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Toddling
to the
Kingdom
Editor
JOHN COLLIER

Contributors
MARCIA BUNGE
JOHN COLLIER
JAMES GILBERT
BILL PREVETTE
CARLOS QUIEROZ
A R I O VA L D O R A MO S
JOHN WALL
KEITH WHITE
HADDON WILLMER
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C O N T E N T S

Contributors Page 4
Foreword 5
Preface 7
Part One
Copyright © 2009 The Child Theology INTRODUCTION 11
Movement Limited
First published 2009 by CHAPTER 1
The Child Theology Movement One Oppressed Child 13
10 Crescent Road, South Woodford,
London E18 1JB, UK CHAPTER 2
Charity registration no. 1106542
Our Response 17
Email [email protected] Chapter 3
Website www.childtheology.org
What is ‘Child Theology’? 23
ISBN 978-0-9560993-0-3
CHAPTER 4
All rights reserved. No part of this
Developing Child Theology 28
publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in
Chapter 5
any form or by any means, electronic, What Child Theology Is
mechanical, recording, or otherwise, and Is Not 32
without the prior permission of the
Publisher in writing. Part Two
SITUATIONS CHILDREN FACE 35
Scripture quotations from the Holy Bible,
New International Version® copyright © CHAPTER 6
1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Some Stories 37
society. Used by permission. All rights
reserved. CHAPTER 7
The Children’s Questions 41
Design by
Tony Cantale Graphics CHAPTER 8
Printed in India Cultural Perspectives 45
CHAPTER 9
A Child’s Dream 54
CHAPTER 10
Concepts and Practices that
Label Children 61
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Interlude Part Four

TRUST HOME 69 EXPERIMENTS IN CHILD
THEOLOGY 179
Part Three
OUR RESOURCES 83 CHAPTER 21
Listening to the Urban Child 181
CHAPTER 11
The United Nations Convention CHAPTER 22
on the Rights of the Child (CRC) 86 Child Theology and Sin 193
CHAPTER 12 CHAPTER 23
A Theoretical Typology of Child Theology and
Children’s Needs 90 Our Ministry 200
CHAPTER 13 CHAPTER 24
Historical Perspectives on Child Theology and Church 204
Children in the Church. 98
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 14 Child Theology and Mission 208
How does History Help Us? 114
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 15 Children, Media and
Seeing God in the Child 121 Eschatology 212
CHAPTER 16 CHAPTER 27
An Outline for an Exploration of Child Theology and the Family 220
Hermeneutics 130
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 17 Child Theology and Education 231
“A Little Child will Lead Them” 137
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 18 Child Theology and
The Child in the Midst of the Christology 242
Biblical Witness 154
CHAPTER 19
A Reflection on Psalm 8:2 161
CHAPTER 20
A Walk with Jesus from Caesarea
Philippi to Jerusalem 170
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C O N T R I B U TO R S

Marcia Bunge Ariovaldo Ramos

Professor of Humanities General Director: Latin American
and Theology: Christ College, Faculty of Full Mission (FLAM)
Valparaiso University, USA Pastor, Reformed Church and
Baptist Church of White Water,
John Collier São Paulo, Brazil
Company Secretary:
Child Theology Movement, John Wall
London, UK Associate Professor of Religion
and Childhood Studies:
James Gilbert Rutgers University, USA
Visiting Professor:
Centro Evangélical de Missões, Keith White
Viçosa, MG Brazil Visiting Lecturer:
Spurgeons College and MBTS
Bill Prevette London, UK and Malaysia
Missionary and Professor of
Missiology: Assemblies of God Haddon Willmer
World Missions and Southeastern Emeritus Professor of Theology:
University, USA Leeds University, UK

Carlos Quieroz
Executive Director:
World Vision in Brazil,
Ceará, Brazil

The Child Theology Movement acknowledges with

gratitude the substantial and continued support from
Compassion International which has made possible
both the printing of this book and many of the meetings
mentioned.

