3 minute read
The church and boys
Ruth Bromley highlights an event in the new year, that will encourage those involved in children’s ministry to consider how well their activities engage with boys.
It was the end of the summer and I had agreed to take an open children’s church on the first Sunday in September on the theme of prayer. There would be children from nursery to P7 and it needed to be interactive and inclusive of everyone. So, I planned and prepared and all that was left was to gather the resources.
Then I read Nick Harding’s book, 'The Church and Boys', as part of my summer reading in work. It dawned on me as I thought about the morning I’d planned that it was skewed towards girls, and if I’m honest, probably much of the activity that we do in children’s ministry is too. I knew I needed to redo the planning in light of what I had read.
Nick says in the opening page of the first chapter, “Boys are different from girls. Boys are part of God’s great creation, just as girls are, and God is a God of diversity, but there are a huge number of issues facing boys that make them different and may be affecting the way they become men.” Nick had my attention from this opening page; he doesn’t hold back as he lays out the way life is for the boys that we interact with in our ministry.
“Testosterone in boys, which becomes more evident as they get older, slows down brain development whereas oestrogen in girls speeds it up. How then can our churches expect 10-year-old boys to behave as sensibly as 10-year-old girls? Often the church looks for both an intellectual level of understanding and an emotional response, which is difficult for boys of any age… boys like practical activities. They are more likely to take things apart, think about how things work, and enjoy factual and evidencebased ideas.”
The more I read this book the more I began to think about the children’s ministry, not just in my own congregation, but across the whole denomination. Many of our children’s leaders (as well as many of our primary school teachers) are female and so a lot of our children’s ministry is slanted in that direction. And that’s not a criticism; it’s simply a fact of female leaders doing what comes naturally. But maybe there is a better way. Either that is female leaders thinking more about the boys in our midst and how they are different, or it is encouraging more men into children’s ministry and allowing them to live out their faith as men for the boys to see. And here’s the challenge: “If boys do not have a significant male role model, they may struggle to thrive, and those who have no male in their lives at home or at school until they reach secondary school will not have seen what a ‘man’ can really be like.” Wow.
Nick also says, “The church could gain from embracing some of the messiness that boys bring to our communities…the more we admonish boys for behaving like boys, the more we tell them, ‘This place is not for you.’”
So, what can we do as a Church? Nick suggests that we should try and view our worship space through the eyes of a boy and accept that we may have to work a bit harder to keep them engaged and to feel like church is a place where they belong. To aid this and to help our boys to grow, we may need to create a likeminded group of boys. Maybe you could do more to encourage your Boys’ Brigade company in all that they do as a step towards this.
Nick goes on to say, “Boys in community are able to challenge each other, compare their problems, and talk things through, fight and bond with each other.”
So, what about my Sunday with the full range of children and the prayer theme? Well I changed some of it to reflect what I read in this book. Just tweaked a few things because I also had the girls in the group to cater for, but it made a difference. I watched as all the children participated and then brought their parents up to see all the prayer stations and the challenges they had taken part in.
Nick affirms, “Boys have a great deal to contribute to the life of any church.” I couldn’t agree more with this statement. We need to work harder to make this happen and allow our boys to contribute in children’s ministry, in worship and in community.
If you want to know how to do that better, prioritise coming to hear Nick speak on this subject on 8 February 2020. It is crucial that we make a difference!
