Parents as Spiritual Directors: Fostering the Spirituality of Early Elementary-Aged Children

7/30/2019 Parents as Spiritual Directors: Fostering the Spirituality of Early Elementary-Aged Children

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Christopher C Hooton

Parents as Spiritual Directors

Fostering the Spirituality of Early Elementary-Aged Children

Parents as Spiritual Directors

Fostering the Spirituality of Early Elementary-Aged Children


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Parents as Spiritual Directors 1

Then little children were being brought to him in order that he might lay his hands on

them and pray. The disciples spoke sternly to those who brought them; but Jesus said,

Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that thekingdom of heaven belongs. And he laid his hands on them and went on his way.1

Who would doubt Jesus sincerity about wanting children to come to him? Yet the

actions of many in the church imply that we dont believe children can really access the depths

of relationship with Christ. There are challenges associated with the spirituality of children, to be

sure, but against them stand the very nature of God and ancient practices that can assist children

on the way.

Challenge

When I was a teenager I was delighted to be ministering to children. I felt called to

childrens ministry as a child, and as a teenager I was already realizing the dream. However, one

Sunday morning shook my convictions so violently that, for a time, I abandoned the thought of

ministry to children. A new pastor had just taken over the childrens ministry that I had been

running with some friends. I was helping her this particular Sunday when she invited the children

to respond to a salvation message. I saw many children finding places of prayer, asking Jesus to

be their Savior. Instead of producing joy, this event rocked me to my core. Many of these

children were already saved and had in the weeks and months before been finding places of

prayer to deepen their relationships with God and seek the baptism in the Holy Spirit. I was

immediately faced with the question: Can children understand this spiritual life? Is the richness

of relationship with the triune God available to them?

Today, I am the father of five-year-old Foster and seven-year-old Ella. This challenge

comes home to me as I attempt to use all of my training as a childrens pastor to help them find

1 Matthew 19:13-15 (NRSV).


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their own experiences of God. Ella is naturally more interested in the things of God. Foster is

younger and is at a stage where Jesus things are boring. Exploring Fosters spirituality with

him is even more challenging. I have come to believe that the wealth of spiritual relationship is

for them, yet those questions from my teen years spur me on to study how that spiritual growth

happens.

Worldview

The stakes are high. The majority of people who come to faith in Christ will do so as

children. At the same time the church is facing high numbers of young adults abandoning their

faith as they enter college. Their worldview is challenged, and for many, who have made a

black-and-white, inflexible structure of beliefs and ideas, their faith will topple.

George Barna gives a litany of statistics profiling the children of our nation. Fewer than

three out of ten fourth graders read at grade level. One in ten teenagers report having had sex

before their thirteenth birthday. One in ten eighth graders smokes daily and one in three were

drunk in the past year.2 While Barna points out that these statistics dont represent a crisis, and

children on the whole do pretty well in spite of messy lives, he says, Our nations children will

struggle to maintain a healthy balance in life.3 The trajectory of statistics suggests that, The

end result of growing up in this challenging culture will be a country of adults whose standards

have been lowered and whose sensitivities have been blunted.4 Barna suggests the missing

factor, on which all these problems hinge, is spiritual health.

2 George Barna, Transforming Children Into Spirtual Champions (Ventura, CA: Regal

Books, 2003) 18-21.

3 Barna, 26.

4 Barna, 26.


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Rational Theology

The church has wrestled with what to do with children from the earliest days. There have

been many questions. Are children born innocent or guilty? What happens to an infant who dies

before coming to Christ as savior? Does infant baptism redeem them? All of these questions

have influenced the way that the church has dealt with the challenge of forming faith in young

ones, and the churchs responses have created many challenges over the years. The challenges

became that much more stark during the enlightenment when theology and spirituality became

increasingly rational.

Two Extremes

The major solution to the questions posed by the church was the age of accountability.