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F O R E W O R D

I can’t remember the last time I heard a sermon in church on children. In

fact, I can’t recall hearing one at all. We are familiar with well-trodden
verses about Jesus and his openness to children and His wrath at those
who would do them harm. Often these are the texts used to try and rope
unwilling members of the congregation to volunteer for children’s church
or Sunday school.
We have a strange paradoxical relationship with children in the
church. Many parents’ choice of church is influenced by the quality of the
children’s programme, especially in the USA where I live. Huge resources
are allocated to facilities, youth pastors, classrooms and teaching curric-
ula. We know that children are important. We want to do all we can to
help them grow and flourish. However, our understanding of children
from a theological perspective: their roles in God’s covenant with us, or
as signs of the kingdom are subjects that preachers rarely touch upon.
Why should we be concerned about child theology? After all, don’t we
know all there is to know about children in the Bible? We should protect
and care for them. Welcome them. Not frustrate them. Teach them in the
way they should go. Our traditions tell us, perhaps shaped by culture and
context more than careful exegesis, that children are sinful or innocent.
We discipline, baptize (or not as the case may be), stereotype and ask for
confessions of faith from children.
But try placing a child in the midst of all that we do, including our the-
ology. What changes? Children have a knack of asking the most awkward
questions. Questions that get to the heart of what we believe and expose
our real core values. Questions that don’t fit neatly into the categories we
have learned. Dig deeper into the text, Biblical history, and the practical
outworking of child theology with some of the most at risk children in the
world, and you’ll be surprised at what you may discover about God. A
group of theologians and childcare practitioners have been doing just
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FOREWORD

that. Over the past 8 years, they created a movement that began to
explore theological questions raised by people working with some of the
most vulnerable children across the world.
This book is not ‘just’ for those who work with children. It is for all
Christians who are not afraid to walk with children into some relatively
unexplored areas of God’s kingdom. It charts a journey of some of those
who did just that. There is much here to ponder and reflect on. There is
still much to learn. With discernment and grace we too can toddle to the
kingdom.

Paul Stephenson
Director: Children in Development,
World Vision International

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P R E F A C E

Since 2002 the Child Theology Movement has promoted with the help of
others a series of extended conversations or ‘consultations’ to explore
what ‘Child Theology’ might be in various locations and contexts. Such
meetings have been held in: Penang, Malaysia; Cape Town, South Africa;
Houston, USA; Cambridge, England; Prague, Czech Republic; Addis
Ababa, Ethiopia; São Paulo, Brazil; Quito, Ecuador; Kathmandu, Nepal;
Newcastle, Australia.
Although reports were produced of all of these consultations, there is
much in them that deserves a wider audience. This book is the result. I
have selected key contributions to the consultations from various partici-
pants and arranged them in chapters. Some of the chapters are accounts
of experiences and challenges children face today. Others are summaries
of questions generated by group discussion. Still others are papers pre-
sented by individual participants. Together, the chapters offer an intro-
duction to some of the central questions of and approaches to Child
Theology.
I have sometimes edited the contributions from the original presenta-
tions. They were given orally to a particular group, at a specific time and
place. My intention has been to make the presentations more accessible
to those who were not at the meetings, to avoid repetition and to intro-
duce some stylistic continuity in this volume. I believe I have not materi-
ally changed the sense of what was originally given.
The term ‘Child Theology’ may not be familiar to many readers.
Perhaps it is worth pointing out here, at the beginning, that it is not a the-
ology which has children and the issues relating to them as the primary
foci. So, in that respect, it differs from a ‘theology of childhood’ or ‘theol-
ogy for children’ and therefore is of interest to all Christians who speak of
God, not just those who work with or are otherwise interested in children.
The focus of Child Theology is ‘God in Christ’ and the role of ‘the
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PREFACE

child’ is to bring a new perspective on the way God does things. We aim
to have a child ‘with us’ as we do our theological work1. In this, we con-
sciously try to follow Christ’s example in Matthew 18:1-5:

At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Who is the
greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” He called a little child and had
him stand among them. And he said: “I tell you the truth, unless
you change and become like little children, you will never enter the
kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this
child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever wel-
comes a little child like this in my name welcomes me.”

