Children's service

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150 years of children's church service, stamp issue by Deutsche Post from 2002.
Sunday school students at the first European Baptist Congress in Berlin (1908)

Sunday school is a definite for children worship .

In the Protestant regional and free churches , the children's worship service takes place differently from region to region, either parallel or at different times to the adult worship service.

The same applies to the Catholic Church . The Roman Children's Directory has existed since 1977 and is valid worldwide and recommends various forms of worship that children can celebrate according to their level of development.

In addition to common songs and prayers, children's services focus on biblical narratives , which are used to convey the basics of Christian belief and action. In terms of content, the children's worship service is related to other forms of child-friendly preaching of the Gospel such as children's Bible weeks and days, family worship services, etc. a. m., which are summarized in the Protestant area under the term church with children .

history

The predecessor of today's children's service was the Sunday School , which was first established in Germany in 1825 by Pastor Johann Wilhelm Rautenberg in the Hamburg district of St. Georg. The idea for this came from Johann Gerhard Oncken , who had got to know Sunday school work in England. For the history of the children's worship service, see the section History of Sunday School .

The first children's church service in Germany in today's sense took place in 1850 in the Neustädter Church in Erlangen . It was initiated by the local professor Karl Georg von Raumer .

organization

First and foremost, the children's worship service is the responsibility of the organizing community. This provides the premises and takes care of the managerial staff. In many parishes, full-time employees (e.g. pastors or youth leaders) are involved in the preparation, but the actual implementation is in the hands of a volunteer group of helpers.

In the Protestant Church and some free churches, the topics of the children's service are usually taken from the "Plan for the children's service". Most of the material booklets are based on the topics and biblical texts suggested there. The plan is published by the General Association for Children's Worship Service in the EKD eV , which has existed since 1910 under changing names. In addition to issuing the plan, the general association also takes on the organization and implementation of the entire conference for children's worship , which has been held at different locations since 1911, with a number of participants between 2000 and 4000, mostly every four years. This is a multi-day training event for employees in the children's worship service.

See also

literature

Historical and theological foundation

  • Carsten Berg: Church service with children. From Sunday school to children's worship. Gütersloher Verlagshaus, Gütersloh 1987, ISBN 3-579-01746-2 .
  • Karl Heinz Voigt: International Sunday School and German Children's Service. An ecumenical challenge. From the beginning to the end of the German Empire. Church - Confession - Religion, Volume 52. V&R unipress, Göttingen 2007, ISBN 978-3-89971-402-9 .
  • Paul Zauleck: The little majesties. Of the service of the church to children . A commemorative publication for the 50th anniversary of the German children's church service, Berlin 1913.
  • From Sunday School service. Eight lectures were given at the Württemb association course. Sunday Schools published by the National Committee in January 1908. Holland & Josenhans, Stuttgart 1908.

Practice of children's worship

  • Manfred Hilkert (Ed.): Practical Children's Service 2009: Celebrating and understanding faith with children. Gütersloher Verlagshaus, Gütersloh 2007, ISBN 3-579-05472-4 .
  • Bernd Schlueter, Jochem Westhof: Children's Service Manual: For employees. Gütersloher Verlagshaus, Gütersloh 2007, ISBN 3-579-05582-8 .
  • Adelheid Schnelle (Ed.): Church services with children 2007. Handout from New Year to Christmas 2008. Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, Leipzig 2007, ISBN 3-374-02489-0 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Christoph Friedrich, Hartmut Bobzin: Neustadt, ev. Community . In: Christoph Friedrich, Bertold Freiherr von Haller, Andreas Jakob (Hrsg.): Erlanger Stadtlexikon . W. Tümmels Verlag, Nuremberg 2002, ISBN 3-921590-89-2 ( complete edition online ).