Tag Archives: Parents

A Simple But Significant Tweak For Your Pre-School Sunday School

All Saints Church, Fulham

If there is one thing we’ve learned as Christian educators during this pandemic, it’s that many of our parents were ill-prepared to take on the role of being faith-formers at home when our church buildings closed and our church programmes were shuttered.

And, it wasn’t their fault!

When asked, most parents say that they ought to be the primary influencers of faith with their children, and they are absolutely right. Yet, these same parents also tell us they have no idea how to do this because they haven’t been shown how. Sadly, with our decades-long emphasis on forming faith with children within our church buildings through Sunday school, mid-week groups and summer programming we’ve inadvertently left our parents in the dark on how to talk about and practice faith at home as a family. 

As we look to rebuild our educational programmes this fall we can’t ignore what we’ve learned these last couple of years; we must not cut our parents out of our faith formation plans and in fact we need to make families the centre of our approach going forward.

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Some One-Liners to Ponder

InterGenerate/Children’s Spirituality Summit CNOB Team

“As Christians, how we relate to each other should set us apart” (Douglas Powe)

Earlier this week a team of six people from our synod attended a virtual conference by InterGenerate and the Children’s Spirituality Summit. We spent Monday through Wednesday listening to thought provoking keynote presentations by world leaders of children’s and intergenerational ministries, attended a broad variety of workshops and/or research paper presentations led by leading practitioners and academics, and joined affinity breakout groups that applied to our areas of interest in faith formational ministry.

It was a great week!

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Talking With Your Children About COVID-19

mother holding child

The kids have questions…and lots of them! 

Why are we off school? Why can’t we play with our friends, or see grandma and grandpa? Why is church cancelled, and why are we stuck with nothing fun to do?

What is the Coronavirus and/or COVID-19? Why are so many people dying? 

Why are my parents so obsessed with the news, the internet and the telephone?

What does God have to do with what’s going on? Does God have something to do with what’s going on?

This is new, uncharted territory for most of us, and we wonder how we are to answer our children’s many questions the best way we can. There is no perfect answer to “What do we say to the kids?” but there are some good guidelines to help us discern what is best for our family.

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FAMILIES @ HOME DURING COVID-19

The Storm, by Leopold, age 6, Melville Presbyterian Church
used with permission

These are unprecedented times. Our churches have been instructed by the Ontario Government and the Ministry of Health to cease holding worship services and all other religious gatherings and meetings for the foreseeable future. Our participation in social distancing offers us all an opportunity to actively help flatten the curve and prevent the needless transmission of this virus to anyone we might meet and interact with. It is imperative that our churches follow the instructions of our government and health care leaders.

Now that we’ve had a day or two to check-in with our congregations’ members and church leaders, many are beginning to turn their attention to finding creative ways of supporting and staying connected throughout this pandemic.

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