As children are relatively inept at analytical thinking, our approach might

be thought to lead to a ‘dumbed down’ theology. However, with Jesus’
example before us, we are confident that the process in fact reveals a
more challenging understanding of the Gospel: one that is relational and
concrete more than analytical and abstract, that points us to Jesus’ mis-
sion, upends our hierarchies and upsets our cherished categorisations
and systems of thought.
In this way, Child Theology is akin to other new theologies that have
brought new questions to the Bible based on the experiences of those
who had long been marginal to formal theological reflection: the poor, the
women, the marginalised races that have brought to us liberation, femi-
nine and black theologies.
When we picture marginalised and oppressed children, it’s easy to fall
into the trap of pulling into focus the stereotypical child soldier or prosti-
tute. But we should think more broadly than that. I remember several
years ago that proponents of abortion law reform in the United Kingdom
did so using a slogan ‘Every child a wanted child’. If that had been
achieved, the sacrifice of so many foetuses might have been redemptive
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PREFACE
though still abhorrent but, as should have been expected from a policy
that trivialised human life, the opposite has happened and we have in the
UK a generation of lonely, alienated and unhappy young people. Our cul-
ture superficially celebrates children, with an unprecedented number of
products aimed at them, while denying them what they really need.
Predatory producers out to ‘accessorise’ our children are sometimes
called corporate paedophiles. Circumstances differ and the type of
oppression varies but the plight of children is global.
As Jesus did something highly significant with a child in Matthew 18,
as children make up about half the world’s population, as they are the
most oppressed social group and as we all are or have been children, isn’t
it time that we brought this perspective to bear on our understanding of
what is meant by ‘the Kingdom of God’ and how we are to live in God’s
way?

John Collier

Jesus and
Children:
Serome Ching,
age 10 yrs
NOTE
1 It needs to be made clear at the outset that this does not necessarily,
or even usually, mean that we have a child with us in the room ‘in the 9
flesh’. Later chapters will show how we try to do this.
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C H A P T E R 1

One
Oppressed Child
“FOR I KNOW THE PLANS THAT I HAVE
FOR YOU, DECLARES THE LORD, PLANS TO PROSPER
YOU AND NOT TO HARM YOU, PLANS TO GIVE YOU
HOPE AND A FUTURE.”
Jeremiah 29:11

The following story from Romania was passed on to us

by Bill Prevette at a consultation in Prague.2
“ when I first met Adina. She seemed
I REMEMBER like a scared child. She didn’t dare
look me in the eye and could hardly speak to me. I talked with her for only
a moment, just enough time to arrange to meet with her for a doctor’s
appointment the following day. She never showed up. Just knowing a little
of her background, I hoped and prayed that she wasn’t pregnant. Due to
her circumstances – living on the streets – I couldn’t see a positive future
for herself and a child.
As a social worker working to prevent newborn baby abandonment in
Romania, I come across very impressive cases. Incredible stories of peo-
ple whose lives, you would be tempted to think, had been lived unnoticed
and somehow overlooked by God. I would like to share with you a story
that has remained close to my heart, because it was one that opened up a
series of similar success stories.
Adina was a part of the street kid subculture in Bucharest. Together with
some of her other street friends she attended a Teen Challenge outreach
where she came in contact with a missionary who began building a
relationship with her. This lady asked if I could come to the coffee house 13
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PART ONE CHAPTER 1