This idea proposed that children are in a special state of grace until such time as they can discern

right from wrong. There has never been a consensus about what age that would occur, and it has

been left mostly subjective. Theologians come to this idea from two perspectives: the inherent

innocence or guilt of the child. The early church, before the time of Augustine and his

contemporaries, emphasized the childs innocence.5 For the early church, it was this innocence

that Jesus was commending to his followers as a subject for imitation. Augustine and some of his

contemporaries argued for the immediate baptism of infants because their fallen nature would

condemn them in death. The two extremes then are that children are innocent and nothing need

be done for them, and that children are sinful and unbaptized children will not enter the

Kingdom. In between these extremes is belief in the special status of children before the age of

5 Holly Catterton Allen, ed.,Nurturing Children's Spirituality: Christian Perspectives

and Best Practices, ed. Holly Catterton Allen (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2008), 64-66.


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accountability.6

The response of the church to these ideas falls on a continuum from inaction to zealous

evangelism. If one holds completely to the innocence of children the danger is that no effort or

value will be placed on developing the spirituality of children. Inaction is also the possible

outcome of those who, trusting in infant baptism, leave the childs spirituality alone until

confirmation. The same can be said of those who trust in a Christian family environment to

protect a child. On the other hand, the revivalists of the enlightenment came to see children as

the objects of intense evangelism, focusing on conversion, and then again possibly leaving the

spiritual formation untouched.

Revivalist approach

During the enlightenment, revivalists were calling people to repentance and conversion.

They expected that men and women would come to rational terms with their sinfulness and turn

to God. As the enlightenment came to a close, revivalists came to question the practice of leaving

children in their sinfulness until such a time as they could have a conversion experience because

they had reached a level of mental reasoning.7 Figures such as D. L. Moody, Charles Finney and

Edward Payson Hammond began to increase their efforts at evangelizing children. Yet the

enlightenment/rationalist attitude toward children prevailed in church thought, as theories of

cognitive development seemed to limit the kind of rational thinking about God in which children

could be expected to engage.

6 Donald Ratcliff, ed., Children's Spirituality: Christian Perspectives, Spirituality And

Applications, ed. Donald Ratcliff (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2004), 55.

7 Michael J Anthony, ed.,Perspectives on Children's Spiritual Formation: Four Views,

ed. Michael J Anthony (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2006), 26.


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Developmental theory

For years the church followed modernist thought, birthed out of the enlightenment, that

spiritual development required high level abstract reasoning skills, and was reserved for thinkers,

intellectuals and academics. It was not for the average Christian, let alone the child. This thought

dominated the research of childrens spirituality during the cognitive period of thought (1960-

1990).8 Based on the work of Jean Piaget, the prevailing thought of this period suggested that

children developed in stages. The cognitive ability to reason in the abstract doesnt occur until

adolescence. If that is the mark by which children are seen to have access to the spiritual richness

found in Christ, then young children would be excluded.

Fortunately for those interested in the spiritual development of their children, Piaget does

not have the last word. Erik Eriksons stages of development offer insight into ways parents and

other adults can help the child experience God. In each of Eriksons stages there is a core conflict

being addressed by the individual with one of two outcomes. In infancy the conflict is between

trust and mistrust. The parent then can aid the spirituality of the child by helping him or her learn

to trust mom and dad. As the toddler begins the struggle between autonomy versus shame and

doubt the parent can help the child learn self-control without losing self-esteem. Children at this

stage learn they have a will and also how to submit to the will of another. From four to six the

child struggles between initiative and guilt. Not only does he or she test boundaries but also

develops conscience. These are important parts of the development of the child morally and the

parent can offer guidance through these and every stage of life under his or her care.

9

Stage theory has its limitations, however. Many people looked to the developmental

8 Allen, 26.

9 Catherine Stonehouse,Joining Children on the Spiritual Journey: Nurturing a Life of

Faith (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1998), 48-58.


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stages offered by Piaget, Erikson and others to determine how best to nurture the spirituality of

children. One problem with this is that a descriptive account of what is does not automatically

lead to a prescriptive account of what can orshould be.10 Building lessons and methods based

on generalized ideas about the cognitive level of a group will leave children who are ahead or

behind the mark frustrated. On the other hand, children can often rise to a challenge set before

them.

