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Children’s Education
Raising children in the Christian faith may take on many forms. Typically, a large part of this experience is determined by the children’s parents, grandparents or godparents. A large part of raising children in the Church is attending Church itself. There are several advantages to taking children to church. Just think of what your children will learn, even by osmosis,in being a part of the Church.
When children come to Church services they become familiar and feel at home in a sacred space they can call their own. This feeling of knowing what it’s like to be a part of a sacred space is “transferable” as they go forward in life to other churches as well. We often think kids don’t hear or listen in Church, we forget that they are like sponges, absorbing music, preaching, and prayer even though they may not look like they are paying any particular attention to what’s happening around them.
Children learn about characters in the Bible, the great stories of our heritage of faith in the Bible, as well as why we do the things we do in Church through education programs on Sunday morning, and these lessons are powerfully reinforced when they see their parents living out a life of faith by taking some quiet time each day to pray, meditate, or read the Bible.
Children learn how Christian relationships work by seeing how people in the Church treat each other and eventually grow into relationships with other members of the Church themselves.
Another part of raising children in the faith is by participating in Sunday morning Christian education classes. At Emmanuel we call these classes Sunday School. This is an intergenerational program (so parents or grandparents can participate right along with the kids if they wish) which includes children from toddler age to high school. Older children may serve as mentors for the younger children and each week they learn about the Christian faith.
Kids' Sunday School begins at 9:30am in St. Francis Chapel with a 10-minute chapel service. This includes short prayers, sometimes music, lighting of candles, and always a time of learning about a Christian concept through, a Bible Story or a teaching of the Church. The Chapel service always ends with saying the Lord’s prayer together as we then proceed to the Sunday School room(s).
2) In the Sunday School room we typically try to figure out a way to express the lesson we have learned. This expressions takes many artistic forms. One Sunday we may be creating a large triptych, another day we may be expressing a concept such as “The Holy Spirit” or “heaven”. We might connect several Sundays together and create a banner to represent the Apostle’s Creed or the Lord’s Prayer in symbolic form. Usually what we create in the room is displayed for the larger congregation to see and appreciate.
3) Each Sunday we either send home or mail to the children’s home a follow- up activity. This activity gives an opportunity for the parent to participate in a learning activity which follows up on the Sunday lesson. It also gives a reminder to those children who were not in class that week that we care for them and miss them.