one evening to meet Adina. She thought that Adina was pregnant and
needed help.
Two months went by until one day I found out that Adina had been
hospitalized in the maternity hospital I worked in as a social worker. She
had given birth prematurely to twins: a boy and a girl. I located the room
she was staying in and this is when I found out the details of her coura-
geous life story.
Adina had been born into a family with many children. When she was
two years old she was abandoned in an orphanage, never to be visited
again by her family. When she was 11 or 12 years old, she was trans-
ferred to another orphanage in a different town. At this orphanage
another child raped her when she was 16 years old. The boy was expelled
from the centre and Adina was moved to another institution. She gave
birth in a maternity hospital and raised her baby until he was 13 months
old. Then, she said, she was forced to give up her child.
She was moved back into an orphanage where she continued going to
school and where she received training as a seamstress.
When she turned 18 she had to leave the orphanage where she was
staying. She was dropped off at her biological parent’s home where her
parents didn’t recognize her.
She lived there for only six months. She was physically abused and
forced to work beyond her strength until finally she was driven away from
home again. Only now she was grown up she could understand that this
was not the place for her. She says, “It was hard for my family, nine peo-
ple living in a three room apartment, trying to make ends meet living off
of the Romanian welfare system.”
So in the spring of 2002, driven away by her family circumstances,
Adina had no choice but to try to survive on the streets of Buzau. Her
hope was that maybe she would finally find a family there. But not even
on the streets was she left alone. The police picked her up many times,
took her the police station and beat her because she was begging to earn
a living. Unable to bear the situation, she left for Bucharest together with
another homeless girl, in hopes of being left alone and being able to blend
in with the multitude of other street children.
Adina desperately tried to make a future for herself but no matter how
hard she tried it felt like she was fighting an uphill battle. Shortly after she
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ONE OPPRESSED CHILD

came to Bucharest she was taken advantage of by a street boy addicted to
drugs and became pregnant. Wanting very much the support of a family,
she became part of a street child gang that was receiving help from vari-
ous humanitarian organizations. Through one of these groups she man-
aged to get a job making candles, which is how I ended up having contact
with her, two months before she gave birth.
Adina didn’t expect to give birth so soon, and certainly not to two
children. She didn’t know what to do and felt confused. She was strug-
gling as to whether or not to keep the babies and try to provide a future
and a better world for them. She wished that she could at least keep the
boy as a comfort for the one who was taken away from her when she was
17 years old. I stood with her when she saw her children for the first time
and witnessed one of the greatest miracles of life: a mother allowing her-
self to be captured by two little lives that God had allowed her to give
birth to.
I believed in my heart that, with help, Adina could be a mother to
these little children and provide for them. Though, to prevent their aban-
donment, I would have to find a way to get Adina off the streets. I went to
work right away!
Because Adina’s babies were born premature, they needed to stay in
the hospital until they reached a normal weight. However, Adina had to
leave the hospital because she didn’t have money to pay for extended
hospitalization. So we made use of this time to obtain copies of legal
papers that she needed to obtain her children’s birth certificates. When
we went to register her children Adina asked me to name her baby girl.
The name Esther from the Bible came to mind – the woman that had been
used by God to save a nation!
All that I had left to do was to find a maternal centre where Adina and
her children could live and receive the support they needed to be inte-
grated back to society. I searched all over Bucharest to find such a centre
but couldn’t find one. It had been almost a month since the children were
born. They were normal weight now, so they were ready to leave the hos-
pital. I began to worry but then realized that it wasn’t in my power to pro-
vide a future for them. I started to pray for the situation and asked others
to pray with me also.
It was then that the Lord brought to my mind Jeremiah 29:11. He
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PART ONE CHAPTER 1

showed me that He had Adina and her babies’ future in His hands. My
simple human ability to help them came into being because of what God
had purposed for them long ago. It wasn’t my job to prepare a future for
Adina and her babies but His.
As I write Adina’s story, it has been over a year since we found a
maternal centre near Timisoara for her and her babies to live in. The chil-
dren have grown, they are beautiful and healthy and loved by everyone
who knows their story. Adina is considered a model mother and a hero for
making the courageous choices she did. She is the pride of the maternal
centre. By God’s grace, a shy, awkward girl who once didn’t know how to
feed, change or care for her children is now teaching other mothers how
to do this. Adina and her babies are preparing to be integrated into soci-
ety to live independently from the maternal centre.
And as for me, I have learnt that my part is to love and to do all I can to
reach out a hand to help those God has put in my life. And in doing so, to
be a reflection of His light and life to encourage mothers to put their hope
and future in Him.”

