Note: This article originally appeared in the Summer 2019 issue of CRUX (Vol. 55, No. 2).

In recent years, several studies have exposed that staggering numbers of young adults are choosing to walk away from their former commitment to Christian faith. One well-known study conducted by Christian Smith suggests that 75 percent of Christian young people are currently disowning their Christian faith upon reaching adulthood.¹ Many researchers have explored various reasons for this unprecedented mass departure. Rapid changes in technology and its impact in reshaping cultural and societal values is often identified as a key cause. Likewise, the shape of modern Christian families—both decreased marital commitments and increased job and scheduling commitments—is often called to bear its share of the blame. Other explanations target the teenage years and name culprits such as secular schooling choices and even inadequate youth ministry practices that misinform and misdirect Christian teens to the point where they abandon the church as soon as they are outside their parents’ jurisdiction.² Undoubtedly, the causes are legion and many societal and familial factors are to blame. 

Yet there is another area that is also complicit in bringing about this exodus of faith, an area that has been highlighted by a handful of Christian voices; however, these voices have remained largely unconsidered. In view of modern research regarding children’s development, the widespread practice in evangelical churches of segregating children from the fundamental rituals of the Christian faith have presented children with a truncated Christianity. In other words, it may in fact be that what many young adults are rejecting is not a tradition-rich, historical experience of Christianity, but rather a modern disfigurement of the biblical and early church’s witness to children and ecclesiology. I would like to explore here the disparity between the secular emphasis of social, intergenerational environments for child development, and churches that practice age segregation for the entirety of their services. I will argue that this segregation is rooted in convenience rather than attention to child-spiritual growth. Based on continuity with the early church and on modern research regarding the importance of rituals in child-learning, I suggest that in order to circumvent this crisis of faith for the next generation, churches must start allowing baptism and communion to become tools of inclusion and integration. 

From 1960 to 1990, the general consensus was that religious development in children was reflective of cognitive development in children. Put differently, faith was considered as dependent upon one’s ability to rationalize. This view came from Piagetian models of age and developmental stages, upon which nearly all evangelical Christian children’s education—including church and Sunday schools—was (and continues to be) based.³ So sweeping was this emphasis on rational thought that it overlooked other forms of knowing and learning that had long enjoyed recognized value in the spiritual formation process. Intuitional, experiential forms of learning characterized by nonverbal, creative, nonlinear, relational activities were simply not a part of the Piagetian “system” and therefore were not included in much of children’s Christian curriculum from the last fifty years.⁴ Child development was understood as the child becoming his or her own person, thus the focus was on the individual as separate from culture and society. The stages themselves were seen as linear and completely based upon the child’s developing cognition. Psychology has since moved beyond these rigid Piagetian models. They are now being replaced with more inclusive models that recognize the flexibility in children’s (and adults’) minds, where rational and fanciful thought can co-exist and where learning is more fluid and more social than the previous century recognized.⁵ Piaget’s emphasis on child development as one coming to know one’s own mind has been countered by social developmental theories that assert that individuals come to know their own minds based on their socio-cultural dynamics. Or, to put it more strongly, one’s social context is the determining factor for the individual’s developing self-understanding.⁶

Likewise, no longer are ages and stages the most helpful way to understand spiritual development. Even James Fowler’s data on stages of faith demonstrate that “normal” faith development for children in middle childhood is actually spread out over four different stages, and “normal” adolescent faith development spreads across five different stages. ⁷ In other words, speaking of “stages” as markers of faith development (and even the term “faith development,” one might say!)⁸ might be convenient for categorization on a chart, but a more helpful and more accurate model is to conceptualize spiritual development as a journey.⁹ This image can account for the reality that one might not always move forward from stage to stage, but may at times stagnate and even regress. It also rejects the notion that a child’s spiritual journey need be removed or segregated from adults’ spiritual formation based on cognitive ability. In direct contrast to Piagetian thought, a study of children’s religious sensibilities by Boyer and Walker found that children share much of their religious conceptions with adults. While they are less knowledgeable in their current level of theological understanding, children match the spiritual aptitude of adults.¹⁰ To this point, one must again note, this disparity of knowledge is not just referring to a strict cerebral knowing, requiring memorization or segregated classroom learning, but also to a social, experiential, and intuitional knowing. Arguing for the social dynamics of childhood spirituality, Estep and Breckenridge write:

