We have Bible School this week. One of our groups is preschoolers - aged 3 to 5. Many of them are used to going to day care, but don't know how to do many things. We had to teach them to play duck, duck, goose, as most of them had no idea how to pat each other on the head and walk around the circle.
So, this got me to think about how many of those children understand our Bible stories. Can a 3 year old grasp the concept of sin and what Christ's death means? Do they have a long enough attention span and the ability to put together the ideas?
Some of them seem to get it, primarily because these are things they hear regularly at home and church. Some of the unchurched kids have more difficulty, but hopefully in time, it will become a more familiar concept for them.
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1 year ago
2 comments:
I think an easy way to answer is to take the opposite approach my gut tells me. Let me demonstrate:
"You are right, I don't think toddlers are old enough to speak to Jesus about. And for that matter school aged kids are too figidity too. And since the courts in San Francisco have to rule on whether parents can decide for a child to be circumcised, they probably also shouldn't decide for the child on what religion to learn. So really, we shouldn't present the Gospel to anybody under the legal age of 18. And since most 18 year olds have their heads in a dark place it doesn't belong, its probably best to wait until about 25 with they start thinking with their heads again."
After all that meaningless argument, it seems to me that their is never a good time for somebody to begin to grasp the Gospel, so lets just start super early and hope that by God's grace some of it sticks.
Ryan,
I know you are right, and I certainly think that people can grasp the gospel early in life (I did at 5 or 6). But sometimes I wonder if our vacation bible school and sunday school processes don't actually work against teaching children the gospel. We try to make the process uniform for all ages, and the reality is that toddlers need different things than even a 5 year old does.
Annette
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