Jesus and
Children:
Ng Joe Yee,
age 6 yrs

CHAPTER NOTE S
2 The story is as told to him by Simona Pop
who graduated in sociology and theology
from the Baptist seminary in Bucharest.

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C H A P T E R 3

What is
‘Child Theology’? HADDON WILLMER

is the name we give to

CHILD THEOLOGY the work we are doing.
As far as we know, no one has ever used the term before. We want to
make it clear that we do not have a proprietary attitude to Child Theology,
as though it is our invention, so that we can or should be defensive about
what happens to it, as others take it up in their own way. What we hope
to do is make a contribution to an open conversation.

It is Theology
Child Theology is not an overall Christian theory of all activity around
children. Nor is it just a reaction to the child unfriendliness of much of
modern life. It also reacts to the massive secular and Christian child
friendliness which are to be found in the world now – for example, as set
out by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. The
Gospel can be ignored or distorted not only in activities that are child-
unfriendly. Child friendliness can take forms that have the same effects.
Secular humanism can be concerned for children without God and the
Gospel. To care for children, it’s not just a matter of adding God into the
programme. There can be Christian activism for children which obscures
the Gospel because it is insufficiently theologically articulate.
Theology is thinking and talking (logos) about, from, towards and with
God (theos). Not all religion involves theology. Even if the talk about Child
Development, for example, uses religious language and categories but
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PART ONE CHAPTER 3

makes no mention of God, then it is not theology. Child Theology takes
the view that theology is important and should be worked at, even though
talking about God can never substitute for God and theology as talk is not
a substitute for faith in action. Child Theology has only a small corner in
the totality of God’s world but in and from that corner it must let its light
shine.

Our Approach
One approach to Child Theology that I have taken with Keith White is to
reflect on some Gospel stories and sayings of Jesus in relation to children.
First, helped by Matthew 18, we aimed to follow Jesus who put a child
in the middle of a theological argument! The disciples thought the Kingdom
of God was such that it was possible and proper to have a competition for
greatness in it. Jesus does not merely attack the proud ambitions of the
disciples by inviting them to become as children but changes the lan-
guage in order to speak more precisely about the transcendent difference
of the Kingdom of God from the kingdoms of our earthly experience. In
God’s kingdom, the language of greatness ceases to be competitive. To
enter the kingdom is enough – and even the great people on earth cannot
take entering the kingdom for granted.
Secondly, we reflected on what it means to receive the child. Jesus tells
us that we cannot enter the Kingdom unless we become as children. Does
this mean we are to attempt the impossible: to go back on our adulthood
– the adulthood it seems God implants in every child by nature? Jesus
does not expect adults in themselves to become children. They become as
children when they receive the child, real children, so that they live with
and for the child, so that they walk at the pace of the child. They become
like a child, without ceasing to be adult, when they let the child they
receive be a child. As they do this, they provide what the child needs as
part of its child-ness: reception. This way of reading the Gospels is con-
troversial, and will be disputed by many child-friendly theologians. Our
approach is not to be wholly conventional and unprovocative!
Thirdly, we found we had to attend to child suffering, to the massive
despising of little ones which is all around us. Jesus said they should not be
despised because their angels always behold the Father’s face. This is
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WHAT IS ‘CHILD THEOLOGY’?

certainly a theological saying: it invites us to think that angels and God’s
face might be helpful and consoling to little ones who are despised. This
challenges the widely held view that God is only of value to us if God-talk
correlates with and symbolises effective justice and goodness on earth.

Child as Sign
Even in spite of Christ, God has done so much to preserve his invisibility –
he preserves the mystery and hiddenness, even while revealing himself.
We can never grasp God but we have to go on babbling as we attempt to
speak about him (Augustine). A lot of life is about waiting in darkness,
waiting in faith. “The people that walked in darkness … .” Like Simeon wait-
ing in the Temple, until Christ is brought in.
The child was put in the midst as a sign of the Kingdom of God but this
is not the same as the presence of the Kingdom. The child is often a sign
of hope but she can also be a sign by pointing to the darkness that is still
waiting for the Kingdom, rather like the canaries taken down the mines to
detect poisonous gases. Faith does not oblige us to be cheaply optimistic
about every situation.
Adina was rescued but what about those that were not? Adina helps
us to remember them but they still suffer. People still say: there’s no God
or if there is, he’s not around when you need him. So, many social work-
ers are quite hostile to the involvement of Faith Based Organisations –
they think faith only complicates the problem. Many Christians also feel
the weight of this question.

