Why do you bring your children to church? Why do you think there are children sitting in the pews of your church?
If you ask parents this question (or if just now, you answered this question for yourself), you might hear answers like this:
“It’s important for me that my child learns the values of our church community.”
“I want my kid to be a good person.”
“Church provides my family with moral guidance.”
Nope. Sorry – nope nope nope.
Church is not about values. Not only are there OTHER places in our society to expose your children to good values, there are BETTER places in our society to teach good values.
Scouting, team sports, community theater, chess club, school-based values curricula, VeggieTales… these are excellent sources for parents to teach their children the importance of fairness, teamwork, honesty, and cooperation. The kiddos will make friends along the way – it’ll be great!
Church MUST be more than values instruction. I’ll risk overstating my point (and annoying my readers): if we structure programs for children in churches with the goal of teaching good values, we will lose. Not only are the organizations I listed above doing great things with kids, the Gospel of grace always trumps morality.
What then takes the place of values instruction? In progressive churches, we’ve somewhat abandoned old-timey instruction. I haven’t seen a good fill-in-the-blank Bible worksheet since I was 10 years old. We’re working on abandoning a school-based model and even in some churches we’re getting rid of a star-earning, funfunfun carnival model.
What’s left? Just two principles guide children’s ministry in the post-modern era, and the earlier a child can communicate and internalize these, the better.
“At church, people love me just as I am.”
This means prioritizing relationships and connections over curricula and content. This means children participating in worship – not as cute props for adults to coo at, but as full members of the worshipping community.
“At church, I can ask questions.”
Whether it’s a deep question like this one I got during Advent, ‘How do we know that Jesus was God’s son? What if he was just a good person?’ or it’s a question from the Our Whole Lives question box or just an everyday ‘Why?’ – questions are at the heart of the spiritual journey for every person. When our churches are safe places for questions, doubt, experiential pondering, they will thrive.
In fact, what would our churches look like if every person at every age and in every situation can express these same ideas:
“At church, people love me just as I am.”
“At church, I can ask questions.”
So, yeah, values stink. The Good News we have is so much better, deeper, and wider than values.
Peace to us all in 2016.