This document discusses ministry among young children in churches. It argues that traditional views see young children as disruptive and in need of "sacred babysitting" care during services. However, the document advocates rethinking this approach by recognizing that the Bible depicts children as gifts from God who are fully human. It also suggests that spirituality is innate in humans from a young age. The document encourages moving beyond just occupying children, and nurturing their spiritual capacities from an early age through meaningful engagement, symbols, and experiences connected to their innate spirituality. It provides two anecdotes of young children demonstrating spiritual awareness and care for others.

1. Beyond sacred babysitting : ministry among young
children.
By Alison Harris
At Barnabas, we want to develop the ways in which we can support and resource
those of you who have a particular ministry among very young children (i.e
children who haven’t yet started school). This will be the first of a series of
feature articles about ministry among young children, and there will be an
increasing number of items in the Ideas section of the website for those of you
working more specifically with young children. The purpose of this article is to
encourage you to think more about the perceptions that shape your church’s
ministry among very young children: the why you do what you do!
The 'cringe' stories!
First, a 'cringe' story! A few years ago, a friend of mine had moved into a new
area and she took her 3 year old to the local church for the first time. The three
year old was actually quite quiet as three year olds go, but still, at the end of the
service, the person in front turned and said, ‘Don’t come back until your child is
five’! Presumably, because at five something magical happens! From this
‘magical age’, children are old enough to understand how to behave in church; at
five, they can sit quietly for the required amount of time; at five, ‘they won’t
disturb the service for me’! There was no recognition that the worship, or parts of
it at least, may be for this young child as well. There was no recognition that this
young child may have something to offer the adults in the worship. As far as the
service was concerned, for this particular person at least, this three year old was
regarded as ‘a nuisance’, a ‘source of disruption’.
The exciting stories!
The good news is that many churches have moved a long way in their provision
for young children. A whole range of things now happen for pre-school children,
both in the week and on Sundays. For many churches, it is their greatest area of
growth! There are midweek groups for young children; some are just for the
children whilst others are for their carers as well. I recently read that Faith groups
were the largest provider of Parent and Toddler groups in the U.K.! And many
churches have set up specific provision for young children on Sunday mornings:
a crèche, a children’s area within the main body of the church or perhaps 'pew
bags' that children have as they sit alongside their parents. (We’ll be looking at
all these kinds of provision in future articles, so don’t worry if all this seems like a
whole new world!) All of these are good things in many ways, but have you ever
stopped to think: Why are we doing this? What are we trying to do here? Whose
needs are we serving?
I would like to suggest that what is hoped for in much of our young children’s
provision, is that the children will feel comfortable and accepted in the church
community, and that this will be a positive foundation for the time when they are
ready to engage more seriously in Christian faith formation. Maybe even, that,
certainly as far as Sunday morning is concerned, the provision is more for the
convenience for parents, so that they can worship unencumbered by demands
from their children!
Sacred babysitting?
That young children should feel comfortable and accepted in church is really

