MISS BONNIE BATES is an Associate Director of the Department of Christian Education of Churches of Christ in Victoria and Tasmania. For two years she worked in the United States of America with the Disciples of Christ, in the field of leadership training and adult education. Miss Bates was one of the representatives of our churches at the World Council of Christian Education Convention, held in Japan in 1958. She is a member of the Church at North Richmond, Victoria.

      Someone has said that "the quiet rural scene is gone forever and it really remains only as a nostalgic dream. For we have now entered the scientific age and all life, town or country, city or mountain, is being affected by these sweeping changes.

      The 20th century should have ushered in the era of hopes, new dreams, yet we are beginning to see more of despair than hope and on all sides the rupturing of relationships between man and man, and man and God. Even our art today, whether in painting or drama, seems to portray terror and despair."

      In the midst of all this what has the church to say--has it a vital message for this day and age, can it meet the new challenges that are constantly confronting mankind, or must the church seek and find new ways of meeting people, must it even find a new language so that it can communicate to those who feel no need of the church?

      What is the church? Is it the community of faith? Is the Christian community the church and, is this the channel by which we make known the life and mission of Christ?

      The world must hear Christ and free persons from the bondage of evil, but are we achieving this communication today? Do the adults sitting in the church pews see the church not as a building, but as a whole people of God called to mission; the church out in the world; the church that only fulfils its mission as it goes out into the world in daily jobs, and as people's lives bear witness to Christ's power? The people of the congregation are out in the occupational organisation; they are in the family, they are alongside other people, they make the encounter between Christianity and the world.

      The church must be a redeemed community, giving new life through the proclamation of the gospel. Is there not a lack of this "redeemed community" today through which the new life-giving power can flow? Do we understand that we witness to Christ when we meet man in his need whatever that need might be?

      What of the adults in the congregation, do they see themselves as being "Christ" to other persons, where they work, in the community, or even sitting in the church pews? Is there a realisation that they are the Christian community, that they are all members one of another in Christ, and is there an understanding of our faith and the actual kind of life we must live in the "scattered church"? How do you help your people bring these into balance? The church "gathers" because of what God has done, we come to worship--but we go out into the world and become the "scattered church."

      We need to rethink some of these truths and in the light of modern day pressure seek to find other ways of helping our congregations to come to grips with the meaning of their faith and look again at the questions that we have been asking.

      Does Christian Education have anything to say in these areas? Have we not tended to think that only children and youth need to be taught, that the sermon is enough for adults? Everyone in the church, if we are to understand

the church's true nature, must accept responsibility for communicating the faith. Our baptism means that first we were ministered to, and then we must minister.

      Somehow we have left even the task of teaching the children to the younger members of the congregation.

      The idea of the "child centred church," championed by George Albert Coe and his disciples, has enjoyed quite a vogue in the past two generations. But in 1940, H. Shelton Smith in his book "Faith and Nurture" launched an epoch-making criticism against this point of view. He maintained that periods of great religious rebirth have not emerged in the history of the church as a result of child nurture, but through a religious transformation of adults that usually involved a break with the religion that they themselves had inherited from their own childhood. "This means," he said, "that unless the faith comes alive in the soul of some individual or group, religious vitality may be expected to decline in modern culture. For the religion of the child will usually be a relatively pale edition of the faith of the older generation." (Taken from A Philosophy of Adult Christian Education by David J. Ernsberger.)

      It is possible then that we must look at the Sunday School as it now exists and ask ourselves some positive questions about it.

      One question with a very high priority for me is "Can the Sunday School provide for the full religious life of the child?"

      This question should have first priority in the thinking, planning and work of the church and should be examined to see if the Sunday School, as it now stands, is advancing--for if it is not it is on the way out as we hear it is in Europe.

      By advancing I do not mean the large number of children in the Sunday Schools. I am looking at the results of our work. We are not seeing children, young people, and their families meeting in the fellowship of the church, renewing constantly their spiritual lives as they seek to meet Christ, not so much in facts about His life, but in relationships, as they find themselves, a part of the faith community and through this discovering a new relationship--that we are members one of another before God.

      How bad is the situation of the Sunday School apart from the losses which will continue with children from non-church homes? Are we helping children and young people and adults to see the relevance of religion to life?

      We could ask some other questions, for instance, how many children say private prayers at home? How do we help them to understand what prayer is so that they will want to continue to discover new truths for themselves? How far will a child continue to pray at home if he is the only one in the family who does this?

      How many homes, both church homes and those from which the majority of our children come, discuss together what God, Christ, and the church are all about? Has the church really learned to work with families? We entertain parents at anniversary time, but we have not begun to sit down and help them to understand what it is we are trying to teach their children.

      From experience we know that the church spends little on buildings

and equipment, libraries, teaching materials, etc. In point of fact the church seldom knows of the needs of the Sunday School. We are still building halls, not because we have not the necessary funds, but rather because we do not yet see the need for erecting educational buildings.

      Some thirty or forty years ago, we saw the wisdom of separating the four and five-year-olds from the rest of the school and, in most cases, provided them with a room of their own. But we have not grown beyond that point. We are still way back there for we have not yet seen the necessity for providing separate rooms for juniors, intermediates, C.Y.F. and even adults where these groups can learn at the level of their own years.

      Are the church members, the elders, the officers really concerned as to what is taking place in the Sunday School, which should really be the church school, or are they just content to leave it to a few teachers to carry this responsibility?

      The church school is in danger of becoming a social institution rather than working towards fulfilling the purpose of the church. It is not enough to say "we know we will lose so many each year" with a "we can't do much about it" attitude--or "the few we gain are so worthwhile"--or "the parents are just not interested."