Another note is that much of the research into what children could experience spiritually

was based on what they said about their spiritual experiences. This is limited by their ability to

use language. One cannot assume because the childs ability to express a spiritual experience is

limited, that the experience itself is limited.11

Along came the recent work of Rebecca Nye and David Hay to answer these concerns.

They found that behind the language and descriptions of the children there was a common

thread. The core of the spirituality of children, they found, was a relational consciousness. Those

experiences that were spiritual in nature were times when the child had a heightened

consciousness of his or her relationship to the reality around them. The exciting thing to note is

that this is not directly tied to cognitive development. Nye and Hays research demonstrates that

the core of spirituality is available to children and can be nurtured. The challenge then is how do

adults best nurture the unique spiritual lives of children? There is a wealth of material that has

emerged recently about childrens spirituality and the implications for formation.

10 Allen, 32.

11 Robert Hay and Rebecca Nye, The Spirit of the Child: Revised Edition (Philadelphia:

Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2006), 60.


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Theological Foundation

There is no better place to look for a foundation for our treatment of childrens

spirituality than in the very nature of God. In his breathtaking book, The Knowledge of the Holy,

A. W. Tozer bookends his discussion of the attributes of God by drawing the tension between

two chapters, God Incomprehensible and The Open Secret. These two attributes will serve

us well as we approach the spirituality of children.

The incomprehensible God

God is completely other. Our minds cannot conceive of something so outside our

experiences. Tozer notes, that even the mythical creatures of lore are nothing more than fanciful

versions of creatures known to human experience in nature.12 In God there is no such point of

reference that can accurately capture who God is. We make comparisons in order to understand

truths about God, but they are sorry approximations of the reality of the Transcendent.

Faced with the awesome reality of God, our minds completely fail. No creative

imagination of child or adult can create majesty so resplendent as to be worthy of God. No

amount of logic and systematic theology can draw the outline of Gods boundaries. Volumes

have been written and myriad traditions guard numerous sacred truths, and yet God is not known

in true fullness.

For many the idea that God is ultimately beyond our mental capacity is disconcerting. We

have learned to distrust mystery and fear that which we cannot know. How can we be confident

in our relationship with God if we can never know God fully? For those who wonder if children

can have access to God before they have the capacity to comprehend God, however, this is good

news. Children are in good company! Not one of us can apprehend God with our minds.

12 A. W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1961), 10.


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Apophatic Spirituality

Words sometimes get in the way of our understanding of our experiences with God. This

is true for adults as well as children. Apophatic spirituality is an ancient way of approaching God

without words. This way affirms that God cannot be apprehended by the intellect but can be

apprehended by love.

The fourteenth century English mystic who wrote The Cloud of Unknowing, spoke of

putting all the good and valuable things under a cloud of forgettingand placing our naked intent

before the cloud of unknowing.13 We are invited to beat upon that thickcloud of unknowingwith

the dart of your loving desire and do not cease come what may.14

Try to understand this point. Rational creatures such as men and angels possess two

principal faculties, a knowing power and a loving power. No one can fully comprehend

the uncreated God with his knowledge; but each one, in a different way, can grasp him

fully through love. Truly this is the unending miracle of love: that one loving person,through his love, can embrace God, whose being fills and transcends the entire creation.

And this marvelous work of love goes on forever for he whom we love is eternal.15

I am reminded of Hay and Nyes work in childrens spirituality. Words often limit the

childs ability to describe the spiritual experience. In some cases, even the religious language

became a fall-back to which children retreated to hide from the reality of what they

experienced.16 Apophatic spirituality is about apprehending God with love. This resonates with

13 Tozer, 15.

14 William Johnston, ed., The Cloud of Unknowing and The Book of Privy Counseling, ed.

William Johnston (New York: Doubleday, 1973), 55.

15 Johnston, 50.

16 On the other hand, the disadvantage of encouraging children to talk in religious terms

was that it tended to trigger off impersonal learned responses rather than reference the childs

personal experience (Hay and Nye, 88).


