The Early Years Matter
Children are created in the image of God, and capable of much more than we often give them credit for. The earliest years of a child’s life are essential to a child’s development in all areas, including spiritual development. The church nursery offers a rich opportunity to nurture the faith of young children and to help parents and volunteers get a glimpse of how vibrant a young child’s life with God can be.
How Do Babies Learn?
Christian Educator C. Ellis Nelson writes, “Faith is an experience that can be thought about but cannot be produced by thinking. It is like hope and love in that it comes through our being, through our associations, and is strengthened through experience in our daily living.” John Westerhoff called the first stage of faith development Experienced Faith. In this stage, children’s faith grows through their experiences. Learning for babies and young children is not really about cognitively understanding words. Instead, babies learn as they explore, experience, and react to their environment. When children play, engage with others, and use their imagination, they learn. Babies pick up on what the people around them are doing and copy it. They use their senses to explore and experience the world around them.
What Does a Nursery Need?
For babies and very young children, the experience of being safe at church and of receiving care and love from attentive and safe volunteers is an essential part of healthy faith development. The first step in making a nursery a place of faith formation is to ensure that it is a place of security, love, and communication.
Security
The church nursery ought to be a place where children experience physical, emotional, and social safety. In addition to robust child protection training, policies, and procedures, it is vital for churches to take steps and make time for young children to feel comfortable and safe in the nursery. The experience of security builds trust between children and caregivers, and ultimately the church. Additionally, nursery policies ought to take into account the attachment needs of young children, providing a safe space to be without a parent, while reassuring them and intervening if a child becomes distressed.
Ask yourself
- How do you demonstrate security in your church nursery?
- How does that build trust with the children in your care?
Love
A child’s relational experiences are essential to the development of self-in-relation to God and others. The relationships they form at church will also influence their development of what it means to belong to the people of God. Like all humans created in the image of God, children are made for community. They experience love through being cared for, noticed, nurtured, and included. The church nursery ought to be a place where children experience attentive, loving care from adults they can build trust with.
“A person learns the meaning of love and how to love as a baby through his relation to his parents….There is no way to tell a baby about love – it is something that has to be inculcated through the actions of the adults who surround the child.” -C.Ellis Nelson
Ask yourself
- What are the ways you already are or can improve upon a child’s experience of love in your nursery?
- How are you demonstrating love through words, actions, attitudes, and engagement?
Communication
Young children, especially babies, often communicate their needs non-verbally. It’s important that there is training in your nursery to attend to and provide for these needs. Healthy communication patterns in your nursery between caregivers and children, caregivers and parents, between caregivers, and between caregivers and leadership are essential to a healthy environment in which the needs of the children can be attended to consistently.
Ask yourself
- Where do you see strong communication patterns? What might need improvement?
- How are you communicating to the child that they belong to your community?
Faith Formation in the Nursery
Because people are shaped by their early memories and experiences, the church nursery absolutely is a place of faith formation. The memories we have become “etched” into our souls. Intentional planning, care, and leadership will help to ensure that the memories and experiences of the children in your nursery help provide a strong foundation for lifelong faith. The reality is that most of a child’s early faith formation is woven into the everyday activities we do with children. Their experiences of care, consistency, love, and presence lay a foundation for their understanding of who God is and what God is like.
Learn More:
Want to learn more about this topic? Dr. Larson suggests checking out this journal article. (note: you will need access through an academic library to access the article.)