Where Everybody's Crazy

From God's Plan For Children, by Dave Roberts, here are some really good questions.

• Do the adults in our church greet the children by name?
• Is there any cross-generational conversation?
• In the case of toddlers and younger children, are we willing to crouch down to their level to talk with them?
• Are the facilities we provide for their classes warm, comfortable, age-appropriate and well kept?
• How many times a year does the church leadership meet with the children's ministry team?
• Is there a role for a children's activity in the main congregational worship time?
• Do we use younger people and children in servant roles in church life, such as ushering, worship groups and a myriad of other tasks, thus significantly increasing their sense of belonging?
• Do we publically affirm those who teach our children in the same way that we honour others in the congregation who undertake major projects or foreign trips?
• Do the children in our church ever get asked to read the Bible publicly or pray?
• If the church prays for people who respond to what God may have said to the congregation, are their children amongst those doing the praying?

I said I'd write something about the theology of children. I used to love and hate doing "children's work" in my church. Hate it because it involved hours of preparation, thinking up games, putting crafts together and so on - not my gifting, as the usual cop-out goes. But love it because I got to spend time hanging about with kids. On the whole I'd get more sensible conversations that way than being in the adult's church.

But I noticed that even with the best will in the world - and actually I think our church did have the best will in the world on this score - our "children's work" generally ended up revolving around us teaching them. Now that's OK in a school context, and I don't dispute that kids generally have a lot to learn. But I'm coming to believe that they have a lot to teach us as well. And so I'd love to see the emphasis shift from discipling children for Christian service in the future, to enabling child-friendly opportunities for service now.

This isn't a new idea, by any means. Even in the Scottish Revival of the 1860s,

the children would be the means of converting parents, brothers and sisters, who perhaps would never enter a church door or a prayer meeting.

- Children in Revival, Harry Sprange

On the whole, the ministers recognised what was going on, and let it happen.

Now as with all things, a balance is necessary. I don't want to be sending children out to work. Play is an important part of being a child. Our society is already doing a fine job of forcing children to grow up before their time, and I don't feel any need to push it any further in that direction. But I do want to see children being given first-class citizen status in the church. And that's not a new idea either:

Paul's acceptance of the children of the church as "belonging to God" or "holy" suggests that the children were not only there because they had to be. They were there because they belong there... In at least some congregations, therefore, children were not merely passive spectators on the edge of what was going on, but were taught and encouraged alongside the adults during the course of the church's meeting for worship.

- Children in the Early Church, W A Strange

And if children can have first-class citizen status, then they can be involved in ministry to others. We saw this occasionally at my church; at the end of the children's church we'd pray for the children, but sometimes we'd ask the children to pray for us. That was always a special time; that was when we "teachers" realised how much we had to learn. Remember how Jesus used a child to teach his disciples the meaning of true faith? Guess what - he still does.

Children provided an example for discipleship in the kingdom of God. Unencumbered by possessions or prejudice, they could see what was hidden from the wise; set low in social status, they gave an example of life in the kingdom of God; weak and vulnerable as they were, they were above all to be the focus of the disciples' concern.

- Children in the Early Church, W A Strange

Now again we have to be balanced and remember that the historical treatment of children by the Christian Church has been frequently appalling and occasionally wicked. The Early Church's revolutionary attitude towards children has often been forgotten. But it can, and should, be reclaimed.

How, practically? In most situations, this will have to be worked out according to the situation. But I can give you a couple of examples. One family here on candidates, with four young children, see themselves as a missionary family, not a missionary couple with children. Once they have that understanding in place, they can share their work with their children, pray for others together, and encourage and strengthen one another.

And when I was on my short-term mission in 2003, I asked someone to pray for me while I was away. As I was fed up and tired from travelling around, with little time off, and struggling over whether or not this was going to occupy the rest of my life, I felt myself being physically strengthened by the prayers of someone back home who was faithfully praying for me every single day of my mission. I felt sometimes I could not have got through the day without her prayers.

She was seven years old.