Joining Children on the Spiritual Journey

Understanding how a child's faith forms is crucial to knowing how adults can most significantly enhance the child's spiritual development. Joining Children on the Spiritual Journey provides parents, teachers, and Christian education leaders with valuable insights into spiritual formation during childhood. By carefully "setting the stage" through liturgy, sacred stories, and parables, Christian educators can help children meet with God.Catherine Stonehouse (Ph.D., Michigan State University) is Orlean Bullard Beeson Professor of Christian Education at Asbury Theological Seminary. She is the author of Patterns in Moral Development and has had extensive experience directing Christian education at both the local and denominational levels.Introduction
1. Why Listen to Children?
2. Knowing God in Childhood
3. Experiencing God in Everyday Life
4. Children Experiencing God at Church
5. The Formative Power of God's Story
6. Let the Children Come: Loving, Knowing, and Following Jesus
7. Celebrating Compassion
8. The Church Partnering with Parents
Appendix A: The Research Designs
Appendix B: Resources and Ideas

Understanding how a child's faith forms is crucial to knowing how adults can most significantly enhance the child's spiritual development. This book provides parents, teachers, and Christian education leaders with valuable insights into spiritual formation during childhood.

With a biblical perspective as a starting point and a recognition of the crucial role of both the family and the faith community, Stonehouse reviews important contributions from noted child development experts Erik Erikson, Jean Piaget, Lawrence Kohlberg, and James Fowler. This overview gives insight into the processes of psychosocial, cognitive, and moral development in children and adolescents.

Stonehouse concludes with solid guidelines for designing children's ministries. By carefully "setting the stage" through liturgy, sacred stories, and parables, Christian educators can help children meet with God. Quiet times of "godly play," carefully adapted to the age level of the child, enable adults to join with children on the journey toward deeper intimacy with God.
-Publisher