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the core of childrens spirituality as found by Rebecca Nye: relational consciousness. Even

without the higher, abstract, reasoning capacities garnered in adolescence, children still

experience the spiritual as relationship. For Christian children this means experiencing their love

for God and Gods love for them. Five-year-old Foster can say, Do you know how much I love

my whole family? As much as I love Jesus! In that statement he is aware of his special

relationship with his family and with God through Jesus Christ. That is intensely spiritual,

though he and children like him may struggle with their young minds to understand the nature of

that relationship.

The constant voice of God

While no person can apprehend God by his or her intellect, God delights in revealing the

Divine nature to us. Gods voice is constantly speaking and self-revelation is almost a

compulsion for God. It seems to me that all of creation exists so that God can express Gods

Divine nature. Scripture is the story of God with us, Gods self-revelation, and also contains

evidence of Gods compulsion. God walks with Adam. God covenants with Abraham. God

speaks to Moses as to a friend. In the ultimate act of self-revelation, God became man in the

person of Jesus Christ who is the radiance of Gods glory and the exact representation of his

being.17

At the end of his chapter God Incomprehensible, Tozer says that while we will never

know what God is like in Gods self, we can know the things God has revealed.18The Open

Secret is that we each may know God in relationship.

To know God is at once the easiest and the most difficult thing in the world. It is easy

because the knowledge is not won by hard mental toil, but is something freely given. As

17 Hebrews 1:3

18 Tozer, 16-17.


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sunlight falls free on the open field, so the knowledge of the holy God is a free gift to

men who are open to receive it.

But this knowledge is difficult because there are conditions to be met and the obstinate

nature of fallen man does not take kindly to them. 19

The conditions that he describes are the disciplines. The voice of God is constantly

speaking to us. It rolls on like a river from eternity past. The disciplines put us in a place where

that grace can wash over us. The voice of Gods self revelation, as Tozer put it, is like sunlight

surrounding us and bathing us in its light. Children are constantly surrounded by the speaking

voice of God. It may speak to them from the beauty of nature. It may even come when wrapped

in wonder over the water running from a tap.20 The voice is constantly speaking, though we may

not always recognize it. Adults and children, alike, benefit from someone who will help them

listen.

Biblical Philosophy

Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord, and the word of the Lord had not yet been

revealed to him. And the Lord called Samuel again the third time. And he arose and wentto Eli, and said, Here I am, for you called me. Then Eli perceived that the Lord was

calling the boy. Therefore Eli said to Samuel, Go, lie down; and if he calls you, you

shall say, Speak, Lord, for thy servant hears.21

In this story Samuel hears the voice of God for the first time. It takes three interruptions

of his sleep for Eli to realize what was happening, but he is finally able to help his young charge

recognize the voice of God.

Scripture repeatedly affirms that God speaks to children. To the child, Jeremiah, God

says,

19 Tozer, 180.

20 Hay and Nye, 122.

21 1 Samuel 2:7-9a (RSV).


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Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,

And before you were born I consecrated you;

I appointed you a prophet to the nations.22

Jeremiah protests that he is too young to speak to the nations, but God affirms that God

has placed Jeremiah even as a youth over nations and kingdoms to deliver Gods word.

To Timothy, Paul writes,

But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing

from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with thesacred writings which are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.23

Often we exalt the testimonies of those who have dramatic adult conversions. How much

more wonderful is it, however, for a person to be able to say with Samuel or Jeremiah or

Timothy, I have known the voice of God since I was a child?

Gods use of the family

Timothy was the child and grandchild of godly women. Paul is reminded, as he writes

2 Timothy 1:5, of the sincere faith of Timothys grandmother Lois, and mother Eunice. God used

Timothys family to stir in him a sincere faith. The family is Gods chosen instrument to form

the faith of little ones. In Deuteronomy 6, Moses instructs parents to pass on the commands he is

giving them. The imagery he uses is continual, daily and creative. Parents are to talk when they

get up and when they lay down, when they walk on the road and when they stay home. The

commandments are to be written on the walls and gates and tied to their hands and foreheads.

There is symbolism and constant reminder offered through the context of the family.

Barna reports that, four out of five parents (85%) believe that they have the primary

responsibility for the moral and spiritual development of their children, but more than two thirds

22 Jeremiah 1:5 (RSV).

23 2 Timothy 3:14-15 (RSV).


