Who is responsible for the education of children? Is it the school who has charge for a third of waking hours? Or is it the family, who nurture and provide for the child?
Obviously education is a joint endeavour, and children require input from both. Schools might be the primary educators in reading, writing and counting, but the role of parents and other adults is essential as well. We test spellings, spend hours in music practice and cajole homework out of our tired infants. Walls are covered in times-tables posters and the kitchen is a science lab. Education continues at home.
Yet what of biblical and faith teaching? Our children might receive 30 minutes on a Sunday and for many, that might be the sum total of their explicit exposure to God and to faith. We don’t expect children to remember spellings unless revised and repeated, but neither should we when it comes to the Bible. Sunday groups and Messy Church are vital tools for teaching and nurturing faith in our children. But we must never think that they are sufficient.
“Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it.”
(Proverbs 22:6)
Just as children’s school learning continues at home, so too must their Christian learning. If our children are ever to grow into faith, we must be engaged with worship, reading and prayer just as we are with maths, English and science.
It’s important to remember that there is no ‘correct’ way to live out faith in the home. It’s not about measuring levels of faith or doing enough to ‘succeed’. Faith is an ongoing experience, a journey for you to enjoy. It’s never too late to start out or pick up again. What works for one family will not work for another, and each family needs to find what is suitable and enjoyable for them. It also doesn’t mean finding numerous additional hours added in an already-packed week. Faith can be found in all that you do already.
There is perhaps a terror that, as soon as we talk about God, we will be asked a question that completely floors us. We don’t want to get anything wrong, or to give the wrong answer – so we don’t even invite the question. But uncertainty is integral to faith, and ‘I’m not sure’ is perfectly acceptable. Children often want to explore the question, rather than hear an answer, and faith develops in conversations far more than in neat solutions.
The excellent Side by Side with God in Everyday Life by Yvonne Morris is a book of conversation starters – conversations about laughing, crying, loving, dying and more. Each chapter takes a theme or an emotion and explores it with the Bible and prayer. There are two short Bible stories and some questions to ponder. Questions to think about, but not necessarily to answer neatly.
If praying seems unnatural, then this book encourages chatting with God. More than we realise, prayer can be much closer to a conversation, a chat, with God. Morris reminds us that God is part of our lives throughout the week, and really is side by side with us. This book removes much of the awkwardness that talking about God might bring.
But faith is a choice and I want my child to choose
Teaching and modelling faith is not the same as commanding obedience or demanding acquiescence. Of course all people must choose to live their life in or outside of a relationship with God, and this should always be respected. But children have no choice about school on Monday or about homework on Tuesday, so why do we allow an option on Sunday? Christian education is certainly no less important than English or maths, but can easily be neglected. We should have the confidence to instil in our children faith values as much as academic ones.
Faith is shaped far more by what happens at home than anything that happens at church. And all of us are equipped to accompany children on a journey with God. There are no special skills or secret answers: just listening, making time, reading the Bible and chatting to God.
Jonathan Brooks is Children’s and Youth Worker at St Michael’s Highgate.