2. important, but, often it is, what Gretchen Wolff Pritchard calls, ‘sacred
babysitting’, (Offering the Gospel to Children. Cowley Publications, 1992). It is a
time when children are cared for and occupied but there is no real expectation
that they will engage in or with anything of a spiritual nature. The underlying
assumption is that anything of any real spiritual content would be beyond the
experience or capabilities of such young children: it is the most that young
children can cope with at the moment. Certainly, this is far better than showing
young children and their parents the door, but is this really the best we can do?
And what kind of messages are we giving children about the purpose of coming
to church?
It’s time to re-think!
These assumptions about young children have been shaped over a long period
of time and it’s time to re-think!
a) We need to re-think what the Bible has to say about children. I have been
helped enormously in thinking this through by an article that Marcia Bunge wrote.
(Historical Perspectives on Children in the Church. Report of the Houston
Consultation on Child Theology. London:The Child Theology Movement. Pp.
38-45). The church’s ministry to children has long reflected an attitude that
regards children as ‘developing beings’ who need instruction and guidance and
‘sinful beings’ who need moral development. But Biblical tradition actually recalls
a much broader view of children than this. Children are also gifts of God and
sources of joy (e.g. Ps.127.3; Gen.30.22; Jer.20.15); fully human and made in
the image of God (Gen.1.27), and models of faith and sources of revelation (e.g.
Matt.18.2-5; Matt. 19.14; Jn.6.9). All of these must be held together if we are to
have a balanced theological understanding of children. The significance of
children, therefore, however young, does not just lie in what they will become but
in who they are now. Even the newborn is a gift of God and a source of joy, fully
human and made in the image of God, a model of faith and a source of
revelation. This gives a new dignity to young children and a place in the faith
community that values them for whom they are and what they bring, as well as
recognising their needs.
b) We also need to re-think the “empty vessels” syndrome. Although the term
“spirituality” carries a number of connotations, there is a significant strand of
thinking, which encourages a view of it as an innate and universal dimension of
what it is to be human. Indeed, our Christian understanding of human beings
created in God’s image suggests that the capacity for spiritual awareness is
innate in human beings! And if spirituality is an innate and universal dimension of
what it is to be human, then it will be present in young children, and may even be
at its most intense in early childhood before it has been overlaid with other ideas
and experiences. Traditional provision for children in the church has viewed
Christian spirituality as part of a more mature faith, inaccessible at a young age
until one has been grounded in significant instruction and experience. But maybe
this is all the wrong way around? Maybe we should start with a child’s innate
spirituality from as early a time as possible, and build on that through the
experiences we offer her/him, so that the faith, which we hope will develop, will
grow out of that and be constantly be inter-connected with it. And maybe, just
maybe, there is much in a young child’s innate spirituality that can enhance the
spiritual lives of adults if only we have eyes to see and hearts that are open
enough. (For further reading about children’s spirituality, see Kathryn Copsey’s
book, From the Ground Up)
c) We also need to re-think the emphasis that has been placed on cognition
(knowing through the intellect) as the means by which we understand matters of
faith and religion. When “knowing through the intellect” is emphasised, young
children are inevitably seen as being deficient! But there are other ways of

3. 'knowing', ways of 'knowing' that could be more significant in matters of
spirituality and faith, and ways which are particularly significant for young
children. Children often know things intuitively, even if they couldn’t reason about
them. And we don’t necessarily need well-developed thinking skills to engage
with things like symbols, rituals and worship.
Beyond ‘sacred babysitting’?
People who work with young children frequently emphasise the importance of the
early years for the development of physical, social, emotional, and intellectual
capacities, but there seems to be little similar concern for the development of
spiritual capacities in the early years. Young children need much more than
'passive occupation', however caring and well-meaning the caregivers might be.
Spiritual nurture doesn’t start when a child can talk lucidly, or when they can start
to reason more logically, it starts from the earliest moments.
Two more stories…
At our weekly Praise and Play service, (a midweek service for pre-school
children and their carers), we always set up a ‘focus table’. On one occasion, we
placed a ‘beanie’ lion and ‘beanie’ lamb on the table. There followed an
interesting conversation with some of the children about whether we should put
the lion and the lamb next to each other on the table. One four year old was
adamant that they should be as far apart as possible because the lion would eat
the lamb. I wondered whether the lion could lie down with the lamb, to which
another four-year-old whispered to his Grandad, ‘They can in God’s house’.
Like many churches, our Christmas Eve afternoon service, is a short,
uncomplicated service, where we tell ‘The Christmas Story’, setting up the Crib
as we go and children are always quick to come forward and place the figures.
The finished scene was of all the figures aesthetically placed in and around the
Crib. Over refreshments after the service, I looked over to see one of our regular
two, coming up to three, year olds crowding all the figures into the stable around
the manger – all the people, sheep from the hillside, an enormous camel, a
donkey and a cow. Gone was any aesthetic arrangement, and the stable was
‘jam-packed’! Curious, I knelt down with him. He said, ‘I want everyone to see
baby Jesus’.
This article was taken from as essay submitted as part of the requirements for an
MTh degree at Chester University.
And is available online http://www.barnabasinchurches.org.uk/2274