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of them abdicate that responsibility to the church.24 God has uniquely equipped the family with

nearly constant contact and given them the tools to nurture spiritual formation. The church has

never found a better way and must help families fulfill this high calling.

Model

How then can parents help children come to recognize the constantly speaking voice of

God? There is a strategy for doing just that, which has been practiced for centuries: Spiritual

Direction.

Spiritual Direction

Spiritual direction is a relationship in which three people enter into a conversation: the

person seeking direction, the director and the Holy Spirit. There is one purpose to this meeting,

helping the person recognize the voice of the Spirit. The director listens and asks questions of the

person while all the time listening to the Spirit. The person tells about his or her experiences with

life or prayer where they might be conscious of the relationship with God. The director simply

helps them see and hear more clearly and pay attention to elements of richness they might

otherwise miss.

Brief overview

This relationship is different than counseling or coaching. In those contexts two people

meet before God to pursue a human goal, while in spiritual direction, the person and God meet in

the presence of a witness, the director, to pursue Gods goal. 25The director is another set of eyes

24 Barna, 77-78. Also Allen, 255.

25 Gray Temple, "Spiritual Direction in the Episcopal Tradition," in Spiritual Direction

and the Care of Souls, 78-95 (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 2004), 91.


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and ears, a mirror to reflect the conversation back to the person experiencing Gods voice.

The spiritual direction meeting, then, is a place of prayer. When I sit down with my

daughter, Ella, for spiritual direction, we light a candle and spend a little time in silence to

become aware of the presence of Jesus. I want to establish an atmosphere of prayer. Both the

director and the person need to approach direction with this attitude of prayer. Prayer is when

the human heart discloses itself to God and is open to listen and respond. 26 In spiritual

direction the director is invited to listen along.

Effective spiritual direction meetings depend on both people intending to listen

attentively for the Holy Spirit, which leans more toward patient waiting than active

striving to hear God. Prayer becomes a mixture of activity and passivity: an activeintentionality to be available to the Spirit and a passive open willingness that invites God

to set agendas for spiritual direction conversations. Directees do not need to have whatthey describe as an outstanding or successful prayer life. But they do need to be willing to

pray regularly and explore the Spirits invitations. The willingness of directors and

directees to continue to pray and seek God even when prayer is not satisfying orcomfortable is essential for spiritual direction to take place.27

The role of the director is to ask questions that help the person recognize where God

might be speaking, and at same time listen to the Spirit speaking in order to give feedback or

direct questions to where God would have them go. The job is not an easy one. It takes full

active attention to the person telling about his or her experiences with God. At the same time, the

director is listening with wrapped attention to the stirrings of the Spirit. From the Spirit, the

director may sense what parts of the persons story are important, what to press, and where to ask

questions. The director may also hear from the Spirit a special word of encouragement or

direction for the person. The director must also have a high view of the individual sitting across

from him or her. Thomas Merton writes, A true director can never get over the awe he feels in

26 Jannette A. Bakke,Holy Invitations: Exploring Spiritual Direction (Grand Rapids:

Baker Books, 2000), 39.

27 Bakke, 39.


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the presence of a person, an immortal soul, loved by Christ, washed in His most Precious Blood,

and nourished by the sacrament of His Love.28

Parents as spiritual directors

In order to minister to children, I am convinced one must approach them with just the

kind of awe and humility Merton writes about. We must be convinced that the spiritual needs of

our children are as important as our own and that the charge of nurturing that spiritual formation

is a high and holy calling. Spiritual direction can be an intimate setting, as the sharer and the

director both lay their souls bare to receive from the Spirit. It is appropriate for parents to serve

in this very intimate position.

After centering into the presence of Jesus, the director usually asks something like, So,

where have you felt close to God this week? However, it could be a month since the last

meeting. That is common for adults, who have full hour sessions, but I have found in directing

my own children, that fifteen to twenty-minute sessions, weekly, work out better.

