Theology of Children

10 Comments

Comment by Harry Bryans on March 25, 2008 at 3:14pm

There is still so much to be discovered and shared about what the Bible says about children. God delights in using children throughout scripture, church history and today's church to challenge, minister to, bless the world and keep us humble! Our historical vision has to be readjusted to have a more faithful reading and balanced understanding of the Bible's teaching about children. I'm here to learn more.

Comment by Dave and Sheri Gidney on April 26, 2008 at 7:55pm

OK ... here goes ... quick Bible verse ... what does this mean ?
Psalm 127:5 Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them. They will not be put to shame when they contend with their enemies in the gate.

Harry Sprange and I have had a chat about this ... what do others think?

Comment by Catherine Montgomery on May 24, 2008 at 8:48am

Children's faith development is something that I think the church has underestimated. As you say, Anne, it is growth as in the relationship with parents. It seems to me that children are born with a God consciousness that is supressed by contact with the adult world. (This would concur with Hay and Nye) Our job as children's workers is to help them to know and then understand the God of whom they are aware. It will probably be a gradual process and at some point there may be a 'conversion experience'. However, the end result is that they know Jesus as Lord of their lives. simply grows.

Comment by Dave and Sheri Gidney on June 23, 2008 at 9:33am

reply to Catherine ...
Thanks for the comment you posted 24th May
Interesting ... probably worth starting a discussion on

"It seems to me that children are born with a God consciousness that is suppressed by contact with the adult world."

What do folk think?
How does this square with the doctrine of original sin ?
What if the parents are not modelling faith properly ?
Does this highlight parenting issues ?

Comment by Geoff Felton on June 28, 2008 at 10:30pm

"It seems to me that children are born with a God consciousness that is suppressed by contact with the adult world."

I agree this seems to be the case from what I have seen with children that I work with.
On thursday night I was reacquainted with the Engels Scale, do you know it? Basically it's a scale from 1 to 10 where 1 is a complete non believer and 10 is a Christian, the numbers in between are the stages of faith development. It got me thinking this scale takes no account of childhood faith because the underlying assumption of the scale appears to be linear development of faith rather than an underlying inherent awareness of God which is what children appear to have very early on.
What do people think?

Comment by Simon Hall on October 18, 2008 at 11:14am

All of these scales a pretty two dimensional. Engels seems to measure attitude towards folowing Jesus, rather than understanding of Christian beliefs, or depth of relationship with God...

Comment by Alan Charter on October 20, 2008 at 4:59pm

The Pattaya scale was developed specifically with children in mind, as a strategic tool looking at the 'going out' and 'bringing in' aspects of making disciples. Check out the 'Reaching every child' video (click above) for an illustrated introduction to how it might be applied...

Comment by Reuben on November 15, 2008 at 10:51pm

Currently reading emerging church and deep church stuff. Seems to make more sense to work with families rather than young children on their own (both churched and un-churched families).
reuben

Comment by Reuben on February 4, 2009 at 9:25pm

We all got an invite to hear "Mark Griffiths" at the Children's Evangelism day. He's an international speaker / academic interested in children's evangelism. Listen to his helpful podcasts free from "Enlarge 07" http://www.serious4god.co.uk/enlarge07 or if you don't like embedded links google - "mark griffiths" evangelism -

Comment by Don Ratcliff on February 8, 2009 at 8:01pm

Related web sites--these emphasize theology about children:

www.childtheology.org
www.childtheology.net

Don

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