Day 23 Christmas - its all about the children

 Yesterday morning we had our Instant Nativity in church.  This involved all the children and included a cast of two donkeys, a fox and a bear, three stars, several angels , two wise men (one of them was a wise woman) and one King Herod. Three innkeepers, a Mary a Joseph and a decidedly plastic baby Jesus. Oh, and some shepherds, one of whom was 2 yrs old and spent the entire time ' driving' his sheep round the stage like a car.  The donkeys spent a good part of the show wrestling each other.  The angels needed a considerable amount of coercion to get on and off the stage.  It was every bit as mad as you would expect.

Of course the whole point was for the children to have fun, to feel included and to dress up.  Oh and to learn about the real meaning of Christmas. 

You might think that everyone knows about the real meaning of Christmas, but I was watching something on the news or some news-type thing the other day and was horrified to realise just how many young adults there are out there who genuinely have no idea what Christmas is about.  They seriously couldn't tell the interviewer more than the most rudimentary things ' Errrr wasnt there something about a donkey? '  ' I think it has something to do with shepherds'   It was awful.  And it was the United Kingdom in 2025.

A generation of tots/kids/teens/young adults now exist who have had absolutely NOTHING in terms of Christian input.  School assemblies are mere information -giving sessions. Maybe with some well meaning moral homily about being nice to each other.  R.E, if it exists at all, might spend a week on Christianity as one religion among many.  Theres no spiritual content on the television and kids dont watch TV anyway these days.  Maybe the only access a whole generation have to anything remotely close to Jesus is when a sports personality acknowledges God.  Otherwise its pretty much nada.

So, for our kids doing our utterly bonkers nativity play yesterday - well, it might not have been the most theatrically competent show ever put on, but it was theologically accurate and we have to believe that each year they hear the Christmas narrative it goes a bit deeper in.

In our church we have a really bad habit when it comes to the kids work.  We have an increasing amount of young families joining us and an increasing amount of babies being born too.  Which makes our kids programmes busy and noisy and fun. Our leadership team have taken to referring to the sunday school classes as ' chaotic'.  They even pray before the service that God will be in the chaos.   I hate that word. Every time someone refers to our kids work as chaotic I recoil.  In fact Ive asked our youth leader not to say it - but its pretty ingrained and has become a bit of a habit so.....

The word chaos means  'complete disorder and confusion ' ' unpredictability'    

This does not describe what happens when we teach our children in Kids Church. And sometimes I fear that speaking the ' chaos' word over them might actually be inviting disorder and confusion to reign.  Yes it is loud.  Yes it can be a bit like herding cats.  Especially in the group I'm in charge of which is the tiny kids aged 2-6.  But there is a curriculum and a plan. There is a theme every term and a bible story each week with activities and crafts to re-inforce the message.  It might look a bit messy and it doesnt always go to plan.  But there is a plan. And I happen to think its quite a good one. 😀

SO, if you go to church on Christmas Day ( we dont cos we meet in a community centre and its closed) and the children are super excited and running about in Spiderman costumes firing nerf guns at the minister, try not to roll your eyes and tut under your breath.  Give deep thanks that your church is growing a generation of children who are being taught and shown Jesus.  That your kids do know the Christmas story.  That their parents are very much going against the grain of their generation to bring up their kids in church.  Support the families with little kids.  Its hard.  And please please please dont EVER refer to the Sunday School or the Nativity or anything to do with kids as ' chaotic'!!

Thank you x

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