Spiritual formation is not simply an internal process, but begins with the process of acquiring the spiritual tradition of the community of faith in which the individual engages. While spirituality is often perceived as an individual or personal quality, it also has a social or corporate dimension. In short, it is a real community of faith. The spiritual traditions and practices of a given congregation pre-exist the child or adult entering the community of faith and in turn impact the spiritual formation of the individual within it. Children begin their spiritual lives by acquiring the spiritual practices of the faith contexts (home and congregation). In this case, faith becomes a collective as well as individual phenomenon beginning within the Christian community. As such, children are also given the impression that faith is more than just their independent personal experiences, but that it is communal and meant to be shared collectively.¹¹

In a similar vein, John Westerhoff III encourages spiritual educators to set aside socially constructed developmental categories such as “childhood” and “adolescence.” He points to their artificial nature and their tendency to limit, minimize, and even harm children. By separating children and adolescents into age-stage categories, Christian educators have taught to children, and have done for children.¹² Faith development has been equated with learning concepts; the desire to flourish children’s spirituality according to their “stage” has led to the creation of several separate “churches” in which one or two adults facilitate church for children. Yet morality and character cannot be taught as information. Children are not drawn further along their spiritual journey by observing classrooms full of other similarly aged children. Indeed, early church instruction recognized this and authorized against the age-isolated grouping of children precisely because it left them mentor-less when trying to navigate the pressures of their own peer influences.¹³ Westerhoff urges Christian educators—parents, churches, and schools—to ensure that faith is practiced with children.¹⁴ He argues that spiritual formation is more social than cognitive. While he acknowledges that certain facts are essential for faith, observation and practice are inextricably bound to spiritual formation. Sociocultural theory describes this as the dialectic between socialization (“the process in which adults structure the social environment and display meaning for the child”) and acquisition (“the process through which children interpret, respond to, and ultimately embrace, reject, or elaborate upon the social patterns to which they are exposed”).¹⁵ Socialization is adult determined. It may not always be calculated and purposeful, yet it greatly determines a child’s acquisition. When relating this to faith, socialization includes faith-related environments and meaning patterns that parents expose their children to, either intentionally or unintentionally, which are spiritually formative. According to Estep and Breckenridge, quoted above, spiritual socialization includes the child’s engagement with the spiritual traditions of the community of faith.¹⁶ These traditions, and the child’s level of interaction with them, greatly determine what and how a child will eventually think, feel, and practice (acquisition) in regard to faith. 

Regardless of intention, the current model of excluding children from church is ensuring that the “oxygen mask” of adult spiritual needs and desires is met first, at the expense of the church’s children.Joyce Mercer encapsulates this two-fold process—spiritual socialization and spiritual acquisition—with the metaphor of apprenticeship. She states, “For children to become genuine apprentices of Christian faith and life, they must have opportunities to participate with others in the ‘core practices’ that define that faith and life.”¹⁷ Without participation, one’s learning remains partial. Participation makes learning personal. In apprenticeship, participation does not mean equal responsibility with more “seasoned” members of the community. Rather, peripheral participation is a way of opening windows of understanding and simultaneously offering growing involvement.¹⁸ The problem in many churches is that instead of peripheral participation, churches have relegated would-be apprentices to peripheral location—on the outs in a classroom.¹⁹ When children are segregated, they observe peer spirituality, not Christian apprenticeship; they practice spiritual-style play and cognitive learning, not church. This is not to malign classroom-style learning or age-specific spiritual instruction in and of itself. These are, in fact, useful aids in a child’s spiritual journey. However, age-segregated classrooms are often used as a replacement for the life and practices of the church. These segregated-church models directly contribute to the bifurcation of age-cultures in churches and the growing disunity between generations. Equally problematic, these young adults have received some spiritual socialization, but as they come of age, they no longer identify with the church. Perhaps they never did. In other words, apprenticeship is not taking place.  

