Real Kids, Real Faith: Practices for Nurturing Children’s Spiritual Lives
by Karen Marie Yust
(Jossey-Bass, 2004)
Once or twice a year, I teach a class for parents on some aspect of raising children in the faith. This fall, we tackled the most challenging age group—those pre-verbal and newly verbal preschoolers whose faith experiences come primarily through the pores of their skin, what they see, and what they hear, not through words.
Few writers even deal with this subject, but Karen Marie Yust, a pastor, mother of three, and professor at Union Seminary/PSCE in Richmond, really focuses on how to provide children the experiences that can nurture faith. Included are topics such as “Creating a Spiritual World for Children to Inhabit”, “Praying with Children”, and “Acting Out our Spirituality with Children.” As the title suggests, she focuses on faith practices (which parents can learn along with their children, if need be), including silence, various forms of prayer, open-ended story-telling, singing, and much more.
She points out that introducing children to the Christian faith today involves helping them learn to be “bi-lingual”, fully at home in both the world of faith and the secular world that surrounds us. Although the focus is very much on things parents can do with their own kids, she is very clear that one essential part of nurturing faith is finding a community where they can see, hear, and feel others practicing their faith. This book is both theologically sound and eminently practical. Highly recommended.
--The Rev. Andrew MacBeth, Calvary Episcopal Church, Memphis
by Karen Marie Yust
(Jossey-Bass, 2004)
Once or twice a year, I teach a class for parents on some aspect of raising children in the faith. This fall, we tackled the most challenging age group—those pre-verbal and newly verbal preschoolers whose faith experiences come primarily through the pores of their skin, what they see, and what they hear, not through words.
Few writers even deal with this subject, but Karen Marie Yust, a pastor, mother of three, and professor at Union Seminary/PSCE in Richmond, really focuses on how to provide children the experiences that can nurture faith. Included are topics such as “Creating a Spiritual World for Children to Inhabit”, “Praying with Children”, and “Acting Out our Spirituality with Children.” As the title suggests, she focuses on faith practices (which parents can learn along with their children, if need be), including silence, various forms of prayer, open-ended story-telling, singing, and much more.
She points out that introducing children to the Christian faith today involves helping them learn to be “bi-lingual”, fully at home in both the world of faith and the secular world that surrounds us. Although the focus is very much on things parents can do with their own kids, she is very clear that one essential part of nurturing faith is finding a community where they can see, hear, and feel others practicing their faith. This book is both theologically sound and eminently practical. Highly recommended.
--The Rev. Andrew MacBeth, Calvary Episcopal Church, Memphis
No comments:
Post a Comment