8
'Immortal Invisible' 1
What is happening to the children of the church?
Given the power and value of sacred song, it is a great shame that many churches would seem to have successfully fulfilled the Victorian requirement that 'children should be seen and not heard.' On average, 65.5% of the children observed in the course of this research did not join in with the singing during any one song. Furthermore, in many churches the children are barely seen at all, spending most of the service away from the worshipping congregation in separate children's programmes 2. Whilst age-appropriate catechism is both necessary and desirable, it should not preclude regular opportunities for the whole church community to worship together.
It is arguable that the scale of segregation widely practiced in churches today seriously hinders children's ability to integrate into the adult assembly, and the results of the church observations substantiate this claim 3, yet Sunday Schools have enormous potential for nurturing the spirituality inherent in children.
'Religious education programs can help children learn to participate in liturgical celebrations by teaching them the significance of various gestures and movements, helping them to learn a repertoire of songs and psalms, developing in those who are able the skill to proclaim the word' (Pottebaum, Freeburg & Kelleher 1992 p29). [My emphasis]
Research has shown, however, that in many British churches, much of this potential remains largely untapped.
'The churchgoing children from Protestant or evangelical communities generally received very low-key religious instruction in the context of children's groups running alongside Sunday worship for adults. Mostly they regarded these as a fun club for children, with some Bible stories, drawing and singing thrown in' (Smith 2005 p53).
The songs that are, in Smith's words, 'thrown in' (ibid.) have little, if anything, in common with the repertoire sung by the adult assembly in normal Sunday worship, coming instead from the school hymn/contemporary children's hymn genre, or from peddlers of popular children's ministry materials 4. Unfortunately these laudable attempts to provide children with appealing Christian songs to nurture their faith, in practice, frequently result in children being fed a diet of songs that, at best, do nothing to aid their integration into normal Sunday worship and at worst, consist of 'doctrinally skimpy' (Pritchard 1992 p74) patronising rubbish 5.
'We bring our children to church and cheerlead them through happy hymns about the beauty and goodness of God's world, as if they had never heard of tornadoes or earthquakes, acid rain or bombs; as if they themselves hadn't lain awake last night, worrying, because Mummy and Daddy had another fight and maybe they will get divorced' (Pritchard 1992 p4).
Recognising that young people no longer easily identify with the mainstream worship of the church, a whole industry has evolved devoted to providing materials for children's ministry, creating a new subculture of worship and children's ministry that straddles the mainstream Christian denominations. This subculture of popular children's ministry exists outside of, but pays lip-service to, the mainstream Western youth culture, characterised by 'pop-style' songs and informal, often zany presentation. Like the work of the 20th Century Church Light Music Group, the songs of popular children's ministry are deliberately ephemeral 6, aiming to keep up with the trends of mainstream youth culture thus lending immediate credibility to the message.
It is not within the scope of this study to evaluate the success or otherwise of the popular children's ministry approach, other than in terms of its impact on young people's ability to integrate into normal Sunday worship. In this respect, the practice of basing youth work largely on the popular children's ministry model fails in all but the liveliest evangelical churches, as popular children's ministry does not provide transferable patterns of worship congruent with normal Sunday worship. The result, in cultural terms, is that Sunday Schools (and schools and Christian youth initiatives such as Lighthouse) now serve not so much as to introduce young people to the culture of church worship, but more to insulate them from it. This can lead to huge disappointment, both for the young people and for the adults who care about them, when the 'young people are interested in Jesus but find church a 'turn-off'' (Maries in Maries et. al. 1996 p23).
'Young people can find much of what goes in church worship embarrassing and alien to their culture. The liturgy, the music, the relative formality, the sermon, and predominance of adults may conspire to make the experience of worship inaccessible to young people' (Hooper 1986 p11).
This state of alienation 7 is held in place by a system of youth work that does little to engage with the worship of the adult assembly. Whilst Sunday Schools and other Christian youth initiatives may be effective in imparting Christian truths and values, most popular children's ministry presentations are devoid of the elements of mystery, awe, contemplation, wonder and silence that are especially beloved of the liturgical traditions. Furthermore, they bear little or no resemblance to normal Sunday worship in terms of musical repertoire, musical style, and liturgical ritual practices. Rather than redoubling efforts to introduce young people to the culture of worship that binds the adult church community (in all its differing denominational manifestations), most Sunday Schools continue operating in 'fun club' (Smith 2005 p53) mode, entertaining as much as catechising their charges 8.
The standard response of the church is to side-step the problem of young people's inability to identify with and integrate into normal Sunday worship by providing a different (often monthly) service to cater for the needs of young people, leaving the regular Sunday worship untouched. In doing so, children are effectively shielded from the regular worship of the church and the 'problems' apparently disappear. Or do they? Family services and youth services, whilst able to offer a useful short-term solution, only serve to create further problems of integration, particularly if the music used in those services bears no similarity to the music in regular Sunday worship for when those young people approach adulthood they still do not know the music of the adult assembly. The young people raised on worship/ Sunday school experiences devoid of the elements that constitute the worship of the adult assembly, will still one day reach the point where they are expected to take part in normal Sunday worship. It is at this point that the failure to adequately socialise young people into the culture of church worship becomes apparent, and when churches lose their young people in droves. Whilst the provision of family services, youth services and 'all-age' worship can fulfil certain needs, restricting young people largely to these kinds of services leads to the
'…danger of creating a new breed of Christian reared on the 'milk' of the special service alone, who will never be weaned off it onto the 'solid food' of regular worship (I Corinthians 3:2). Meanwhile the worship experience of the main parish community is left untouched and unreformed' (Giles 2004 p43).
