On Sunday 4 November, churches hope to build on last year’s effort with On Our Knees Again, when they will be asking for God’s wisdom and guidance as they seek to raise the number of children attending their churches.
Christian Today asked the Baptist Union of Great Britain’s mission advisor Nick Lear what’s changed since last year.
The Baptist Church has seen quite substantial losses in the number of children attending over the last few years. Do you have any idea what prompted this decline?
When we first realised the high number of young people leaving I did some research comparing churches that have experienced growth in their children’s work with those that have experienced decline over the last five years and there are some marked differences that give us some clues.
Those that were experiencing growth were running activities not just on Sundays, but also mid-week with children, in recognition I think of the fact that children’s weekends are now far busier than they used to be and are therefore filled up with things other than church, meaning that perhaps Sunday then isn’t the best time to do church for children.
In analysing all the responses from the different surveys, we also found a difference in ethos, in that churches seemed to be far more inclusive and child-friendly where they were growing, rather than those that were showing decline.
That must make it a bit easier for you to figure out what to do about it?
Yes, that’s one of the reasons why we did On Our Knees the first time round and On Our Knees Again, because we wanted to raise the profile of children’s work, the need for it, the value of it, the potential that God has placed in each child. The church could help to unlock this.
Prayer is obviously fundamental to it, but we also just wanted to raise awareness, so we’ve been developing resources over the last year and identifying areas of weakness, and we’ve pulled together a strategic response.
Part of the purpose of On Our Knees Again is to offer churches some of the answers that we’ve come up with. We are saying to churches ‘these may be issues for your church and if they are then these are questions you can ask and here are the places you can go to for help’.
While the number of children went down in the same period the number of adults coming increased. Does that indicate that parents aren’t taking their children to church?
Well, it depends also on how you count. We’ve asked churches not just to count the children coming on Sunday’s but also mid-week. One of the issues is that perhaps parents are not bringing their children to church on Sunday but taking them to other activities during the week. But we also don’t know if all of these new adults are parents.
