One Generation from Extinction (eBook)

Chapter 2

CHILD EVANGELISM AT THE END OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

An Anglican Report in 19451 noted:

The twentieth century saw Sunday School attendance drop from 6 million in 1903 to less than 500,000 by 19982 – this was despite an overall increase in the population. The period contained two world wars, and the demands of war necessitated women working in factories for long hours, including Sundays. Worship was no longer possible for many, and when it was possible, many found that they no longer felt the need. Those who survived the wars found their theological position shaken. Questions of innocent suffering undermined the beliefs of many.

The social imperative of the initial Sunday Schools – the teaching of literacy – was now confined to history. The almost universal role of the Sunday School in the twentieth century was summed up by the Reverend J. Williams Butcher:3

Before looking at this era further, it is important to note again that in the Sunday School world there is a lag of approximately thirty years between the words of the change-agent and its acceptance at grass roots level.4 The negative or positive impact of decisions taken may not be felt on a national level until some thirty years after the decision.

The vast majority of discussion in the latter part of the twentieth century follows one subject: what is going wrong? Montgomery5 writes:

‘FIFTIES FREEFALL’?

The Church of England commissioned further reports,6 but the emphasis was on the progress of the child through its church from baptism to confirmation. Several authors wrote on the reasons for the huge decline of Sunday School attendance during the twentieth century. Some of these pointed to specific changes that took place in the 1950s as the main contributing factor to the decline. One example of this is Coupe’s 2004 article where she writes:

The statistical information is a matter of fact: the church is losing children. The debate revolves around why. Coupe comments that:

The reports were taken seriously and, by 1970, 82 per cent of churches had Sunday School at the same time as morning worship. Alongside this, the overall attendance reduced radically. Coupe observes:

It would be easy to conclude that Coupe’s ‘fifties freefall’ was indeed the reason for the huge loss in Sunday School membership and to follow her to the logical conclusion: ‘If church policy can do so much damage, then the reverse ought also to be true. Policy is easier to change than culture.’ However, before that conclusion is adopted it is important to identify the factors that led to the British Council of Churches and the Free Church Federal Council making their initial recommendation. Part of it was stated by Coupe herself when she notes:

The other contributing factor was the way Sunday School attendance had been dropping up to that point. The writers of the reports could be forgiven for resorting to crisis measures in an attempt to stop the exodus of children from the church. A related issue may have been the strong impression the Parish Communion Movement7 had made since its formation in the 1950s. A strong emphasis was placed not only on the eucharistic service but also on the need to share the eucharistic service as a family. When consideration is given to Cliff’s thirty-year time lag, it becomes clear that the policy decisions of the 1950s did not cause the huge decline that followed but instead were an attempt to try to salvage an already sinking ship.

The tragedy of the 1950s decision is that it turned many children from non-churchgoing homes away from the church. Whatever the reason for the policy change, the change had taken place. By 1977, 80 per cent of the Sunday morning children’s groups were made up of children from church families.8

Nevertheless, against this backdrop of serious decline, some enterprising Sunday School practitioners had begun to experiment with the concept of the mid-week children’s club (some even before the start of the Second World War). Cliff9 comments:

These were, at the same time, the forerunners of the Children’s Outreach Project, and the re-emergence of Raikes’ Sunday Schools, in that they had embedded within them many of the principles that characterized Raikes’ early model, including the definitive feature that they existed primarily for the communication of Christian values to non-church children.10

ALL-AGE WORSHIP

During the mid-1970s and into the 1980s, new champions arose to take up the call for families to worship together. Children’s workers such as Ian Smale (Ishmael, figure 2.1)11 began advocating the family praise party, a church service designed for the whole family. Through the 1980s, Ishmael became associated with Spring Harvest12 children’s groups and as such had a significant impact on the way churches from primarily Evangelical Anglican, Baptist and New Churches conducted their children’s work. Many churches were already experimenting with all-age worship services, and the methods modelled by Ishmael allowed churches to improve the quality of those services. He worked hard to encourage churches to run all their services with all ages together. The result was that many churches adopted a compromise policy of running one Sunday a month as an all-age worship service. This is a practice that many churches, particularly Anglican churches, have continued to implement into the twenty-first century. Nevertheless, there is a difficulty with this. Where there are charismatic figures to lead such all-age worship events, the events are generally a positive experience, but those who can run all-age worship services to the satisfaction of all who attend are rare. In many churches, parents, children and members without children find this the least beneficial service they attend. Many churches are unclear as to their reasons for running all-age services at all, and others comment that it gives their Sunday School teachers a week off.13

Fig 2.1 Ian Smale

The Church of England’s report Children in the Way (1988) promoted a new way of thinking about the church’s children, based on what it termed ‘the...