Childhood and the Church

I never wanted to work with teenagers. I’d never understood teenagers, even when I was one. And then the strangest thing happened, and the children I’d been working with as a volunteer in our church’s family ministry, well, they grew into preteens. Then, oh horror, teenagers. And when someone asked me to help rebuild a youth group, I remembered that I never wanted to work with teens. But these weren’t just random adolescents, they were the children—now larger, taller, ganglier, some louder, others grown more quiet—that I’d been helping to form for years. Of course, I said, I’d love to continue being in relationship with these amazing young people!

Sixteen years later I’m here to tell you, I love working with youth. I’ve sponsored youth for baptism, I’ve received their texts and phone calls of celebration and grief and angst, I’ve held them in my heart, in my prayers, and in my arms, countless times. I love them, and a few of them call me their second mom.

These days I oversee youth ministry, and my day to day work is focused on children and their parents. In church language, children generally refers to kids from birth through elementary school, while youth is shorthand for middle and high school students. My own boys now in their teens and early twenties, I notice, always, how the stages of life bring new understandings and perspectives that can be profoundly helpful in my ministry. And just lately, in this Epiphany season, I’m experiencing a bit of a professional epiphany:

Youth do not exist in a bubble. They do not rise, as sixth graders, from some primordial soup, suddenly deserving of our time and attention.

Wait, don’t go…hear me out. I know, my epiphany may seem basic to you at first read, but I think it’s something those of us in ministry, anyone who works with children and youth—in fact, our society at large—need to consider more carefully.

Reading a book about the spirituality of children and youth in challenging situations recently, I became frustrated that the authors were not truly writing about children most of the time, they were writing about teens and young adults. And that’s fine, it’s a good book with important insights about this work. I know of so many good programs, both faith-based and secular, that lift up youth voices, attend to youth mental health, empower and resource and work to build life-giving opportunities and understandings to teenagers and young adults. And thank God for every one of them; they are important and needed.

AND…youth grow from children. All that they are, in these angst-filled, noisy, messy, emotional teenage years, is informed in large part by the identity and sense of worth they’ve built since babyhood. Speaking from the church point of view, this understanding matters, deeply, in how we attend to the raising of our children, always remembering that they are on a lifelong path of being formed – into youth, into young adults, into adulthood and middle age and onward. I’ve come to understand, myself, finally, that the child within us doesn’t disappear. She’s there, striving and dreaming and hoping and fearing just as she always has, and the formative moments of childhood still inform her perceptions of self-value, of capability or incompetence…of her worthiness as beloved by God and deserving of the love of others. Of course these perceptions are not stagnant from childhood into adulthood, but they are the foundation from which we enter into adolescence and onward.

And so I wonder, how are we teaching children, from babyhood, that they are now and will always be worthy of love. I wonder, once we’ve baptized our children, how we hold up the promises we made that day. I wonder, how are we in our homes, in our churches, in our communities, in our society, supporting parents and parenthood. 

In the church context, do our children’s programs invite children to explore their own innate spirituality and unique relationship with God? In right relationship with children, treating them as fully human, are we honoring their understanding of the divine and of their place in Beloved Community? In our services, are our wiggling or tearful little ones and their harried parents received with love, support, and grace, with the conviction that they are fully included in our life in Christ? In our classrooms, are we handing them coloring sheets and craft kits, or are we inviting them to create using quality, open-ended art supplies that foster their own creativity. Are we telling them what the stories of God’s people mean, or are we asking them to participate in making meaning alongside us and one another? 

Our children, soon-to-be youth, have important ideas and understandings of the world, their place in it, and their relationship with the Creator to share with us. Are we listening?