefully by some news outlets, that religious kids turn out to be more selfish than non-religious ones. Predictably, many Christians lashed back, attacking either the messenger or the methodology.

While I also have some problems with drawing a sweeping conclusion based on this particular study, I actually find this "bad news" quite useful.

The cynical take is that these studies are done by people who don't like religion and who want to believe religion isn't necessary to teach people right from wrong. And to be clear, this study defined “religion” really broadly – lots of Christian and Muslim kids were studied as part of the “religious” group (as if they’re the same thing), yet the reporting focused heavily on the shortcomings of Christianity in teaching morals.

When studies reflect badly on Christianity, we’re quick to smear the messenger. They hate us! They’re liberals! They’re anti-family! But what if the study results had shown something different, that religious kids were generally more moral than those raised without religion? You can be sure churches would herald those results loudly: See? Religion is necessary. Science proves it!

I suggest we take the higher road, and refrain from anxious hand-wringing when the news is bad, or victory laps when the news is good.

First of all, this isn't new news. Studies like this have been done before. In the 1920s and 30s, Hugh Hartshorne and Mark May made waves with their research showing that kids who regularly went to Sunday school did no better on questionnaires about honesty than kids who didn't go to church. The results, published under the title Studies in Deceit, were an attempt to reform religious education - not to abolish it. Religious education curriculum had long struggled to find its footing. To some people, there wasn't enough Bible. To others, there wasn't enough relevance. Liturgical churches thought it should follow the church year. The Temperance movement wanted a special focus on the evils of alcohol. The Religious Education Association, of which Hartshorne was a part, had been campaigning for a few decades for a more practical purpose for Sunday school. If that one hour a week wasn't preparing young people to be productive members of society, equipped to tackle the problems of the future, what was it good for?

Members of the REA argued, why quibble over doctrine, when what mattered most was conduct - especially in light of Harthshorne and May's findings?

80 years later, if the latest study is to be believed, not much has changed. Sunday school is still not effective at changing kids' behavior. In fact, the study suggests, religion may actually make kids less generous. So what do we do?

I suggest we concede.

Concede the point, that is. Religious education is not without value. But we have consistently rolled over and let those outside the church tell us what its value is. What's that all about? In this case, the study tested whether being raised with religion makes kids more altruistic and generous. The researchers expected that it ought to, because religious convictions shape our moral behavior. And in doing so, they put religion into a box, a specimen to be studied. (As sociologist Christian Smith of UNC pointed out, you might get a better measure of the truth of that premise if you studied adolescent or adult believers, who are more grounded in their faith convictions, than children.) But just because something contributes to something else doesn't mean its purpose is limited to that. The real purpose may be much broader.

In the case of bringing kids to church, there are lots of reasons to do that, I suppose, but that doesn't mean its overall value can be measured by whatever preconceived expectations someone has.

If someone tells me I'm a terrible dancer or a lousy artist, I don't argue with them. I don't accuse them of trying to smear me. I simply don't worry about it, because I've never held myself out to be those things. As Christians, can we allow that someone who chooses to raise their kids apart from church influence might raise a kind, respectful, successful kid? I think we can.

To stubbornly insist that kids can't be good apart from formal religious training defies what we can observe with our own eyes. And you know who knows that? Your kid. If you raise them to believe that we go to church because it makes us good, and that the purpose of Jesus' coming was so that we'd be nice to each other, you're making a claim that Christ himself didn't make. All that has to happen then is your kids go off to college, meet a kind Buddhist or a moral atheist, and every claim they've heard about the uniqueness of Christianity or the necessity of religion goes out the window.

What if instead of freaking out, we calmly reframed the debate? What if we stood by the contention that religious education has one, ultimate, singular purpose: to nurture a kid's personal relationship with the transcendent God of the universe, who makes a claim on their lives and has revealed himself to them. Not character education or ethics training. Not cultural transmission. What if we clung to this claim not as an easy cop-out, but because we really believed it?

We could then allow that other systems of ethical training might be effective in teaching right from wrong, even producing altruism. But they will all fail at bringing kids to God. That is Christianity's central claim: that a personal relationship with God is possible through Jesus Christ. Not that we can make ourselves good, or train our kids to be good. If we were clearer on that, maybe nonsense studies like the most recent one would never be conducted.

We Speak Kid Here (Do You Speak Kid?) (Value #5)

Last weekend was our church’s International Missions Fair. Christians have learned a lot about doing missions in the last 200 years, and much of that is how not to do missions. We now know that it’s wrong and counterproductive to go into a foreign culture and demand that they become just like us.

We shouldn’t make the same mistake in ministering to kids.

White missionaries took Africa and Asia by storm and the result was cultural resentment. We wrongly communicated that becoming Christian meant becoming a Westerner (still a prevalent belief across the Arab world). “Heathens” were told they needed to learn English and even dress like Europeans – this was “becoming Christian”.

Of course, looking the part of a Christian and actually being one are two different things. There’s a pretty funny scene in the beginning of the Humphrey Bogart movie The African Queen, showing an exasperated missionary, and Englishman, trying to lead a congregation of native Africans in a hymn sing. They don’t understand the words, it’s not relevant, and they’re prone to – and eager for – distraction. When the service finally ends, they can’t wait to get out of there and back to more interesting things.

I used to play that clip when training new volunteers, and have them look for all of the ways the tent meeting missed the mark. They were easy to see.

Now, here's the kicker: Kids inhabit a different culture, and to reach them, we must act like missionaries.

