Let the little children come!

The church is being called to reach children beyond the walls of Sunday services, argue Nick and Deborah Pearson.

A quiet but urgent call is echoing through the church in Britain – a call not to innovate for novelty’s sake, but to rediscover something once central, now largely absent.

It is the call to reach children beyond the walls of Sunday services, and it sits at the heart of a new booklet by Nick and Deborah Pearson, The Dream We Carry.

Framed as both reflection and rallying cry, the Pearsons’ work traces a dramatic shift in children’s ministry over the past half-century.

Where once Sunday schools thrived as vibrant community hubs, today many churches find themselves primarily serving children already within Christian families.

The implications are profound – not only for the church, but for the spiritual landscape of a generation.

“Eighty-three per cent of adults who are Christians today first made a commitment to Jesus between the ages of four and 14,” writes Tim Alford in his endorsement.

This “staggering reality”, he argues, should command the church’s full attention.

Yet, as the Pearsons document, the structures that once reached children at that critical stage have steadily declined.

The story begins in the late 1960s, when Sunday schools were woven into the fabric of British life.

Nick Pearson recalls standing outside a community hall in 1969 as a teenage Sunday school teacher, part of a movement that drew in children from entirely non-churchgoing families.

story continues…