Children and Conversion

Excerpt from Sam Donoghue's How do children become Christians? reflecting on comments by Revd Andrew Smith, the Bishop's Director for Interfaith Relations in the Diocese of Birmingham, at a Children in Urban Situations conference.

1. You've grown up with it, now make it yours

For those of us who work in churches this is an especially valuable thought. It is my hope that the children who grow up in our church communities will never remember a time when God wasn't a significant part of their life and our job is to nurture that and allow it to deepen.
This means that as the child gets older and their thinking develops they are able to choose to carry on in the faith they grew up in rather than slightly bizarrely repent from it. This may come in a moment of decision but is likely to be a slow process that John Westerhoff would characterise as the movement from 'affiliative faith' to 'owned faith' through a time where faith is described as 'searching'.

2. Continue doing what you're doing but welcome Jesus into it.

This is a model that Andrew suggested had great value when working with people coming from other faiths. It acknowledges the good in their current practice and seeks to place Jesus in the heart of it. So don't repent of praying five times a day but instead pray in the name of Jesus and the power of the spirit.

3. Stop doing what you're doing and follow Jesus

This is the model that Andrew reflected is applied to children the most but may well be the least appropriate. I'd agree with him; please hear that I'm not saying children don't need to decide to follow Jesus but we need to be careful about how we present this. The danger is that no matter how well we explain to a child that God loves them all they will hear is that they have done things that make God so angry that he can't be their friend until they say sorry. For some children they won't hear about grace because they won't get past that first image of an angry and judgemental God who is actually pretty scary.