Children, young people and families

Every child is important to God, and we need to find ways for churches to be welcoming, safe and inclusive in all ways.  

Children and young people are disciples in the same way as believers of every age, and the Baptists Together Children, Young People and Families (CYF) Round Table has produced a number of resources to help churches to encourage young missionary disciples recognising that:

• The right of children and young people to explore and celebrate their faith and to worship God is throughout scripture.
• A child is no more of a learner disciple than anyone of any age. We are all on a journey and none of us has reached perfection. We need to look at whole life discipleship instead of modular faith.
• We need to prepare children, along with disciples of all ages, to build robust and enduring faith based on a relationship with God using frameworks, rather than rules and simple stories.

The CYF section of the Baptists Together website offers articles and resources to help us reflect on children, young people and families.

They include:
 

The CYF Round Table Toolkit for churches – Joining the dots between church, home and school

If we are to be relevant in today’s context we need to move towards doing things with children. We should think of childhood as a characteristic of life; we should be doing things with children, creating a relational model of equals - a model in which all of us have something to offer each other.

This resource is a conversation starter for churches with questions to help you start, and keep on, growing.

Wonderful Youth

Even though there are a vast number of resources on the Christian market to enable young people to reflect on their Christian faith, few intentionally enable Black, Asian and Minority Ethnics to see their image reflected in the resources.  This resource draws on culturally diverse images, exercises and activities, exploring and celebrating some of the historical and current unique contributions from our multicultural society.

Joining the Dots

A podcast that draws on the wisdom of experts and the experience of those on the ground to help start the conversation in exploring the context of the child so that the dots between home, church, community, school and faith begin to join up.