      How much longer are we willing to continue to work like this without bringing the home right into the situation? Do we really see the Sunday School as being the Church School where children, youth and adults grow and are nurtured in the faith and doctrines of the church? When you hear that, in some instances, churches are not happy about the Sunday Schools using those good church hymn books to sing out of you cannot help but doubt that the Sunday School has any relationship to the church at all. Some adults are not happy with children in a congregation during the communion service at which all the children should be present learning through the worship.

      One of our biggest problems is the non-worshipping child who comes along to the Sunday School for several years and then, like a good many others, he has suddenly gone from our midst. For hundreds of our children see only the inside of the Sunday School or church hall, they are rarely in the church for worship. Have we helped these children to understand the worship of the church?

      Canon Lumb, in his book "Education of Souls," has this to say--"until the Sunday School can be integrated into the worshipping life of the child of God, it can only lead a precarious existence as a tolerated institution."

      For sure we provide treats, trips, prizes--but does every person sitting in the pew have a concern for the spiritual life of the children and youth, and does the church minister to the teachers who try faithfully Sunday by Sunday to carry out their task? Merely helping teachers to learn a few techniques is not enough. They need to discover afresh what this faith is all about, that they in turn may communicate this to the groups in which they work.

      Has the church helped teachers to study the Bible afresh, looking and searching for new truths in today's hectic living? Ox are the teachers still imparting Bible teaching in exactly the same way as they were taught when they were children, rather than helping children, youths and yes adults, too, to discover new truths for themselves, new insights into what the

message is all about in this day of the year 1961?

      How have we helped the children to understand the worship of the church? Some congregations may have a few children in their midst, but quite often the children are segregated into a group of their own rather than sitting with the adults as part of the worshipping community.

      We could, perhaps, ask ourselves another very important question. Can the Holy Spirit teach the souls of non-worshipping children? And what of the parents of these children if they do not meet with the worshipping community?

      For children and youth we believe two things are required, an act of worship and an act of learning. If all we require of them is an act of learning we may be dangerously near to a separation of the so-called secular from the sacred. The Sunday School would appear to the child little different from his ordinary day school.

      Is this not one of our greatest areas of evangelism? How do we bring them into our fellowship? Iris V. Cully, in her book "The Children We Teach", has this to say of these families. "The church can serve families in so far as it sees its task as that of winning people. They have needs and concerns. They need the love and fellowship and knowledge that the church can give. They are not won by laying down laws or telling them that they "ought" to send their children regularly, or come to church themselves, or to work in the church school because someone is helping their children. This merely makes them feel guilty or resentful and causes them to avoid the church."

      Is there then only one way of preaching the Gospel or do we need to seek and find other ways as well to work with these people to bring them into the wider fellowship of the church?

      We could, perhaps, start parents' groups but, unless these groups can start within groups already in existence in the church, there might be the danger of starting another group on the fringe of the worshipping community.

      The worshipping community must be the live, concerned cell, so alive and vital that it can and will draw these parents to it. Our adults sitting in the church pews Sunday by Sunday need to have the opportunity of verbalising their faith so that they may know how to share it with others, and share it in the language the people outside the fellowship can understand.

      Much of our religious phraseology is in danger of becoming religious jargon because we cannot interpret the words, the meaning of which we have never stopped to doubt or question. But these same words would have little meaning to many people hearing them for the first time.

      How many of us, if we were asked not to use words like salvation, redemption, reconciliation, but rather to spell them out in living experiences, would know where to begin to take hold of them and put them into the language of the man on the street? Yet this is communication. Perhaps the church needs to come out of its building and to come to life in the homes of the neighbourhood and provide opportunities for persons to ask questions so vital and real to them. Unless they ask questions how do we know how to help them?

      Whatever we do to meet this problem of the non-worshipping parents, we must draw them into the stream of the church's life, and we can only help them to

grow as they learn to participate within the worshipping community.

      The church and the home have different yet mutual responsibilities to any child or youth, however, little headway can be made until the church takes seriously its education of parents. The parent is the powerful educator, and if the parent's participation in the faith begins to fade, that of the children cannot long endure--this we have ample evidence of in the drop out from the Sunday Schools of children from non-worshipping homes.

      When parents come to a saving relationship with God-in-Christ, they are able to communicate something of their faith to their children. Parents also can learn from one another. There are many ways for them to learn and the church must seek even better ways to help families to worship and help the church become a fellowship of worshipping families. Perhaps the church must work towards putting Christian Education back into the home. Through the course of history we now see that the Sunday School took over from the home the responsibility of the nurture of the children and the parents allowed it to happen.

      In the days of the Reformation, Christian education of children was centred by the hearthside--Martin Luther, who constructed his catechism to be taught by parents, was convinced that "the home is the God ordained place for training in Christian character--a thousand times better suited for this purpose than artificial monasteries."

      The real purpose of parent education is less a means for understanding the child than a means of self-education for the adult. This way the parent comes to know himself in relationship to others. Parents could learn from involvement in the process of thought and interchange of opinion with other parents, from challenge that puts them on the alert through transfer of these new opinions and challenges into their family relations.

      Most of us in our churches today think that Christian Education is for children and youth--this is a great fallacy. To be more accurate, Christian Education refers to the continual maturing process of all of us, no matter what our age. From nursery age to the oldest adults we ought to be growing in the Christian faith and in Christian life, else our spiritual life will be stunted.

      Christian Education should aim at helping adults to gain personal maturity and to grow in their faith, as Paul puts it, "until we attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children."

      We must, I think, seriously ask ourselves does the church where I worship, that is every person sitting in the church pew, have a real, vital concern for all the lives that it touches. Is it conducting a Sunday School or a church school? This brotherhood cannot afford the present wastage in Sunday Schools. I mean the wastage in lives of children and youth whom we touch and who linger with us for a while and then pass by on the other side of the street.