Children's Spirituality and Faith Formation Course

As we begin our journey together, we want to first define what it is that we mean by "children's spirituality." We also want to begin considering our own story. As we seek to understand how children develop spiritually, one of the greatest resources we have to learn from are the memories of our own journey as a child.

In this lesson, therapist Corey Jackson shares a framework for thinking about the human soul and how souls are formed and reformed. Corey builds on Dallas Willard's framework for spiritual formation in his book Renovation of the Heart, describing five general areas of soul formation, how each plays an important part in a person's spiritual development, and how each area is important to consider and balance as one seeks to understand and nurture a child's spirituality.

Before we answer the question: What do we have to teach children about God? We want to first try to answer the question: What do children have to teach us about God? Answering this question will help us to appreciate the children in our lives as a group of people who should be listened to and valued as having a very important and unique contribution to make when it comes to understanding who God is and what God does.

For every person, the relational context in which they are raised (parents, grandparents, teachers, caregivers, neighbors, friends, spouse, partner) is hugely influential in the development of so many of the things that we associate with healthy spiritual formation – safety, identity, purpose, belonging, inner peace. In this lesson, we want to spend some time thinking about the key relationships that may influence and shape a child's spiritual development.

In this lesson, you will learn about various types of trauma and grief that a child may face in life, and some of the potential sources of these experiences. Often these kinds of difficult experiences are connected to specific formative relationships in a child's life, but some struggles may be more disconnected from specific relationships. Regardless of their source, experiences of trauma will likely influence a child's spiritual development.

The Bible provides an amazing and wonderful story in which humans can locate themselves and then discover answers to key questions of existence: Who am I? What am I here for? Where do I belong? With that in mind, we want to consider ways that adults can help children connect their own unique story to the Story of God and humanity that we read about in the Bible, and through that connection find deep and lasting answers to these questions that they will be able to carry with them into adulthood.

In this lesson, we will consider how adults can help children grow spiritually by encouraging curiosity and question asking about their life and their surroundings, making space for observation in and engagement with the natural world in all its diversity, and embracing moments of awe and wonderment. These experiences naturally lead to a deeper understanding of one's place in the world and the artistry and creativity of the God who designed it all and holds it all together.

This week, we will explore how adults can support and nurture a child's connection with themselves, especially their own body and feelings. In many ways, children have a natural proclivity toward embodied spirituality as they tend to process life, for good or for bad, through all of themselves. We want to think about how adults can help children grow spiritually by nurturing their natural proclivity toward spiritual embodiment and supporting the connection of the spirit to the body.

In this lesson, we explore environments, strategies, tools and techniques that help to nurture a child's connection with others in their process of being formed spiritually. When we realize the importance of varied relationships, modeling, question asking and communal story-telling in a person's spiritual formation, we can start to understand why intergenerational relationships are crucial for a child's faith development.