When we talk about spiritual formation here in our parish, we often start with seven questions that every person—no matter what age—asks of themselves. Two in particular,“Who am I?” and “With whom do I belong?”, are questions that children encounter early in life. The sacrament of baptism (BCP 2009, pg. 165) answers them; it communicates to them “you are a child of God” and “you belong here, in the body of Christ.” We, as the adults who have sworn to do all in our power to support them in their lives with Christ, then have the privilege, the duty even, to tell them the stories of the men and women of their faith who have gone before them and shown them what it means to be a child of God in the body of Christ. The stories of these saints are a powerful tool to feed the spiritual growth of our children and to fulfill those vows we take as we witness their baptism into the family of God.

So, who are the saints?

In Stories of the Saints, a children’s book here on the shelves at Redeemer, the author Carrey Wallace puts it this way: “Saints aren't people who are always good and never afraid. They are people who believe there must be more to life than just what we can see. This world may be hard and unfair, but saints believe in a God who is bigger than the world, whose law is love and whose justice is mercy. And this faith gives them courage: to stand up to evil kings, to care for people everyone else forgets or hates, to slay dragons.”

When it comes to teaching our children about the faith, it can be so tempting for us as the adults to package important content about faith, Scripture, the nature of God, and all things high and heavenly into little bite-sized lessons that our children can easily gobble up Pac-Man-style during their week and expect it to produce robust Christians. But a life of faith is a dynamic and living thing that is more like a tree growing slowly and mysteriously than like a brick house built piece by piece. The growth is hard to measure day by day, and we have much less control over how quickly or what shape it might take as it goes. This can feel daunting when we are holding the little “seeds” of our children’s faith and must entrust them to the Lord, praying for a strong and mighty faith to take root. We have the beautiful and crucially important job to keep speaking words of life to those seeds: “you are a child of God” and “you belong here, in the body of Christ,” and to feed them rich stories of how children of God can live a meaningful life at every age and in every circumstance.

A few times a year, our parish gets to watch families bring their small children to get baptized, our parish vows together to support their growth in the faith, and we celebrate! But there are other places in our church, less visible and celebrated, where children are reminded of who they are every week. Each Sunday morning in Redeemer Kids classrooms, our volunteers crack open the Bible and read stories of men and women who lived imperfect lives but whose stories are sufficient for “teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16). Through them, we are called to be faithful like Abraham, bold like Peter, and obedient like Mary. During the curriculum year, we will also tell our children about St. Patrick and Martin Luther King Jr., men who lived courageous lives for Christ and whose stories tell us something about what it means to live for God’s glory in adversity. We get to tell our children here that these men and women are children of God, just like us. They belong in the body of Christ, just like us. And, just like us, they were imperfect and flawed, in need of God’s grace. They tell those who listen to keep going, it’s worth the battle! Their light was meant to illuminate the path we are meant to follow and “flicker like candles along a dark corridor,” (Our Church Speaks, pg. 7) a light in the dark and a city on a hill. Let’s gift our children with these stories as way-finders to guide them in their spiritual growth.

Casey Cisco
Director of Redeemer Kids

SUGGESTED READING
for telling the stories of Saints to children:

Our Church Speaks by Ben Lansing and D.J. Marotta
Deborah and the Very Big Battle by Tim Thornborough and Jennifer Davison
Stories of the Saints by Carey Wallace and Nick Thornborrow
Augustine of Hippo by Simonetta Carr
Patrick: Patron Saint of Ireland by Tomie dePaola
Saintly Creatures by Alexi Sergeant and Anita Barghigiani

*Images above from the book Stories of the Saints, illustrated by Nick Thornbarrow.