Equipping parents
This Sunday my church will have it’s “Recovenanting Sunday.†(You know, the service which marks a new year without really being a new year because the church year starts with advent and the calendar’s New Year’s starts in January!) One of the many things we will do this day is give a bible to the children who just started second grade. We give them the Abingdon’s NRSV Children’s Bible. Starting this year, we are also going to give their parents Abingdon Press’s recently published Discovering Together: A Parents Companion to Abingdon’s NRSV Children’s Bible by Joyce Brown.
What I love about this 16 page leaflet is summed up in the introduction, “As a parent, you are your child’s most influential teacher.â€
Sometimes we at churches think that we are our children’s sole educators of the faith, but we aren’t. Christian education begins at home. I like this leaflet because it is meant to help parents be their “child’s most influential teacherâ€. In particular, it teaches them how to teach their children how to use a specific bible. It is a great resource – and for only $2.00 it is a must have!
You can find both the NRSV Children’s Bible and Discovering Together: A Parents Companion to Abingdon’s NRSV Children’s Bible by Joyce Brown at www.cokesbury.com
Vanessa M. Ellison
Date posted: Friday, September 7th, 2007 4:59 pm | Under category: bible, books, children, Christian Education, teaching
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Thanks, Vanessa, that’s a great example of what needs to happen more of in congregations: giving back responsibility for the spiritual formation and education of children to the parents. The most successful models of children’s ministries in congregations will be those that provide the best balance between educational ministry with children AND ministry to parents and families.
The biggest challenge seems to be resisting the calls of parents who insist that churches entertain and take responsibility for teaching their children about the faith. The firstis just not our job, and the second, as you point out, is the PRIMARY responsibility of the parents.
[...] just at the start of the new fall Christian Education year in our churches (and, as Vanessa pointed out, the fall “new year†has more to do with adapting to the secular calendar than to [...]