Listening to Children on the Spiritual Journey: Guidance for Those Who Teach and Nurture

Listening to Children on the Spiritual Journey: Guidance for Those Who Teach and Nurture

Catherine Stonehouse and Scottie May, Baker Academic

This book has the potential to radically change the church.

I believe every adult in the church should read it — particularly those who are in leadership positions, who are parents or who seek to nurture children in their faith.

This is an easy-to-read book that explores how we might better serve and minister with our young people and with their parents.

It is based on research and explores a radically different approach to the way we seek to engage, educate and work towards introducing children to faith.
Listening to Children is approachable. It draws on research but doesn’t read like a text book or academic dissertation.

It isn’t perfect. It doesn’t hold all the answers. The research is relatively narrow and the book is obviously biased towards presenting the authors’ thesis in a positive light.

However, the questions the book raises and some of the suggestions that it puts forward are things that need to be thought about by all of us in the Church. The last chapter, particularly, is worth thinking about as ministers, church councils and teachers as it questions much of our basic approach to what we do.

If you have any interest in being the best church that we can be, if you have anything to do with children and the church, and have done little recent reading or learning about children and their faith development, then this is a book that is probably worth putting at the top of your list.

Jon Humphries

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