Help! What Do I Do Now?
he published word does not change, but our lives go on and we encounter new people, new circumstances, and new needs. When we finished writing the Sprouts manual (Sprouts: Nurturing Children Through Covenant Discipleship, available from Discipleship Resources), we had only one year's experience with Sprouts. Many Sprouts have come and gone in the 31/2 years since then. Some of these other Sprouts have been children with little or no church/Sunday school experience and little knowledge of Bible stories and the basics of the Christian faith. Why did they want to be Sprouts? What did they understand of discipleship? What did their commitments mean to them?
Providing justice information at an emotionally appropriate elementary level and meaningful justice activities has been difficult at times. Perhaps you too have had to adapt the Sprouts model to fit circumstances not addressed in the manual.
One way to accommodate this is to do more "teaching" and "experiencing" during Sprouts time. In my most recent group, we have done litanies and group prayers. Many of these have been adapted from The Best of Holy Days & Holidays: Prayer Celebrations with Children (Gaynell Bordes Cronin, St.Anthony Messenger Press, 1615 Republic Street, Cincinnati, OH 45210-1298; 513-241-5615).
In one lesson, I compared Martin Luther King's dream of equality and justice to Jesus' proclamation of Isaiah's text on justice when he preached in his hometown synagogue (Luke 4:16-27). Others have dealt with Noah's response to God's call to preserve part of creation and how we can do that too, knowing God's love, repentance (Lent), and rebirth and renewal at Easter. Many of these have included hands-on activities where a poster or display was created that could remain on view as a reminder. The Bible lesson followed by a litany became a mini-worship experience, giving the children a taste of listening for and responding to God's Word.
Christmas or "Santamas"?
If you are not already a recipient of the catalog or a member of Alternatives for Simply Living, I highly recommend this organization to you. For 25 years, they have published resources to help us get our Christmas priorities straight. The 1998 version of Whose Birthday Is It, Anyway? features a beautiful scene of Wise Men and Joseph with Mary holding ... Santa! The booklet, which includes an Advent calendar, worship experiences, and other ideas for a Christ-centered holiday, is available now. Contact: ALTERNATIVES, P.O. Box 2857, Sioux City, IA 51106; (712) 274-8875, (800) 821-6153, Fax (712) 274-1402, or visit www.simpleliving.org/.
Serendipity
I recently ran into the father of a Sprout from Napierville, Illinois! Grace United Methodist Church was one of the churches that helped us test Sprouts before the manual was published. They have continued to do Sprouts under the direction of Margaret Harrison, so I called her to see how their Sprouts were doing. What a wonderful experience to hear such good things about the Sprouts ministry! Their Sprouts meeting is scheduled as part of a weekly total family event, so they eat a meal together, but when the other event is in "recess," the kids insist that Sprouts continues.
Among the justice issues they have addressed are treatment of the aged (praying for grandparents, visiting nursing homes), hunger, media, literacy, violence, homelessness, and the environment. Two children who had moved away have contacted Margaret wanting to get Sprouts started in their new churches.
At Napierville, confirmation is done with eighth graders, so Sprouts incorporates grades 3-7, with justice done jointly but covenant groups done according to age groupings. One of the meaningful activities the Sprouts have done was to create a weekly ongoing "chain of kindness," writing their acts of kindness on a link and adding the links to the paper chain as a visible reminder of their fulfillment of their covenant.
If you are doing Sprouts at your church, please let us know. You can be a source of inspiration and information for others.
Contact:
Edie Harris, 641 NE 6th Street, Pompano Beach, FL 33060
phone: (954) 942-7522
e-mail: briceedie@juno.com
Fax: (954) 943-0406or
Shirley Ramsey, Dayspring United Methodist Church
1365 E. Elliot Road
Tempe, AZ 85284
phone: (602) 838-1446or
-- Edie Harris is co-author of Sprouts: Nurturing Children Through Covenant Discipleship.
This article is from the Fall 1998 issue of Covenant Discipleship Quarterly.
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