Catherine Stonehouse - Listening to Children on the Spiritual Journey: Guidance for Those Who Teach and Nurture

Listening to
Children
on the
Spiritual Journey

Listening to
Children
on the
Spiritual Journey

Guidance for Those Who Teach and Nurture

Catherine Stonehouse & Scottie May

2010 by Catherine Stonehouse and Scottie May

Published by Baker Academic
a division of Baker Publishing Group
P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www.bakeracademic.com

Printed in the United States of America

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meansfor example, electronic, photocopy, recordingwithout the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Stonehouse, Catherine.
Listening to children on the spiritual journey : guidance for those who teach and nurture / Catherine Stonehouse and Scottie May.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN 978-0-8010-3236-3 (pbk.)
1. Church work with children. 2. Christian childrenReligious life. I. May, Scottie. II. Title.
BV639.C4S775 2010
268 .432dc22

2009046907

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1989, by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations labeled TNIV are from the Holy Bible, Todays New International Version. TNIV. Copyright 2001, 2005 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations labeled NKJV are from the New King James Version. Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations labeled NIV are from the Holy Bible, New International Version. NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

10 11 12 13 14 15 16 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To the children
who have blessed us as we
worshiped and learned together.

And to our students from
Asbury Theological Seminary and
Wheaton College and Graduate School
who invest their lives in ministry
with children and families,
listening to children and parents as they
journey together.

Contents

You have heard the claim, It takes a village to raise a child. Well, a whole village is not needed to write a book about listening to children on the spiritual journey. But it did take a good-sized team, and we want to express our appreciation to those who contributed so significantly.

First, Thank you! to the forty children who participated in the Listening to Children research study. They entered whole-heartedly into the interview process, providing insights and understandings for us to share in the pages that follow.

We also thank the parents who allowed us to interview their children one, two, and even three times and who participated in the interview process themselves. They gave us a glimpse of spiritual formation in the family, how it took place in their homes, the challenges, and the rewards. Pastors Dean Cook, Daryl Diddle, Richard Stevenson, and Ken Houp granted permission for us to contact families in their congregations and continue the study over seven years. We greatly appreciate their support for this research.

I (Cathy) am also indebted to Laura Hunter, Lenore Sweigard, and Dwight Winters, who assisted with all three rounds of interviews with the children. They invested many hours, and their excitement for the project offered great encouragement. It was a joy to work with them and celebrate what we were hearing from the boys and girls. Barbara Jaeger took on the task of transcribing interview tapes. She invested 206 hours in that task, providing us with quality transcripts from the first set of interviews for our study.

Several Asbury Seminary students have assisted along the way, interviewing parents (Becky Gardner Todd and Shannon Fredres), coding transcripts for data analysis (Darlene Hyatt), additional transcribing (Johanna Truesdale), and checking the final manuscript prior to submission to the publisher (Alison Wright). I deeply appreciate the contribution of each person and have been enriched by teaming with them in this project. I also want to thank Asbury Theological Seminary and its sabbatical policy that gave me significant blocks of time for research and writing.

Research at its best is not a solitary task. I (Scottie) am very grateful for the input and help I received in these projects from Wheaton College students. Assistants in the Good Shepherd Research were graduate students Maria Chase, Amy Long, and Jennifer Wilson. For the Good Shepherd Family Research, I was assisted by Kathryn Christenson, John Hall, and Chi Meei Ngo. We had wonderful times praying together, creating and gathering materials, and then being blessed by the experiences right along with the participants. I am grateful for the contributions these friends made to the recording and analyses of our findings.

Special thanks go to the children and parents of Blanchard Alliance Church who took part in these studies, for the parents who gave permission for their children to be part of the Good Shepherd Research, and for the families who willingly gave ten Sunday afternoons to come together to participate in the Good Shepherd Family Research. Your encouragement and feedback have been very helpful.

One of the many delights of this research and writing is the pleasure of collegial work. At the core of this pleasure is the privilege we (Cathy and Scottie) have had of working together. We have enjoyed the blessing of friendship, have each been enriched through the wisdom of the other, and have been encouraged by our shared passion for the spiritual potential and nurture of children.

The team at Baker Academic has been great. Thanks to Robert Hosack, acquisitions editor, who believed in the book concept and patiently encouraged us during the writing process. Jeffery Wittung served us well, investing his editing skills in fine tuning our work and efficiently moving the manuscript along toward publication, until his untimely death in January of 2010. We deeply appreciate the way in which Robert Hand has led the process of pulling everything together and carrying