This will be the first installment of a two-part series. Tim Wright here and Jonathan Aigner here have significant ideas which are worth our attention in thinking through our “theology of the church” with respect to the participation of children and students in the life of the church.
Tim Wright notes the shift the western church has made over the last 40 years to enculturate kids with their own programs. Unfortunately, one of the unintended consequences of this increasingly ubiquitous model of the church in North America is that many young people are losing — and have forever lost — any meaningful touch points with the rest of the congregation. He argues that by segregating our kids out of worship, we never fully assimilated them into the life of the congregation: “They had no touch points. They had no experience. They had no connection with the main worship service—its liturgy, its music, its space, its environment, and its adults. It was a foreign place to them.”[1]
Not coincidentally, once kids finished with the children or student ministries departments of the church….many simply left the church as young adults. Former youth group kids, now in their 20s and 30s, figured, “Hey, my parents dropped me off at sports. My parents dropped me off at piano. My parents dropped me off at church.”
But now? Young adults can easily connect the dots: “Now, I don’t play sports; now, I don’t play piano. I guess church was in the same category – a passing fancy of my childhood, an age-appropriate activity to eventually out-grow.” Read More
Related Articles:
Sunday Schooling Our Kids Out of Church
Killing the Church with Sunday School
Segregating kids from the rest of the church was recognized as a problem in the early 1970s. The late John Westerhoff and others drew this problem to the attention of those who were willing to listen. For a summary of Westerhoff's views, see “An Evaluation of the Contribution of John H. Westerhoff III to Religious Education.”
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