The child then goes on to tell the stories about where they have felt God. It may be a

special time at church, or maybe they felt Jesus playing with them, or helping them with their

schoolwork. Often the discussion centers on some experience of prayer. If the child doesnt have

experiences from which to draw, the parent can help the child with these experiences throughout

the week. Going on prayer journeys from The Praying Family or exploring disciplines from

Habits of a Childs Heartmay be very helpful here.

The parent as director listens to the story, asking questions for clarification. Here, the

parent must resist the urge to correct the experience or interject a moral lesson. The role of the

28 Thomas Merton, Spiritual Direction & Meditation (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press,

1960), 34.


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director isnt to teach but to listen and draw out from the child conclusions about where and how

God is speaking to him or her.

Spiritual direction is also helpful in times of stress or crisis for the child. When Ella was

having a hard time at school, spiritual direction became a safe place for her to rest in the love of

daddy and Jesus. When we found out that she was being bullied, I led her through a healing

prayer meditation where she actually took her bullies to Jesus! She was imagining Jesus was

with her, and she asked him where he was when she was being bullied. Jesus showed her that he

was right behind her, following her every step. This is an image she can take with her, and when

she feels threatened or hurt she can lean into Jesus or turn and give him a hug.

For a parent to become good at directing his or her children, it is important that they find

a spiritual director themselves. The direction sessions will not only help them find where God is

speaking to them but introduce and strengthen techniques and methods for being a good director.

A parent may also want to find an experienced director to supervise the parents direction of his

or her children. A supervision relationship helps the director see blind spots in his or her own life

that may affect the ability to effectively direct the child. A supervisor normally listens to a

recounting of the directors session with an ear to what is happening in the director and between

the director and God.

A note about the term

There has been much discussion among Spiritual Directors about what this relationship

should be called. Many feel uncomfortable with the term Director as the best Spiritual

Direction is non-directive. Alternatives have been suggested including: Spiritual Friendship,

Spiritual Father/Mother, Anam Cara, Soul Friend, or as one colleague suggested, simply Dad.

Some very specific expectations come along with the term. I have in mind simply what I have


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described above. I am not suggesting that parents be subjected to the same rigorous code of

ethics maintained by organizations such as Spiritual Directors International, nor that they should

be recognized as Spiritual Directors to the community in general.

Some issues could be difficult to navigate as well. Spiritual Direction, as we have

discussed it, is not a time for instruction or making assessment as to the correctness of the

Directees spirituality. This is an important part of the normal role parents are to take in the lives

of their children, but for the Spiritual Direction session this should be set aside. However, it may

be difficult for a child, hungry for parental approval to set this role aside. This brings us to

another potential difficulty: navigating the power differential that exists between parent and

child. I believe that these issues can be successfully navigated, particularly with the use of

Supervision.

Conclusion

The spiritual direction approach is consistent with what we have discovered about

childrens spirituality. Spiritual direction like this may well be the missing component to the

spiritual development of children. They get the cognitive lessons through Sunday school,

devotions and stories, but the relational consciousness can be developed through conversations

like these. As we build a foundation of experience of relationship with God, we help children

find something that cannot be taken away. A worldview can be challenged, beliefs can be

shaken, but when a child experiences his or her own relationship with God, that story can never

be denied.


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Bibliography

Allen, Holly Catterton, ed.,Nurturing Children's Spirituality: Christian Perspectives and Best

Practices. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2008.

Anthony, Michael J, ed.,Perspectives on Children's Spiritual Formation: Four Views. Nashville:Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2006.

Bakke, Jannette, A.Holy Invitations: Exploring Spiritual Direction. Grand Rapids: Baker Books,

2000.

Barna, George, Transforming Children Into Spirtual Champions. Ventura, CA: Regal Books,

2003.

Barry, William A., and William J Connolly. The Practice of Spiritual Direction. New York:

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Ratcliff, Donald, ed., Children's Spirituality: Christian Perspectives, Spirituality And

Applications. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2004.

Stonehouse, Catherine.Joining Children on the Spiritual Journey: Nurturing a Life of Faith.

Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1998.

Temple, Gray. "Spiritual Direction in the Episcopal Tradition." In Spiritual Direction and the

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Documents

Parents as Spiritual Directors: Fostering the Spirituality of Early Elementary-Aged Children