The campaign has been wholeheartedly endorsed by the Bishop of Southampton, the Rt Rev Paul Butler, who shares in this interview his hopes and expectations for children’s ministry in the coming years.
CT: Children today are growing up in a very secular Britain. How do you see the church expanding and deepening its ministry with children in the face of such a great challenge?
PB: I think our continued role in schools - not just church schools but getting involved in all schools - is going to be very important in that. I was in a school this morning, a church school in this instance, talking to the children, leading collective worship, talking to the school council, and I think the whole thrust of the church finding ways of serving children through activities, play, holiday schemes and so forth is vital.
That is going to be more important, dare I say it, than traditional Sunday school. There is still a very important place for that but if we are concerned about all children and the building of relationships by Christians with children through church-based activities, then this is going to be crucial.
CT: Are the doors open to the church in schools, particularly in non-faith schools?
PB: They are. A very high percentage of schools welcome engagement by local clergy and church members, not always necessarily in overt Christian activities but Christians going along and assisting in reading, being governors, helping at lunch time.
One of my clergy is a keen gardener and he runs the gardening club at school. They all know he is the local vicar but he leads the local gardening club because he wants them to learn about gardening.
CT: Some feel children are the forgotten members of the body of Christ?
PB: I think they are and are not taken as seriously as they should be. Sometimes children are the way that God actually speaks to the church as a whole. We can put to one side the things they say or ignore them but we do so at our peril.
CT: What do you think the church can learn from children?
PB: The starting point for me is taking seriously that Jesus took a child and stood her /him in the midst of his disciples and said unless you are like a child you will never enter the Kingdom.
What was it about being a child that Jesus was getting at in the Gospels? One of the things was humility. But also children have a capacity to wonder and imagine that sometimes we squash as we get older. They have a capacity to trust that we lose.
I have contributed a chapter to a new book coming out next year called ‘Through the Eyes of a Child’ and I actually spent time with groups of children in different settings looking at the parable of the sheep and the goats and as the children read and engaged with the story they came out with insights that would sometimes make adults sit up and think ‘oh that’s an interesting thought’, and sometimes the children don’t understand the depth of what they are saying but they see something that communicates to the adults.
