While I don't agree with "traditional" approaches to child evangelism, I do try and give that approach the benefit of the doubt that they are passionate about children following Christ. I just wish they understood that they are setting up those children for a false sense of who God is and what it means to follow Christ as they grow older. Anyway, that's for another post :)

It's scary sometimes to think about the responsibility we have as youth and children's workers. That's why I've been so fascinated by the spirituality of children and how they view God and heaven and salvation and such.

I suspect a lot of my hesitance toward "evangelism" – and most especially, the cheap tricks and emotional preying that often come along with it – is that it discounts the actual child.

Evangelism, at least as we know it mostly today (evangelism = neat tricks & proselytizing), doesn't recognize the child fully as a person. It refuses to recognize the unique, wonderful life and character of each child. The evangelism movement also comes decidedly from a deficit-oriented perspective, a perspective not of what children have but of "what they lack" (in this instance, spiritual salvation). Proselytizing and evangelism, I feel, cheapens the profound, vibrant and alive relationship that child can really have with Jesus Christ.

I think, as with everything, it largely depends on context. My first instinct – whenever I work with any children, inside or outside of the church – is to let the children guide me. I don't like to put a lot of my adult stuff and ideas on them. When the time is right, though – when I feel I know them well enough and that I have won over their trust, when I recognize that they're in a good spot where they want and can use this information, and when they honestly display a desire for it – then I'm okay with sharing with them whatever spiritual knowledge or thing or fact or whatever in an appropriate dialogue. I sense that's probably a very similar process to Michael Spencer's – especially in that chiefly it matters most upon both the cultural and relational context.

Robin