Children and Families - Scripture Union NZ

How are we doing when it comes to getting to know the children in our local communities? Our research found 60,000 across New Zealand who are involved in activities run in their community by the local church. 40,000 of these children were involved in one-off activities like Light Parties or maybe holiday programmes. The other 20,000 were involved in regular community ministries such as clubs and classes in their local schools or regular after school programmes.  Sixty thousand. That’s the size of Napier! That’s a significant number of children and we can celebrate what we are doing in our communities. The problem is, that while many of these children are attending our programmes, they are not connecting with the churches who are running them. When we asked about those children who have found their way into the life of the church through the church’s community programmes we discovered something sad. 34% of the churches we surveyed had no children join the church ...

When I popped into the local church to visit their children’s programme, the big hall was almost empty. A small group were gathered over in the corner. They looked like they were having fun - they were playing a game and it was loud and energetic. But there didn’t seem to be very many children. Where was everyone? The sad news is that small groups like this one are a common sight in many churches on Sundays. SUNZ has been conducting some research about churches and children and the research shows that in New Zealand, a typical Sunday programme for children will have 20 children or less in its primary aged programme.   There are exceptions of course. There are a few stand-out big churches. But most churches, most of the time, have less than 20 children. [i] That’s sad especially when you think about the number of children in New Zealand. We have over 750000 children [ii] and only around 10% of them will be found in church on a Sunday. These are sobering...