The Children’s Angels

Perhaps Jesus offers us some help in resolving these issues when he
admonishes us not to despise the children because their angels always
see the face of God (Matthew 18:10). Despising here is very broad: an
unfriendly word is a despising, and death is a despising. Jesus says: don’t
join in with this. Why? Because of the angels! God’s face being open to
them is a Biblical symbol of God’s acceptance and favour. So how seri-
ously and purely do we take this, the fact that God is for them? Does our
concern for children, our receiving them, stem from God? Or are our
motives and modes of action largely secular? There is a strong humanist 25
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PART ONE CHAPTER 3

case for doing good for children. Christian action for children is often
actually based on secular, sociological sensibility, science and concern.
We just add a religious gilding to it.
What comfort is it that angels behold the Father’s face? This is a basic
issue, which all believers in God feel: Where is God when children suffer?
And further, if comfort can be found in God’s open face, who and where
are the angels? Could, for example, the United Nations Convention on the
Rights of the Child be an angel, who represents the child to God and with
the affirmation of God?

Standing with the Angels

But we can’t leave the angels to do all the representing of children before
the Father’s face. Even though they’re despised, God is still on their side.
This in itself doesn’t alter the fact of their being despised in the world. We
must see this text in the context of receiving a child, which means we
should attend to them. So then it would be inconsistent for us not to be
on their side, just like God with his angels. Throughout the Bible, God’s
people are to be as God is. Even when the darkness is deep and it seems
that it will never yield, we can still hope that the Kingdom is coming.
In exceptional cases, the angels don’t merely behold the Father’s face
but come with timely help. The story of Hagar and Ishmael is an example
(Genesis 16.7-14; 21:15-21) but even stories like this are not to be used to
excuse our leaving it to the angels. They strengthen our sense that God is
for the despised and abandoned and so make clearer to us what we have
to do.
A Pentecostal hermeneutic of the passage might see it in the context of
‘spiritual warfare’. The gap between social and spiritual, Pentecostals
would like to fill with Holy Spirit, the power of God. Children can be
caught in the middle of two worlds in conflict.
Some churches wouldn’t help Adina as she wasn’t ‘one of theirs’. And
if she were one of theirs, they would throw her out because of church dis-
cipline! What do we actually believe about God? An article in the Baptist
Times suggested we shouldn’t preach the love of God in the world but
only in the church. How much do we believe that God is active in the
world just now?
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WHAT IS ‘CHILD THEOLOGY’?

Is there anything in Creation that represents mystery better than a
child? The story about angels might be more about God’s care and
involvement; reminiscent of stories from the desert fathers which suggest
that things are not the way they often appear. And in this way, children
may begin to expose the gap between the theology we say we believe and
the theology that we actually practice.

Questions to be Answered
For those working with children, and to all who would wish to follow this
analysis, many issues arise. Here are some that were suggested by partic-
ipants at a Child Theology consultation:

What do we mean by ‘child’? Must he/she be young or can the text

stand for any powerless or marginalisebout children before they
meet the child? How do we complete the following sentences, in
the context of our own particular cultures:
Children are …
Children like to …
Children should …
The child is part of …
Does receiving the child presuppose a movement of the child
towards us?
The child should be received as into a family, so openness,
patience and willingness to be changed oneself are important. It
is the start of a new relationship.
It might mean to open one’s home for the child; but that is a
serious matter because it means opening a private space.
Receiving is complementary to giving. Who is the giver? The
identity of the giver may affect our response to the gift.
Reception must be on the child’s terms
There is a price to pay in receiving

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