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So that they might fly

There has been much joy around the world at the election of Barak Obama to the Whitehouse. He was elected as someone offering hope for a very different sort of administration - an agent of change at a time when there is a widespread desire for a very different sort of leadership in the United States. All leaders are in a way dealers in hope - holding out hope to those they lead. Only time will tell if this leader can deliver on all the hope invested in him by so many.

One of the slogans used prominently in the campaign that spoke of the particular hope of the Black American population, and which was reprinted all around the world was:-

"Rosa sat
So that King could walk
So that Obama could run
So that our children might fly."

That sense that each generation is actively preparing the way for the next to have more hope, more rights than the last is a powerful motivation for Black Americans who have come in just 60 years from near slavery to delivering a black president. It is also a very biblical motivation too - that each generation has the task of preparing the way for the next to know and honour God with more freedom and rights than the last - all except that it is no longer happening in our own country.

When I was appointed to the Uttoxeter Team seven years ago it was with an explicit hope that we would work to bring more children and families into the church. It is a source of real sadness to many of us that our own children and grandchildren very often do not go to church, and yet I wonder if we really understand why this has occurred, and if we really are working together to bring about the fulfilment of this hope, or almost without realising it actually preventing it from coming about? I wonder if there aren't two problems we need to understand and tackle.

Firstly, in the Bible, the responsibility for sharing faith with children rests squarely with the child's parents. Moses made this clear to the Israelites before they crossed over into the promised land "Do not forget to tell your children" he told them. He was afraid that when the people had settled down and become prosperous that they would stop telling their children that they owed all of this to God.

Of course, we are enormously blessed that many of our children receive some religious education at school, in young people's groups and in Sunday schools where they still exist; but the truth is that we cannot delegate our parental responsibility to someone else if we hope that faith will grow and flourish in our children and in generations to come - it must come from us. I so much enjoy working with young people and sharing my faith with them, but I am often painfully aware that the time I spend with them is often the only hour of Christian teaching and experience that they have all week, with very little support - prayer - encouragement - churchgoing happening within their home context at all, despite their parents often wanting their children to learn the Christian faith, and having learned this faith themselves as children from their own parents. We do need to take very seriously our responsibility towards our own children and grandchildren of sharing our faith and demonstrating faith and prayer to them in our own daily lives if we really share the hope of more young people coming to our churches.

The second problem is that when young people do come to church it is often a poor experience for them. Without us meaning to, what we do in church largely ignores their needs and belongs to a culture and tradition which doesn't speak to them at all. If we are disappointed that young people don't come to church, then what do we need to imagine changing so that this becomes a possibility?

How might the things we do now (and often enjoy ourselves) need to change in order to encourage them, help them to feel wanted and at home? And most difficult of all - is what we like to do in church enabling this change, or actually preventing it taking place?

I wonder if we are, often almost without noticing it, perpetuating a tradition in the church for our own enjoyment that, far from encouraging our children to come to church, actually excludes the next generation - sowing the seeds of the churches almost inevitable extinction in our efforts to preserve what has been handed down to us unquestioned by generations before.

Like great political leaders, perhaps we need to have the courage to be agents of change in the church - and hold onto a hope that for the next generations sake we may have to change what we do quite radically. Perhaps we need to walk so that they can run - "Straining forwards and not looking back" as St. Paul said to the Philippian church, and being prepared to learn a whole new language of fellowship and worship for our children and grandchildren's sake; and perhaps we need to get on with this before another generation is lost to the church altogether.

May the hope of New Life belong to you and your children this Easter.