In offering popular children's ministry as an alternative to normal Sunday worship, pandering to young people's supposed wants, the church is effectively withholding the very thing young people most crave - acceptance.
'We forget that children worship naturally and have an acute sense of belonging (or not belonging)' (Gaupin 1992).
When young people take part in foreign exchange programmes (for example, through school or Scouts or town twinning schemes) some feel very homesick in what is, for them, an alien environment. Does the host family reject them for this? No. They take time and make an effort to make their visitor feel welcome and at home; they share their favourite meals and visit their favourite places together; they show them how things work in that house and gently explain what is expected of them. In most cases the homesickness disappears and both visitor and host are enriched by the experience as questions are asked and answered on both sides, and understanding of the cultures represented deepens. In the same way, churches need to make a conscious effort to welcome their young people into the culture of church worship, sharing, explaining and persevering in the face of 'homesickness'. If we are to truly share our faith, then we must share the practice of our faith - we cannot allow the church's young people to bolt for the first ferryboat back to cultural familiarity. Young people will never successfully integrate into the culture of normal Sunday worship if they are do not receive appropriate exposure to it. Conversely, regular exposure to the worship of the church from an early age allows a child to naturally absorb, understand and be shaped by the culture operational there.
'The practice of integrating children into the life of worship in the Orthodox Church is simply one of immersion into the experience of worship. "Taste and see how good the Lord is" (Proverbs 34:8). Experience (taste), then understand (see; be illumined) - this is the methodology. Children who are introduced to worship from the time of infancy accept their role in worship naturally… Their common participation in the sacramental life of the church unites them as one family in the body of Christ. The child learns to worship through experience from the very first moments in church. The child's "understandings" come through the senses' (Tarasar 1983).
Keeping young people out of normal Sunday worship serves to limit their liturgical experiences - musical and otherwise - and therefore limits the choices they are suitably informed to make. Youth A Part recommends that churches 'value young people and be aware of their worship needs and preferences. Arrange consultations to find out what these preferences are' 9 (Youth A Part 1996 p177). It also says, however:
'The dialogue with young people has to take into account their relative inexperience. If extra efforts are made to provide information and encourage and value their contributions, this will make the dialogue real' (Youth A Part 1996 p71).
As the gap between normal Sunday worship and children's ministry grows, it becomes increasingly hard to find middle ground acceptable to both the young people and the adults of the church. In terms of music, young people will inevitably request to sing the songs that are familiar to them - and these invariably fall outside of the idiom favoured by the adult assembly - because increasingly they have little or no experience of anything else. Well intentioned efforts to include young people in worship by 'singing something the children know' have the effect of confining young people to a common body of song that is ever decreasing. This study has proved that churches (or at least, those churches studied here) can no longer assume that young people will learn the music particular to normal Sunday worship in any place other than in church. Whilst all the schools studied sing together regularly, and all have one source of hymns/Christian songs in common (Come & Praise) the selection of hymns learned in any one school can still be extremely limited. Prestwood Infant School, for instance, plans to sing just twenty-one different hymns/Christian songs (excluding unspecified 'Christmas songs') over the course of the 2005/2006 academic year 10. Singing 'something the children know' is therefore becoming increasingly difficult.
'Our writing and programming for children still overwhelmingly reflects a tradition that treats faith as essentially an personal, private matter, and trusts to the mainstream culture to provide whatever communal reinforcement is needed. For the last several generations, that trust has been increasingly misplaced' (Pritchard 1992 p74).
In the absence of mainstream cultural reinforcement, it is the responsibility of the churches to socialise their young people into the culture of normal Sunday worship. This means making the effort to teach young people the songs the church would like them to know.
If the culture of church worship is to be preserved and perpetuated, churches must take the risk of including their young people in worship of the assembly. This is more important than ever considering that the loss of younger generations from the church is threatening the very future of the church 11. The time has come for children to return to their rightful place 12.
'Children must not be excluded from worship, even if that means that they spend less time in class because their parents will not bring them to class at any other time. We need to rethink what we mean by Christian education, and rearrange many of our parish structures' (Pritchard 1992 p143).
