Categories: theology-philosophy
Date: 13 December 2009 20:44:55
... so how do we make the church relevant to them?
It was a 'family service' this morning, but I was bored.
However, the children who aided the vicar during the sermon did fantastically, and 'ruined' his sermon! He had 9 children up the front. He gave 1 jelly baby each to 6 of them, and 4 jelly babies each to 3 of them. The point he was then going to go on to make was to do with world wealth and poverty, how one third of the world has so much wealth. The wonderful children changed the message. He told them all to eat their first sweet, so they did. He then told them to eat their second sweet. Those who'd originally been given 4 did, and then the three of them proceeded to give the other 6 children the 'extra' ones so that they could all have a second one each. How brilliant. And how simply showing that children know what needs to happen to change the world to make it a fairer place.
These children are the adults of tomorrow. But the children at church are so much in the minority. What motivation is there for children to go to church? Should we be 'changing' the church to make it relevant for today's children?
I recently went to a One Generation talk by Mark Griffiths. On the promotional material it said it was going to explain 'how to get the unchurched child to come to church'. I was fascinated by this and really looking forward to some wonderful insightful talk. I was deeply disappointed.
He talked a lot about Raikes, who founded 'Sunday Schools', but they were for the poor, uneducated children. They were successful often because of what they could offer. They drew in the children, often without their parents. But in today's society children don't go to things alone. They're not allowed. Child evangelism is no longer effective as children rarely go to church without their parents. All children get an eduation so that's not an attraction any longer. Busy lives mean that there is not time to go to church - childrens and adults lives.
One thing that Mark did say which I totally agree with is that certain services immunise children / parents from ever wanting to experience church again.
Christmas often highlights for me the struggle for trying to make it seem relevant to children, but while also trying to keep tradition. I love the traditional Christmas carols - both the words and the tunes, but when going through a book of very well known ones to try and find some my 10 and 11 year old children knew, there were only 3 in the whole book (of about 35 or 40) that they knew. But then when teaching the more traditional songs the children ask me why it is in such 'funny' language, and even though I explain what the words mean, I do wonder why I don't just teach them the contempory ones which they will understand without great long explanations.
When we had a discsussion about Bibles, I've shown them a variety of translations and tried to explain some of the differences (and the reasons behind them), they still wonder why anyone would want to read, for example, the King James version if there was an equally accurate easier to read version. So should we just abandon 'tradition' and the past, and use modern, relevant language? Which is more important, preserving tradition or the continuation of the church?
Hmmmm... this train of thought will, no doubt, continue...