This calls into question the age-segregated church’s method of socialization: are the structure and content of spiritual formation children receive helpful? Immediately, this produces a second question: if modern educational theories are calling for a correction to Piagetian models by acknowledging the merits of relational “apprentice-style” learning, why then are these church models hesitant, or even resistant, to practicing faith with children? After all, the exclusion of children from church life is unique to the last hundred years, with the adaptation of the Sunday school. Initially birthed as an evangelistic educational tool, Sunday schools were run separate from church life. Geared for reaching children who worked every day of the week except Sundays, this “school” offered children the gift of literacy, while equipping them with spiritual literacy as well.²⁰ However, as their educational component became redundant alongside public school curricula, the Sunday school morphed into an intra-church catechetical tool for all ages. More recently, however, the Sunday school shifted from catechizing adults and children alongside church to the currently common evangelical model where Sunday school replaces church for children, and adult catechesis has largely ceased altogether.²¹

Although this model is recent, its deep entrenchment in church culture speaks to a widespread societal shift that has in turn altered church practice. David Elkind, in his book Ties That Stress, argues that during the last one hundred years, adults have systematically reversed the old order in which parents sacrificed their well-being for the sake of their children. He likens the current view to airline safety procedures, where one is instructed to first ensure that one’s own oxygen mask is secure before attempting to care for one’s child.²² In other words, the current view says a parent’s rights, freedoms, and desires must be met before s/he can truly meet the needs of a child. 

In the church, this mental shift is equally visible: parents’ spiritual needs must be addressed prior to their children’s. Bonnie Miller-McLemore, in Let the Children Come, notes that given the frenetic nature of the modern schedule, many adults have come to associate spiritual growth with stillness and solitude. Yet often church worship is the only time reserved for fostering these spiritual practices. When this is so, child-presence in church is easily seen as a hindrance to adult spiritual formation. Their busyness, noise, and pestering questions are identified as antithetical to what church “should be.”²³ While the desire for stillness in church is not wrong in and of itself, it is illuminative of the pervasive use of church as personal therapy. Mercer calls this consumerist-church, in which ecclesial life is re-structured to meet individual—and primarily adult—needs, either intentionally at the expense of children’s needs (“I just need a break from my kids!”) or under the guise of meeting children’s needs as well (“my child finds church boring and prefers being in the classroom with friends”).²⁴ Regardless of intention, the current model of excluding children from church is ensuring that the “oxygen mask” of adult spiritual needs and desires is met first, at the expense of the church’s children. 

What can be done to alter this impact on the church’s children? Does the entire evangelical church model need to be re-evaluated—including structure, building design, and target audience? Perhaps. Yet, the vast diversity and lack of cohesion within evangelicalism makes this suggestion as unhelpful as it is unlikely. In addition, the current consumerist-Christian worldview is equally problematic and puts forth a strong excuse against wholesale structural change. Instead of calling for the entire age-segregated model to “repent and convert” to full integration, I will hereafter emphasize integrating and apprenticing children during the core church practices of baptism and communion as the first step—a sort of peripheral participation from which to build upon. This is not to suggest that more cannot or should not be considered in regard to apprenticing children’s faith in church. I believe that many creative and innovative approaches should be explored.²⁵ Nonetheless, apprenticeship in baptism and communion is a helpful, needful, and essential starting point for counter-balancing the long-term effects of age-segregation in the church. I have chosen these two rites for their primacy in the Christian faith, but also because they are not typically reproduced in the lives of children through other means. For example, a Christian child is often exposed to prayer or preaching/teaching or even to worship through song outside of the church. However, for the child who does not attend church, the Christian rituals of baptism and communion typically remain unwitnessed. For the remainder of this article, I intend to build a case as to why segregated churches should move toward apprenticeship in these two practices, based on (1) the church’s actions in the past, and (2) present-day evidence concerning the importance of ritual for child learning. 

