Sunday School finishes, the children rejoin the adult congregation… and then what?
In many churches, there’s a ‘show and tell’ time, where children display their work or talk about the story they heard. There can be many benefits to this, such as:
It reduces the ‘invisibility’ of children’s groups by making adults aware of what’s going on.
It can reinforce for children the idea that what they do in their groups is important.
It can allow children the opportunity to teach the adults, giving them a new angle on a story or explaining how they’ve interpreted the story in their artwork.
However, there are downsides to ‘show and tell’ as well.
As a children’s worker once said to me, ‘Every time I see the children do show and tell, I want to ask the adults in the congregation, “Tell us what YOU learned in church today!”‘ It can put children on the spot. How often have you found that the true value of a Sunday service only comes later, as you think over what you heard and experienced, and process it? It can be unrealistic to expect children to completely and immediately engage with a session, coming up with a neat conclusion by the end of the service.
It can put children’s spirituality on display in negative ways. Even subconsciously, ‘show and tell’ may be sending out the message that the children’s job in church is to be cute (or precocious) for the adults, rather than to experience worship for themselves.
It can move the emphasis from process to product. Rebecca Nye writes about the importance of process in her book Children’s Spirituality. Children responding artistically to a Bible lesson are focused on the process of creation and exploring the story for themselves. This may result in an unfinished work, or a work that’s only understandable to the child themselves. Or it may result in a work that feels very private and personal. Changing the focus from process to creating a finished piece of work for the adults to understand moves the focus from the child to their audience, which can be distracting at best.
It rewards certain learning styles over others. I have a 7-year-old boy in my group who will never be interested in art. He does, however, love playing with our toy church, putting together puzzles of Bible stories and making Bible story pictures with a felt board. If we did ‘show and tell’, he would be empty-handed every week – but his spiritual exploration is just as rich as that of my keenest painters.
So what to do? The idea of ‘show and tell’ is a good one, and it can be great for both children and adults, as well as integrating the children and their work more fully into the congregation. Here are some ideas.
Make it reciprocal. Encourage both children and adults share with each other what they’ve done during the time they were apart. This cuts down on the risk of children being put on display or on the spot – and adults may welcome the chance to share too!
Make it flexible. Instead of sharing art, why not ask children and adults to share with each other what they prayed for? (Make sure you impress on children that some prayers are too personal for sharing time. You don’t want a child shouting, ‘I PRAYED THAT MY MUM AND DAD WOULD STOP FIGHTING ALL THE TIME AND NOT GET A DIVORCE!’ to the entire congregation.) This takes away the focus on product over process, and creates a moment of intergenerational prayer at the end of every service. Or you ask both children and adults some wondering questions, eg ‘I wonder what your favourite part of today’s worship and Sunday School was.’ This gives everyone a pressure-free chance to respond to what they’ve learned and experienced.
Make it voluntary. If you do want to share children’s art work or their thoughts on the day’s story, allow them to choose whether or not they present something. Ask at the end of every session whether someone has something they’d like to share – whether an artwork, a prayer or their favourite/most important part of worship. Agree on a non-verbal signal with the vicar, to let her or him know, as you come back into church, if you have anything to share.
Many children these days experience huge amounts of pressure to perform for adult approval. ‘Show and tell’ can inadvertently add that pressure to church as well. With a few simple tweaks, however, it can become a great opportunity for all ages to learn and share.
Margaret Pritchard-Houston is the Children and Youth Worker at St George’s, Campden Hill, in Kensington. She is the author of ‘There is a Season: celebrating the church year with children’ and runs Mustard Seed Kids.