"Educating out of Spirituality"

In my blog browsing yesterday, I came across this post:  "Educating out of Spirituality" by Dave Csinos at Such As These.  He basically says that our traditional educational model in the church is doing a disservice to children - teaching them about God but not helping them experience God.  He's written some other good stuff about children in the church as well.

This is something I've been thinking about recently:  How do I encourage my kids in their spiritual development through more than sending them to Sunday School or even reading them Bible stories at home?  Because while Biblical education and learning about God is important, it's not enough.  As Csinos says, "it can’t compare to the life-changing, life-giving, and life-forming experience of God’s presence in our lives."

It's so easy to drop the kids off at their church classes, say a prayer at dinner, and read a Bible story at night.  So easy, but not enough.  It's so easy for us to talk about church.  My husband and I both work in churches, after all.  He is even the children's minister!  We talk about church a lot.  But talking is not enough.  How do we encourage them to grow and form their God-given spirituality without educating it out of them?  How do we encourage creativity, critical thought, doubts, passion, love?  How do we help them experience God's presence in their own lives as well as in the world around them? 

I'm not very good at this myself.  I have lots of thoughts about faith, but practicing it and really experiencing it...that's much harder.  I grew up in a traditional Sunday School and was in church multiple times a week.  I'm a good student, so I learned lots of stuff.  My parents were always open about how God is important to them.  In many different ways, I learned that faith is important.  I am very thankful for my Christian education, at church and at home, but today I wonder how it can be improved upon for the new and different world that my kids live in.  Because while I learned lots of good stuff, I was often on my own in learning spiritual practice and figuring out what it means to experience God. 

Even though I never went to a truly fundamentalist church, I was taught a pretty prescribed faith.  So when I was faced with questions that my faith didn't seem to have good answers for, or when I was faced with people who didn't fit that faith box but seemed to have a genuine relationship with God, I was a little thrown.  Not greatly thrown, but a little.  Others have certainly had to "unlearn" much more than I did, because I did grow up in a house where questions were allowed and the traditional was not always viewed as the best.  But I still remember a gut fear that I was losing faith when really I was just trying to own it. 

So how do I help my kids experience God and practice their faith?  How do I give them permission to ask questions without feeling like they're falling off a cliff?  How do I help them think and act creatively in the kingdom of God?  Heck, how do I help myself?!  As mentioned above, my husband is their children's minister, and I know that he is working on some good stuff for their spiritual education at church.  Stuff that focuses more on faith formation and less on filling their head with Bible points.  But what should I do?  Or what should we do at home?  I have some blurry ideas, but no formulated plan.  And maybe it shouldn't be a formal plan, but I feel better with a list! 

Is anyone else out there wondering these kinds of things?  Any ideas?  Let's share!  Hopefully in future blog posts I can share with you what we're trying.  If you, too, are wanting to dream about a different kind of education that educates into spirituality, then let's talk.