Despite later theological divergence on these issues, in the eyes of the early church baptism was the initiation rite to the church, and communion was the participation rite of the church.²⁶ From earliest tradition, children were generally not baptized, as they were considered incapable of understanding and following its significance. On this, Tertullian states, 

Granted, the Lord said, “Do not stop the children from coming to me.” But they may come while they are maturing, they may come while they are learning—while they are taught where they may come. They will become Christians when they are able to know Christ. Why should this innocent age rush to the forgiveness of sins? Let them know how to ask for salvation so that you may seem to have given to someone seeking it...If people understand the importance of baptism, they will fear its execution more than its delay. ²⁷ 

In other words, Tertullian placed great expectation on the church to first shape, nurture, and teach children about Christ, and then to instill in them an understanding of the importance of baptism. Since there was no formalized children’s training at this point, learning would be expected to take place through observing church practice—including baptism and communion—and listening to the church’s teaching.²⁸ As shifts in theology began to include infants in baptismal practice, the emphasis on “apprenticing” children’s faith alongside baptism remained preeminent. Summarizing the teaching of John Chrysostom, Vigen Guroian says, 

Baptism is the beginning of a life spent in spiritual combat (askesis) and instruction in holiness and godliness and on a deepening journey into the kingdom of heaven. Infants and children are especially needful of being incorporated and socialized into the church because they benefit from the care and discipline of adults experienced in the spiritual struggle.²⁹

Put differently, while Tertullian saw church socialization as coming prior to church incorporation through baptism and Chrysostom saw socialization as the needful follow-through of church incorporation through baptism, for both church fathers, socialization was tied to baptismal process and was the adult community’s responsibility. For Chrysostom, infants were included in the church based upon their innocence. Later, Augustine called for the baptism of infants because of their depravity. Yet he too saw the adult church as responsible for incorporating and socializing children into the church. He said, “Children are not offered so much by those who are carrying them in their arms as by the whole community of the saints and the faithful.”³⁰ He believed baptism helped observers to remember their own baptism, and he called them to take seriously their role in spiritually forming the coming generation. Later, even Anabaptist movements—those who practiced “believers” baptism—shared the premise that baptism, preceded by the child’s profession and articulation of faith, was the seal that marked inclusion into the church. Prior to this, children were not officially considered part of the church.³¹ For parents and congregation leaders who held to believers’ baptism, this meant that the weight of the coming generation’s acquisition of faith depended heavily upon the church community and its intentionality to spiritually socialize children. Therefore, throughout history, apprenticeship has sometimes been initiated with baptism and at other times acknowledged by baptism. In both contexts, baptism has corresponded to an intentional process of incorporating children into the life of the church. [Rituals] help our body live into what our mind is knowing; they help our mind align with what our body is enacting. Counter to cerebral information or memorized doctrine, rituals are mystery; they are symbol.

Regarding communion, early church practice included not just children’s observation of communion but also their participation in it. One of the earliest accusations against Christians criticized their inclusion of children in their “immoral banquets”—a misguided yet helpful witness to early communion practices.³² Already by the mid-third century, Cyprian speaks of little children receiving Eucharist,³³ and by the fourth century, church instruction states that children are to receive the Eucharist in the prominent position of first among the laity.³⁴ Later there arose concern that since young children were incapable of confession, communion should be withheld until a later time when they could fully understand its significance.³⁵ Thus while baptism was considered entrance into the church, communion was the rite of the confessing church, and confirmation—the catechetical process undergone usually during mid-childhood—marked full participation in the life of the church.³⁶ This process was considered so important that it was not to be left up to individual families. According to Catholic and Reformation traditions, church leaders were to assume this responsibility with utmost care.³⁷ Likewise, John Wesley demanded all Methodist preachers spend weekly apprentice-style teaching time with the children of their congregation, regardless of whether they felt particularly adept with children. Wesley said, “Gift or no gift, you are to do it, else you are not called to be a Methodist Preacher.”³⁸ In some instances and church traditions, the order of these rites and the time elapsed between them was not always consistent.³⁹ For instance, Anabaptists’ confirmation of the faith and doctrinal fundamentals often took place before baptism. Depending upon the age of the one being baptized, these rites might take place in relatively quick succession.⁴⁰ Confirmation then, regardless of formality or order, was a church-led apprenticeship into the Christian faith. It connected baptism and communion—including teaching, observation, and participation—as part of the adult-led socialization of children’s spiritual lives, which encouraged and fostered their full participation in the life of the church. 