That's why Children's Ministry Value #5 is: Speaking kid language. Our job is to reach out to kids in relevant and culturally-appropriate ways. Kids need to be allowed to be themselves before we can push them beyond themselves.

Let's break that down:

• Speaking kid language. This includes verbal speaking, of course, but also non-verbal. Not only do we not use 1990s pop culture references in our teaching illustrations, but we sit on the floor with kids. Not only do we visit with them about their interests and hobbies, we play with them. Instead of praying in flowery language, we try to demonstrate that prayer is just talking to God.

• Reaching kids in relevant ways. It's not particularly helpful or effective to teach kids using adult-sized metaphors, subjecting them to I-was-down-and-out adult-style testimonies, or by giving a three-point sermon. These communication methods barely work well with adults! Instead, showing kids that God is relevant is a matter of listening to them and walking alongside them as they discover who God is. Being relevant with kids doesn't mean we preach a "me-centered" gospel. That's a real danger. It does mean that we teach that God has a really big story and that they - even they! - have a place in it.

• Kids need to be allowed to be themselves... This is a big one. Our ministries are not a free-for-all. There are rules, and there are structures. BUT - within those structures, we want kids to be themselves. Why? Because it's important that we understand where they're at. If a kid isn't standing and singing, we're not going to force them to. There's a reason they're opting out - what is it? When I ask a kid a question, I don't want them to give me the "just right" answer. I want them to answer honestly. Last year I was teaching a lesson on Creation to our Kindergarten & 1st graders. After I got to the part where "God saw all that he had made...and he said it was very good," a boy raised his hand and with a concerned look on his face asked, "Does that mean God even created earthquakes?" I love questions like that, and I love when our ministry creates safe spaces where kids feel they can ask them.

• ...before we can push them beyond themselves. If a kid can't ask "Did God even create earthquakes?" we miss the opportunity to get him to grapple with the magnitude of God, and his infinite wisdom. If a kid never has the opportunity to write, "I'm getting bullied at school" on a prayer wall, he may never think to bring that to God in prayer. If a girl doesn't share with a trusted leader that her parents are getting divorced, we miss the chance to walk alongside her as she wrestles with where God is in all of this. If kids aren't allowed to know about suffering in the world because their Christianity is all about knowing right answers and nothing more (and you MUST watch this hilarious and spot-on video about that very thing), they'll never be troubled by poverty, or injustice, and they'll never be spurred to consider what God might have them do.

All of this points to the need to go beyond "playing church" with kids. The native cultures who received missionaries in the 1800s and 1900s didn't need that, and kids don't need that either. They need people who will take them seriously, spiritually. They need adults who will start by listening to them, before dishing out a bunch of answers to questions kids aren't really asking. Who are they? What is happening in their lives that wasn't happening last week? What do they already know about God? What is their understanding of his plan, and their place in it? Good missionaries start with these questions. We should follow their example.

Should your kids take communion?

Something new starts next weekend. We are setting up a station for families to take communion together on the same weekend communion is offered in adult church. We did this because we realized that unless kids were going to "Big Church", they were never taking communion.

Should they?

The short answer to that is yes, every Christian should take communion. As Protestants, we believe it is one of two ordinances Jesus left to us, the other being baptism. And there is ample evidence that the earliest Christians took his command seriously, that receiving "the Lord's supper" was a regular part of their worship life.

Does that include kids? It should. If we believe kids are capable of making the decision to follow Christ, and to signify that decision through baptism, why would we bar them from taking communion?

Likewise, the same things that would bar or disqualify someone from baptism would be the same reasons for them not to take communion - but age isn't necessarily one of those:

• Not a believing Christian
• Not able to comprehend what the act means or symbolizes
• Doing it under compulsion and not freely choosing it

You may have grown up in a more ritualistic church, where communion was a more central activity in the worship service, and that background might cause you to have strong feelings - one way or the other - about kids receiving communion.

• On the one hand, communion for you may have been just "what you did" without really understanding why, and you don't want it to become an empty, legalistic gesture
• Or, your church may have taught communion as a means of grace, and you want your child to clearly understand that grace comes through faith, not the performance of a ritual (read further for more on that)
• Or, maybe communion (and first communion instruction) was a big deal in your church, and you want your kid to have the same thing.

So, kids should take communion with you as long as the following are true:

1. They understand that communion (like baptism) is something we do to remember. It doesn't produce anything in and of itself.
2. What we remember with communion is Jesus' last supper with his disciples, where he told them to remember him whenever they ate the meal of bread and wine. The bread represents Jesus' body, broken (killed) for us. The wine (we use grape juice) represents Jesus' blood, which was shed for the forgiveness of sins.
3. Communion is something Christians celebrate together, to remind ourselves that what unifies us is Christ and his sacrifice. (Taking communion doesn't make us "more holy" or "more spiritual". It's a "we" thing, not a "me" thing.)
4. Communion isn't driven by feelings. We might "feel" closer to God because of the act of taking communion, and of meditating on the meaning of Christ's sacrifice. But we don't necessarily "feel" anything, and just because you don't "feel" something doesn't make it less significant.
5. On the other hand, communion should never be done "just because it's what Christians do." Ritual for ritual's sake, without understanding, is never good.

If your child considers themselves a Christian and part of the body of Christ, there is no reason why they shouldn't receive communion. I wouldn't worry too much that they don't "fully" understand it, because who among us exhaustively understands and appreciates the cross? Instead, make it your goal that as your kids grow up, they'll understand the importance of the cross more and more. Regularly taking communion and being invited to reflect on its meaning is a great way to make that happen.