The child evangelism movement is a Christian evangelism movement that was begun in 1937 by Jesse Irvin Overholtzer who founded the Christian organization Child Evangelism Fellowship (CEF). It focuses on the 4/14 Window which centers on evangelizing children between the ages of 4 and 14 years old. Children are targeted because they are the "most receptive, but also because they are often the most effective agents for mission" to evangelize their peer group. Groups supporting the evangelization initiative have argued that "It is crucial that mission efforts be reprioritized and re-directed toward the 4/14 age group world-wide"
Contents
Strategy
A study conducted in 1995-6 survey commissioned by the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary found that 71% of Christians in the US converted before the age of 14.
In 2003 George Barna published the results of his research, showing that children are the most important population segment to minister to because of their spiritual teachability and developmental vulnerability. Barna argued that a child's moral development is set by the age of nine, while churches focus on older children. Barna wrote that "Habits related to the practice of one’s faith develop when one is young and change surprisingly little over time.” and “the older a child gets, the more distracted and vulnerable he or she becomes to nonfamily influences." Barna found in 2004 that children converted to Christianity before their teen years are more likely to remain "absolutely committed" to Christianity. Barna stated "It is during those [pre-teen] years that people develop their frames of reference for the remainder of their life." He later stated "The early impressions we make go a long way toward shaping a person’s worldview, relationships, dreams, expectations, and core reality."
Bryant Myers and Dan Brewster have used Barna's research to argue that global evangelism programs should target younger children for conversion. “The implication of these findings is clear,” says Barna. “Anyone who wishes to have significant influence on the development of a person’s moral and spiritual foundations had better exert that influence while the person is still open-minded and impressionable – in other words, while the person is still young.”
The Christian relief organization World Vision has declared that the child evangelism movement is a very important evangelism movement in the 21st century.
Dan Brewster argues that children should be targeted for evangelism because the "clay is still soft" and argued "Children need our attention more urgently than any other group of people"
4/14 Window
In April 1994, Christian children's ministry leaders from 54 organizations gathered for a two-day conference which focused on ways to evangelize children between the ages of 4 and 14. Awana Clubs International, which has trained leaders who head clubs in 10,000 U.S. churches, hosted gathering at its Streamwood, Illinois, headquarters. Christianity Today International along with six other groups co-sponsored the gathering.
The 4/14 Window was originally conceived by Bryant Myers of World Vision and later popularized by Christian missionary strategist Luis Bush who also coined the term 10/40 Window. The 4/14 Window is a global Christian mission movement focused on evangelizing children between the ages of 4 and 14 years old. Bush commented in the Christian Post in 2009 that "Mission strategies developed for the 4/14 Window would be implemented by parents, pastors and other role model figures who play key roles in shaping a child’s worldview."
In 2004, at the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization in Thailand, a group of Christian evangelists examined the state of evangelism among children. The Lusanne committee published a paper arguing that evangelists should target children under 14 in the global South for conversion, and created the Aim Lower movement.
In 2005, Dan Brewster, a director of World Vision, indicated that the 10/40 Window is a vital Christian mission opportunity developed in the 20th century and the 4/14 Window is a Christian mission opportunity in the 21st century which may be just as important. Brewster argued that "The poor and exploited tend to be much more receptive to the Gospel" and that children and young people should be targeted in areas where disease, poverty and conflict have disrupted their lives. The paper included basic ethical considerations, such as not evangelising children without parental consent, or where their families are entirely dependent on Christian charities for financial or material support, or in a way that disparages their local culture.
Criticism
Proponents of the 4/14 window encourage children from the age of four to be converted to Christianity. Evangelists often use techniques such as a Wordless Book to communicate religious concepts to children too young to read. Critics of this practice charge that children too young to read for themselves are too young to be able to make an informed, independent decision about what religion they belong to. Many Christian authors are critical of the use of altar calls. Some theologians argue that altar calls may give converts a false understanding of religious salvation. Theologian Randal Rauser has criticized the practice of “conversionism,” which emphasizes immediate change in religion, rather than a gradual transformation of life and belief. He has also criticized the targeting of young children, who can be "easily manipulated" into confessing belief in things they don't understand to please adults.
The Roman Catholic Church maintains that children do not have moral responsibility before the Age of Reason, at eight years old. In Latin Rite Catholicism, the sacraments of Eucharist and Confirmation are only given to children who have the use of reason, and Holy Communion may be administered to children only if "they have sufficient knowledge and careful preparation so that they understand the mystery of Christ according to their capacity and are able to receive the Body of Christ with faith and devotion." Despite this, child evangelism advocates argue that children aged 3–6, who have only a rudimentary conception of right and wrong spelled out by their parents, should be evangelised.
Many Protestant Christians have expressed concern that young converts grow up to have a false understanding of the religion, and that widespread secularisation of Europe and North America is the product of false conversions in childhood. John F. MacArthur has been critical of evangelists coerces a profession of faith in children, especially when the evangelist oversimplifies parts of the religion in order to get a large number of children to "convert" in response to a formulaic presentation that is light on details.
In the 19th century, Philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer argued that teaching some ideas to children at a young age could foster resistance to doubting those ideas later on.
In her 2012 book The Good News Club: The Christian Right's Stealth Assault on America's Children, journalist Katherine Stewart criticizes various practices of the 'Good News Club' after-school Bible study program, including young participants being rewarded for recruiting friends of other faiths and denominations whose parents have not enrolled them in the program. She argues that children in schools are encouraged to bully children who don't share their faith. Katherine Stewart has criticised the efforts of politically conservative biblical literalists to convert young children to forms of Christian belief that advocate a literal reading of violent Old Testament narratives. She argued in an article in The Guardian that biblical literalists teach children that they should read from the Old Testament in order to understand divinely-ordered extermination of the Amalekites, is used to justify genocide. In response, the Childhood Evangelism Foundation stated that they encouraged a literal reading of the extermination of the Amalekites, but do not encourage children to view it as an endorsement of historical or current genocides.