Conversely, in the case of present-day churches who segregate children during church, these rites are at risk of losing their long-standing theological and practical significance. As mentioned above, Sunday school is often considered the church’s catechetical/confirmational process. (Yet it includes mostly biblical teaching and leaves elements of doctrine up to the parents.)⁴¹ Since, however, it is separate from regular church life and leaders, it does not provide apprenticeship into core church practices. Baptism and communion might never be witnessed, let alone participated in, until a child “graduates” from the children’s programming, sometimes not even until age eighteen. Furthermore, even when a child does choose to publicly profess faith and be baptized, it is more of a one-day field trip into the sanctuary, after which they return to their segregated classroom until they become an “adult.” There is no change—no added responsibility, expectation, or inclusion. No participation in communion is required or, for that matter, explicitly offered. The rites are dislodged from historical meaning. The only consistency with historical meaning is that the “catechetical” process (Sunday school) is still the tool used to determine full participation in the church. Yet it is not based upon completing requirements of knowledge, practice, and understanding; it is based on the age requirement of becoming adult. Put differently, segregating children from core church practices strips baptism and communion of their theological significance. Baptism does not mark church entry, and communion is not the participatory rite of the confessing church. Practically speaking, in age-segregated churches, adulthood marks one’s opportunity to fully commit oneself to church, and communion is the rite of adult believers rather than of the body of Christ. 

Concerning this issue, John Westerhoff powerfully states that “to transmit faith to the next generation is to include them as participants in all the community’s rituals.”⁴² Or, to state his point more potently, to remove children from the church’s rituals is to rob them of their faith. Yet what is it about rituals that are so important for children’s spiritual formation? It is no secret that repetition is essential for child learning. Rituals do offer repetitive learning environments, but they provide much more than that. While Sunday school can teach elements of what it means to be a Christian through telling stories and traditions of the faith, rituals teach how to be a Christian by “enacting those stories and traditions in the ritual actions of the Christian community, in the dying and rising experience in baptism, in the grateful reception of bread and wine.”⁴³ Ritual theorist Catherine Bell describes rituals as ordinary practices—washing in water, or eating bread and wine—endowed with privileged meaning. They are practices in which “action and thought co-reside.”⁴⁴ In other words, they help our body live into what our mind is knowing; they help our mind align with what our body is enacting. Counter to cerebral information or memorized doctrine, rituals are mystery; they are symbol. They evoke powerful images and present incomprehensible truths, such as a community comprised of “differents” and “un-equals” who declare unity in Christ, or, that in a simple action of being lowered and raised in water, one can leave behind an old life and be filled with the power and life of God. Rituals enmesh experience and emotion into a kind of “knowing” that is then physically cemented through repetitive bodily action.⁴⁵ This has been called the sedimentation of memory in the body. It is body learning—physical, emotional, participatory activity—yet it reinforces and strengthens cognitive learning.⁴⁶ 

While it might seem obvious that bodily actions have a role in instructing heart and mind, what is essential to note is that this form of learning is similar to knowledge gained through play.⁴⁷ Put differently, rituals employ the same basic learning foundation as child-play, thus making rituals an effective, age-sensitive, and age-useful practice. Moreover, psychologists have discovered that children and even infants can determine intentionality in ritual action. Studies on children’s observance of ritual show that not only are they motivated to mimic these intentional actions but they are also quick to recognize that these actions carry social significance. Although they may not understand the precise social significance right away, through repetitive observance they first learn the ritual actions and then grow in awareness of the ritualistic meaning. All the while, they simultaneously grow in connectedness and perceived belonging to the social group in the process.⁴⁸ In other words, intergenerational ritual observance forms bonds between the children present and the community they are participating with, even prior to their full cognition of the ritualistic meaning.

Yet there is a key to this rich child-ritual learning: intentionality. Indeed, strategic intentionality makes the difference between a wooden, meaningless, or misunderstood ritual and a transformative one.⁴⁹ If rituals are not strategic—carefully evaluated, clearly articulated, consistently and creatively practiced—they are at risk of losing or misconstruing their privileged meaning. Inattention to Christian ritual can be seen in five different categories,⁵⁰ all pertaining to the loss of ritual meaning for the church’s children. They are as follows:

1. Adults see church as their spiritual escape and therefore do not consider the meaning being communicated to their children.

2. Parents prioritize society’s rituals above Christian ones, which can confuse the meaning and importance of Christian rituals for parents and children alike (e.g., skipping church because hockey practice is on Sundays).

3. Rituals can become overly intellectual. When they are separated from more intuitive ways of thought and expression—poetry, music, visual arts, embodied expression—children, (and adults) struggle to embody their deeper meaning.

