flickr: The Arches
A few years ago, our family of six left a congregation full of parents with young children, and joined a church made up mostly of university students.1 This wasn’t an ideological statement on our part: it was simply because my husband works in university ministry, and that’s where we needed to be at the time. But it’s made me aware of some of the benefits and costs of going to church with people from a different age and stage from your own.
There was an interesting comment on my post Reading the Bible with kids – even the hard bits.
A mum who’s thinking about how to read the Bible with her family said, “I’d love to see a follow up article about tackling the other types of difficult passages of the Bible – the particularly gory or sexual bits.”
Are the kids’ talks at your church varied and involving, or rushed and repetitive? Annabel Catto looks at the purpose of having a kids’ spot during a church service, and shares ideas for what it could include. (more…)
I’m the children’s worker at St Mark’s Anglican Church in Oakhurst, in Sydney’s western suburbs. I don’t see my role as a job; I see it as a wonderful God-given opportunity to support the other people in our children’s ministry team and to share the gospel with people in my parish. (more…)
Western societies like Australia are living through times of rapid change. Revolutions in technology create new ways of living that in turn create new ways of thinking. Young people grow up in environments very different from their parents, and so often develop different values. This makes the passing on of biblical values from one generation to the next difficult. The technologies that shape our lives give us amazing freedom of choice, and relative independence. But this is creating a growing, transient, consumer-driven individualism in our societies.