Thoughtful Moments

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 7, Issue 30, 3 December 1943, Page 2

Thoughtful Moments

(Supplied by the Whakat;m fc Miaist eis' Association).

THE FAMILY CHURCH

''Christian Education is training in the art of right thinking and willing and feeling towards God and towards one another. 'the setting for siu-h education is withinthe life of a community in which, such relationships can be not onlv talked, about, but also expressed and developed. The Fellowship and Worship and Work of a Church are indispensable agencies; they are the j living expressions ol the laith a\ e want to teach. J't is not so much what we. teach about the Church which will determine the decision which people make- about it, but what the Church in fact is and does in their lives. There is. ol course, no doubt that the primary agency in Christian Education is a Christian home.. But the more clearly we see how religion is learned in the mutual acceptance and mutual service of a Christian home, the

more inevitable are. we drawn to see that when the Church plays its part it must lie in loco parents. How can we make the home more truly a Church, and the Church more truly a home? What can we do about the children who come from homes that have no regular connection with the Church? This is a vital concern. "We must face the fact that our Sunday Schools and liihlc Classes are frequently failing to lead young

people into the Church? With many children their religion is associated

with the Sunday School and not with the Church. One of the great tasks of Christian Education to discover how to develop the sense of. Christian family life between the 80 per cent of children, Avho come from homes which have no Church connection and the members, of. the Christian community we went them to enter. Can we mobilise the resources of the whole. Christian fellowship in this task of winning for Christ and His Church a generation beset on every side by pagan forces. New Testament it, is in the community life of the believers that the. power of Christ comes most directly to them. So a Church, if it looks at the children who are committed to its care with Christian

imagination, may realise as. never before the. need to put its house in

order. If avc took a simple, slogan : no child in the School without a

OUR SUNDAY MESSAGE

friend in the Church —how could we apply it so eilectively that our Children would come naturally to think of the Church, not as a place, hilt

as a happy Christian. I'amilv to which they belonged? Every chi.d in our Sunday Schools, particularly those from non-Church iSoinM homes, should have a "Church friend."-whose task it is to shepherd that child into

the Church fellowship. A Christian must be more than communityminded; he must have Icained in the. school of Christ how to crcatt community wherever he is. ''The characteristic expression of a Church's life is. its worship. It is ol' quite critical importance that our children should shave in worship with the whole family of God, and pome into a sense of family together before him. The recovery of the family pew with all that it implies should be in the forefront of our educational policy. Short term or long term, it should be our policy to build up again family worship in the. Church. If every child has a friend in the Church, what is more

natural than that he should sit with that friencl? The result will be-, that at a regular service of worship some children will be. with their

own parents, some with their teachers, and some with their Church friends. Not only will the Church have the appearance of being a Church of families, but the. family spirit will be fostered by this regular relationship. "We must recognise in our Christian Education that the Word we have, to communicate is a living person, Who is Himself actively seeking to be known, not passively waiting to be discovered. We want the children to know that God, the* Creator, God, the Redeeming Person, God, the living Spirit, is available, is, near, is inescapable,. With this in mind we should use more, the Great Festivals of the Church. Christmas, Easter, Whit Sunday, the Harvest, and the Church Family festival, provide occasions when young and old in the Church can rejoice together; and if the services on these occasions are built up by contributions from children and young people, then so much the more truly will Christian worship be linked with Christian instruction. Our task is not merely to give: Bible history lessons, but to make plain something which is at work now, and not far from any one of us."