Children Matter

My interest was piqued by the Education for Discipleship report to General Assembly. The report noted that nearly 20 per cent of congregations in the Presbyterian Church had no Sunday school in 2005. In 2006, 164 out of 932 congregations (reporting statistics) were in that situation. This suggests that Presbyterians are not reaching the next generation of Canadians.
Some people, however, have argued what the data actually show is that the widely used model of Sunday school is finished as an effective tool for reaching children with the good news. “Effective contemporary churches are still reaching children, initiating them into the faith, just not through Sunday school,” is the reasoning.
The question became: How to test the argument that children and young people are still being initiated into the church through Presbyterian congregations? I decided to look at baptisms. Baptism is, among other things, an initiation into the church. Whether it is parents bringing children to be baptized, or people publicly professing their faith as adults and being baptized, in the waters of baptism people are welcomed into the church. Therefore, it is worth asking how many people are being baptized in Presbyterian congregations in Canada.
From the late 1980s to 1993, an average of 5,500 people were baptized each year in Canadian Presbyterian churches. Since that time there has been a steady decline in the number of baptisms. In 2006, 2,461 people were baptized; less than half the number 15 years earlier.
In 2006, 36 per cent of the Presbyterian congregations in the country (331 of 932 congregations reporting) did no baptisms at all; an almost 50 per cent increase from the 229 congregations who in 1992 did not celebrate any baptisms (23 per cent of 984 congregations reporting). In short, Canadian Presbyterians are initiating ever fewer people into the faith either as infants, young people or adults.
Over the last 15 years, the number of congregations in the Presbyterian Church has declined, as has the denomination's membership, the number of children in Sunday school and the number of households under pastoral care. Yet none of those declines has been as precipitous as the collapse in the number of baptisms celebrated.
A possible explanation would be: “Canada has a declining birth rate, therefore it is to be expected that there would be fewer baptisms in 2006 than in 1992.” Thanks to Statistics Canada we can evaluate this explanation. The average number of births in Canada per year in the first half of the 1990s was 316,000. That figure dipped to an average of 282,000 births a year in the second half of the 1990s. There has, however, been a significant rebound in the birth rate over the first five years of the new millennium. Between July 1, 2005, to June 30, 2006, 343,517 babies were born in Canada – the highest number in 15 years. The declining number of baptisms cannot be explained by the falling birth rate, for the birth rate has been on the upswing for the last five years. It would be so simple if the decline in baptisms could be explained by something external to the Presbyterian Church. But the evidence does not allow for such simple answers.
Having asked how many congregations had no Sunday schools, and how many congregations initiated no one into the church through baptism, it seemed reasonable to ask how many congregations lacked both Sunday school and baptisms in 2006. The answer is 99 of the 932 congregations reporting (10.6 per cent). Put another way: 60 per cent of congregations that had no Sunday school in 2006 also performed no baptisms. If a church does not have a Sunday school, it is likely it will not get the chance to celebrate baptisms.
In 1992, there were 76 Presbyterian congregations that celebrated no baptisms and had no Sunday school. Tracking those 76 congregations, I discovered that 28 were closed by 2006. The sobering fact is that 36.8 per cent of congregations with no Sunday school and celebrating no baptisms were closed within 15 years. The evidence is compelling: congregations that did not reach children and their families with the good news of Jesus had difficulty maintaining ministry of any kind. Put positively: having a ministry to children is one of the most effective ways of maintaining the life of a community of faith.
Congregations that expect children to be part of their faith community find that children attend Sunday school and church; congregations that do not expect children to attend church find their expectations fulfilled: no children come.
Let me illustrate this: A small rural congregation has four children connected to it. Some Sundays the children are there, other Sundays they are not. Yet each week a woman in the congregation faithfully prepares to teach Sunday school not knowing whether this week there will be children or not. She lives in expectation there will be kids, and whenever they come they receive a welcome.
At another congregation, a new young family came to church one Sunday. The mother was shown the nursery space and was invited to stay there and provide childcare for her youngest child while the worship service took place. No one in the congregation was prepared to respond to these children and their family. Needless to say, that family did not go to that church again.
Congregations that do not touch the lives of children are at risk of closing. Congregational leaders and members need to trust God to send children to their congregation and then do everything they can to welcome and nurture those children and their families.
There is a glimmer of hope in the tale of woe. Among the 76 congregations that had no Sunday school and celebrated no baptisms in 1992 were: Woodbridge, north of Toronto, and Guthrie, near Barrie, Ont. Both these congregations are thriving today, albeit with different names. Woodbridge is now Cornerstone Community Church and Guthrie was one of the three congregations that joined together to form Trinity Community Church, Oro.
The fact that these two congregations had no children in Sunday school and celebrated no baptisms, and yet have been able to find new life, holds out the hope that turnaround is possible. The members of these congregations will bear witness that turnaround requires congregations doing new things, thinking in new ways, and moving outside of the safe confines of known patterns of congregational life.
While it is not necessary for congregations to imitate Trinity or Cornerstone to reach the next generation with the good news, reaching the next generation will require significant changes in the life of the congregation and in the thinking of church members. Congregations and their members may be afraid to change or unwilling to change. Yet the data indicate that congregations which do not reach the next generation with the good news are making a choice which will likely end with their congregation's closure. The good news is that congregations ready to minister to children and families can find new life in their midst, and in their numbers!