This does not mean that Sunday Schools must be disbanded, or that churches may cease to make efforts to provide for their young people. Nor does it mean that adult members of the assembly should be made to adopt liturgically inappropriate songs into their worship, or that young people should be made to 'perform.' 13 It means that churches must work as one body, embracing all their members, young and old, in seeking ways of sharing and living out the gospel. It means that churches must strive together to actively create a culture of worship within their church that is truly worthy of handing on, for this power lies in the hands of the assembly 14. Every church needs to honestly evaluate their liturgical practices, and make changes as necessary 15. Indeed the presence of young people at normal Sunday worship can prove to be most helpful catalysts for necessary change:
'If it bores them, it probably bores everyone else as well, and for the same reasons. This counsels that children may well be early and forceful witnesses to liturgical atrophy in their assembly and that their witness should be taken seriously by all' (Kavanagh 1982).
The challenge of liturgical renewal must be faced and tackled in every church. If such renewal incorporates the recovery of the elements of festivity and celebration into normal Sunday worship, liturgy will regain its power to offer something for everyone 16. If, however, churches do not rethink their approach to socialising young people into the culture of church worship, that culture, and the church as we know it, is destined to wither and die.
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Chapter 9
- Chalmers Smith, W. (1824 - 1908) 'Immortal, invisible, God only wise', no 377 in The English Hymnal Company Ltd. (compiler) (1986) The New English Hymnal. Norwich: Canterbury Press Back to text
- '"Community life" has become fragmented as has the traditional family unit. The church has organised its services in a way that complements the fragmentation: for instance, the preparation of children for the sacraments is not a family function but the task of religious education specialists whose textbook series attempt to provide parental involvement - but the burden of the preparation is still centred on the classroom, not on the family nor even on the parish community's ritual celebrations' (Pottebaum 1992 p69-70). Back to text
- See 'Chart showing the overall average level of sung participation (per song) in relation to whether or not the young people were present for the majority of the congregational singing', Chapter 4, Fig.15, p51. It is interesting to note that the church with the lowest recorded overall average level of sung participation is also the church with the most comprehensive youth work operation. Back to text
- See Singing in Sunday Schools, in Chapter 4, p32-34. Back to text
- Examples include: Price, A. (1996) 'I'm enthusiastic, boing, boing, boing!' Daybreak Music (sung at Church Eight); Bing, M. (1998) 'Heel and Toe' in Myles Bing. Jesus…You're the Best, vol.1 (audio recording on compact disc) OuT LouD Publishing (sung at Church Three - words reproduced in full App.p78); Wright, J. (?) 'I'll clap, clap my hands' in Wright, J. (?) Sing Out 1. Newport: Gottalife Productions (a favourite at Church Ten). Back to text
- See The 20th Century Church Light Music Group, App.p140-141. Back to text
- Fig. 1, App.p153 shows what I have termed 'The Spiral of Alienation'. It demonstrates how churches have allowed mainstream popular culture to dilute the culture of church worship in Sunday Schools to the point where the children are learning little or nothing or the culture particular to normal Sunday worship. Back to text
- The welcome antidote to the 'fun club' approach is Godly Play, a variation on the Montessori tradition of Religious Education, developed in the USA by Jerome Berryman (Berryman 1991). 'Godly Play is a method of telling Bible stories, or presenting parables or lessons about religious traditions. It invites listeners into the stories and encourages them to connect the stories with personal experience. Godly Play is a non-coercive way to encourage children to move into larger dimensions of belief and faith, through wondering questions and open-ended response time. It is a way of preparing children to join in the worship and life of their congregations as they develop a deeper understanding of stories, symbols and rites' (http://www.godlyplay.org accessed 07/01/06). Godly Play is in use at one of the churches observed, but the music used by their Sunday School is still very much in the popular children's ministry mould. Back to text
- This whole study grew out of one such series of consultations, through which I discovered how few hymns/Christian songs the young people with whom I was working knew between them. Back to text
- See 'Assembly Music September 2005 - July 2006, School Nine', App.p154. Back to text
- 'The loss of younger people in turn leads to an increasing dominance of older people in the church. While some churches with an older congregation grow, the large majority do not. The image of an older church, the difficulty of remaining financially viable with fewer attendees in employment and the problems of finding people to run the church activities and take leadership roles can all become very acute if younger people are absent (Brierley 2005 p12.13). See Table, 12.4, 'Trends to 2040: Church Membership: Institutional Churches' (Brierley 2005), reproduced in the appendices, App.p155. Back to text
- 'Initiated infants and children may not be adolescents or adults, but they remain fully enfranchised members of the assembly by their sacramental initiation into it…The Sunday liturgy is theirs no less than it their pastor's or their parents'. And while they will need time and much special help in their growth into full and active participation in that Sunday liturgy, they must neither be, nor appear to be disenfranchised of it'(Kavanagh 1982 p67). Back to text
- 'The children came to the front of the church, held up their pictures and then sang a song about not being a butterfly! None of the adults joined in, and once they had finished, there was a polite round of applause. This was not worship' (Mission and Public Affairs Council 2005 p25). Back to text
- 'I have come to value to assembly as makers of culture' (Tamblyn 2003 p8). Back to text
- For an example of how one church went about renewing the liturgy of the Palm Sunday Procession, see 'Is Liturgy Acquired?' (App.p156-168). Back to text
- See 'Recovering and Preserving Festivity and Celebration in Modern Day Liturgy' (App.p169-175). Back to text
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