Children's Ministry: Nurturing Faith Within the Family of God

As a Christian education major in college, I was steeped in traditional programming--Sunday school, children's church. Shortly after I graduated, I discovered Larry Richards. And I ended up throwing out about 90% of what I'd learned in college and replacing it with the much more exciting--and biblical--approach I found in Richards' books.A THEOLOGY OF CHRISTIAN EDUCATION was my introduction to Richards in the 70s. The first edition of this book came out in 1983, and I think I read it the first year it was out. I was director of a small inner city ministry at the time, and we had been struggling for two years with the question of "What do we do with the kids?"This book framed an innocent-looking question: Where were the kids in the New Testament church? Were they in Sunday school? Were they in children's church? No, they were worshiping in living rooms with their parents in house church. They were learning how to live the Christian faith by watching--and participating with--adults who were living out Christian community with the kids in the thick middle of it. This inspired our little group (about five families) to commit to making our house church intergenerational. All our children at that time were age 6 and under. The kids didn't stay with us the entire two hours, but they were fully integrated into community life. It was absolutely the best experience of church we had ever had. For my six-year-old son, house church became the highlight of his week that he looked forward to all week long. The down side of this is that this was such a positive experience of church that my oldest children are seriously spoiled: "church as usual" now leaves them feeling really empty.Since reading this book, I have been a champion of the idea that children are best discipled in intergenerational community among adults who love them and who are modeling in their relationships with each other and with the children what Christian community looks like--the hurting and forgiving, the serving and sharing, the fun and the tears. Next to this, traditional age-graded Sunday school can't hold a candle. Not that Sunday school doesn't do some good things. It's just doesn't come close to intergenerational Christian community. Most churches, in working with the children's Christian education program, ask questions like, "How can we improve our Sunday school?" or "How can we get more kids to come?" This book asks a much more basic question: "How can we best disciple children?" If you want to discover and implement the answer, not to the first two questions, but to this last one, you're not going to find a better starting point than this book.