4. Rituals are disconnected from the real “stuff” of congregants’ lives, and therefore do not seem to impact one’s spiritual or secular life (e.g., “Why do I need to get baptized? I’ve been an active part of this church for twenty-five years. What difference does it make?”).

5. Rituals often carry a “hidden curriculum” in the way they are practiced. When rituals are not evaluated, this hidden curriculum can misconstrue and misrepresent the desired symbolic meaning (e.g., if a congregation states that communion is open to all believers, but they structure children’s programming to run simultaneously until communion is over, the hidden curriculum teaches parents and children alike that communion is not encouraged for children). 

A congregation’s adult community is responsible for evaluating their complicity with each of these categories, yet categories 4 and 5 are more hidden and are thus perhaps more insidious to children’s spiritual formation than the first three. If children are isolated from witnessing/receiving baptism and communion week after week, they are unintentionally yet ritually being taught that these rites are either a) not important for children, or b) too important for children. As Mary Collins says,

People learn who they are and who they are becoming before God in their very physical positions and their assigned roles in sacred assemblies, by what they themselves do and say, by what is said and done to them and for them, by the transactions in which their participation is either prescribed or proscribed. This learning, because it is ritual learning, is pre-conscious, not consciously available to the liturgical participants. It is nevertheless taken into their identities and is formative of the world view from which their behaviors flow.⁵¹ 

Instead of strategically shaping Christian rituals to propel and apprentice the next generation, many age-segregated churches have ritually erased the meaning and experience of these core practices in their presentation of Christianity to children. Put differently, because these churches have not been strategic with Christian rituals in the lives of children, they have ritualized the unimportance and irrelevance of baptism and communion for the coming generation. 

While Christian rituals are teaching agents and need strategic attention in order to communicate their privileged meaning, it is essential to recognize that baptism and communion are more than just Christian strategy, something Christians do. They are rituals that, in a sense, “do” to and for the Christian.⁵² Regardless of whether baptism is considered a sacrament or an ordinance, whether it is deemed salvific or the first act of obedience in response to salvation, baptism and communion are agents that act upon the community of faith. They are believed to impact us, propel us, teach us, and change us. If this is so, child inclusion or segregation during baptism/communion cannot be based on adult convenience. While it would be presumptuous to invoke Jesus’s warning in Matthew 18:6 to all who might cause a little child to stumble in his/her faith, the picture of a millstone around one’s neck is a stark image. For many churches, however, it may well be the case that child-segregation is believed to be carrying out the wishes, not of adults, but of children. In regard to this, it is necessary to look at the principles underpinning the current culture related to the teaching and rearing of children. Consider the old adage “Children are to be seen and not heard.” Parents of today would perhaps jokingly quote this phrase, but in reality, many would see it as deeply problematic. Children are, they would say, entitled to a voice. It is not simply an adult world—children’s desires matter too. Modern culture has embodied this ideal to such a degree that school teachers struggle to find secure footing from which to discipline, lest it be seen as hindering the wishes and agency of a child.⁵³ While evangelical churches do not dole out much discipline to children, they may be guilty of flipping the old adage on its head and catering to children’s wishes while banishing their presence. In other words, as it plays out in many churches today, children are not to be seen by the average congregant on a given Sunday, partly because the adults are trying to give children what they want. Yet, they are forgetting to ask themselves the question, “What is needful in order for our children to undergo faith acquisition?” In churches where grown children are closing the book on faith, child-presence needs to be not just allowed but encouraged during baptism and communion. Furthermore, these rituals must be conducted in such a way as to allow children both presence and a voice. If they are to become the church of tomorrow, evangelical churches must consider whether their practices demonstrate and reinforce that children are also the church today. 

In conclusion, instead of being a place of modeled faith transmission, age-segregated congregations find themselves at risk of producing faith omission for the coming generation. Since rituals are considered paramount for child-learning and help solidify meaning and social connectedness for participants, inviting children to witness and participate in baptism and communion must become a strategic aspect of apprenticing child-faith in order to counteract age-segregation. Children must be drawn to ask “why.” If the answer to that “why” involves inviting children into The Story—their story—perhaps these children might themselves embody the mystery and wonder of their faith and live it out into adulthood and beyond.