One Generation from Extinction

How the church connects with the unchurched child

Mark Griffiths

• Publisher: Monarch Books
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9780857213686
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

When Robert Raikes started his first Sunday School in 1780, he saw his idea grow to reach 300,000 unchurched children within five years - this in a nation widely ignorant of Christian ideas and values. Mark Griffiths has used Raikes' pioneering work in examining child evangelism in the UK. Working from extensive local and national research (leading to a PhD), he considers how children 'tick', what basic theology is at work in Christian outreach, and what constitutes best practice in child evangelism. His text is studded with insights and observations, and brings together the author's passion for his subject with the rigour of careful research. This is an unparalleled resource, laying the foundations of future growth.

PART 1

THE HISTORY AND PRACTICE OF CHILDREN’S OUTREACH

This section looks at Robert Raikes and the pattern of child evangelism that he developed, and then goes on to develop an overview of child evangelism in the twenty-first century and a detailed examination of five key projects.

Chapter 1

ROBERT RAIKES AND THE SUNDAY SCHOOL MOVEMENT

By careful analysis of the Sunday School movement’s formation, it is possible to identify the practice of the earliest Sunday Schools with their regular repeated pattern and built-in norms and sanctions.1 No timeline can be exact in this respect, but by identifying the pattern of working for the first decades, it is possible to use it to evaluate the development of child evangelism that emerged into the twenty-first century.

ROBERT RAIKES

Raikes was the product of a family that loved him, and Raikes in turn would prove to be a loving father and husband and one who could turn this compassion further afield. The material written about Raikes suggests a man of good character.2 In many ways he was the epitome of the eighteenth-century Gloucester gentleman. Raikes’ ancestry, rich with clergy influence, may have attuned his conscience to the needs of the poor and to the suffering of those around them. It is likely that the love he enjoyed in his own home as a little boy and its influence upon his own personality is attributable to his mother,3 but it was the skills he learned from his father, and the character modelled by his father, that would enable him to make the Sunday School movement so influential. It is for this reason that some observations on Raikes’ father are necessary. (Both Robert Raikes and his father share the forename Robert; for that reason, Robert Raikes’ father will be referred to as Raikes Senior.)

Fig 1.1 Robert Raikes

At the age of sixteen, Raikes Senior was bound apprentice to printer John Lambeth. He was to hold various positions within the printing trade over the next fourteen years until, in 1718, he had learned his trade well enough to set up his own press in St Ives and produce his own newspaper, the St Ives Post Boy which he sold for three halfpence a copy. Raikes Senior was to begin many newspapers in the same way as the St Ives Post. After the Post came the Northampton Mercury, but it was The Gloucester Journal that was his most successful publication and the main vehicle for presenting his views.

Fig 1.2 The Gloucester Journal 1783

Raikes Senior printed whatever was necessary while at the same time using The Gloucester Journal as the means to advocate his personal propaganda. For example, on 12 March 1728 Raikes Senior included in The Gloucester Journal thirty lines he had written on the subject of the national debt. The article was critical of the government’s policy. Parliament was indignant and Raikes Senior was forced to apologize in person and fined £40.4 This was the first of two occasions on which he had to apologize to Parliament. Raikes Senior was to express many opinions on subjects as diverse as waste of grain foods, the inhuman treatment of debtors and criminals, and cock fighting.5

It is clear that his friction with Parliament did not do any permanent damage to his community standing. In the same year that he was forced to apologize to Parliament for a second time, Booth6 notes that he was appointed overseer of St Mary de Crypt, a position of great respect and influence within the community.7

Raikes Senior married Sarah Niblett in 1722. They had a daughter, but Sarah died shortly afterwards. Raikes Senior had been a widower for less than a year when he married Anne Mond. She gave birth to Robert, Elizabeth and Martha. All but Elizabeth died in infancy. In 1734 Anne died, leaving Raikes Senior a widower for the second time. A year later Raikes Senior married again, this time to Mary Drew, twenty-five years younger than Raikes, who by this time was forty-six. The following year Robert, the eldest of four sons born to Mary, was baptized in the church where his father was now the overseer.

Raikes Senior’s entrepreneurial skills were not just evident in his dealing with The Gloucester Journal. Booth8 talks of the episode in which one Henry Wagstaff, county sheriff, died in 1725, leaving large debts that his widow could not settle. Raikes Senior, seeing a business opportunity, took over the mortgage of Wagstaff’s considerable house. In 1732 Raikes foreclosed and took up the tenancy of Ladybellegate House, and later, in 1735, he took over the complete and extensive Wagstaff property portfolio. The picture of a shrewd businessperson is developing. The Raikes family knew how to make money; their wills and other deeds show clearly that each generation was wealthier than the one before it.9

Raikes Senior showed tenacity and fortitude in the face of the deaths of his wives and children. He showed entrepreneurial prowess in his financial dealings. He is a man of clear influence and, despite his shrewdness, lived his life with integrity and favourable reputation. He often stood against injustice, had a well-developed social conscience, and knew what it was to work hard and to persevere. These are the character attributes and skills that Robert inherited.10 Raikes Senior had nurtured and moulded his son in his own image and it was no surprise that in 1757, when Raikes Senior died, Robert Raikes inherited the business. In reports that are otherwise exceptionally positive regarding the character and integrity of both Robert Raikes and his father, it may be surprising to note the comments of Harris that both were also described as ‘vain and conceited’.11 This statement is not easily reconciled with the comments that have gone before, but it is not unique. Kendall,12 citing the diaries of Madame D’Arblay, records her description of Raikes as ‘somewhat too flourishing and forward’. It is also not as simple as suggesting that these comments came from enemies of the Raikes family as this is clearly not the case. Madame D’Arblay goes on to say that Raikes is worthy, benevolent, good-natured and good-hearted, and that therefore the overflowing of successful spirits and delighted vanity must meet with some allowance.

In reading about Raikes Senior and Robert Raikes it is clear that both men possessed large quantities of self-belief. In Raikes Senior, this is seen clearly in his ability to persevere despite experiencing personal sorrow, and not only to persevere but to excel in his chosen field; and in Robert Raikes, his self-belief is shown in the way he continues in his philanthropic endeavours, despite his early attempts at social reform, by his own admission, being failures.

It is possible that the unwavering self-belief exhibited by father and son would be misinterpreted by many as vanity and conceit. Nevertheless, it must also be conceded that the very fact that writers such as Harris and Kendall mention these indiscretions at all indicates that there were at least tendencies for the Raikeses to be proud of their achievements, even on occasion to the point of arrogance.

ROBERT RAIKES’ ENGLAND

Raikes’ paradigm of child evangelism did not operate in a vacuum; there are external factors that both shaped it and influenced its outworking. To understand these factors fully, it is necessary to understand the cultural context in which it was birthed. To draw the necessary comparisons involves looking at four significant factors of eighteenth-century life that were to influence this development: the social environment, the prevailing world view, the state of the church and the influences on the child.

Robert Raikes was born in September 1736 into an age of major contrasts. The French Revolution, with the ripples it would cause in Britain, was half a century away. The Reverend Gilbert White13 described it as ‘a golden age’, and for some it was. Where employment, food and other necessities were freely available, life could be enjoyable. This was achieved in the places where landowners cared for their workers and their children. These were the communities to which White14 referred:

We abound with poor, many of whom are sober and industrious, and live comfortably, in good stone or brick cottages, which are glazed, and have chambers above stairs… Beside the employment from husbandry, the men work in the hop gardens, of which we have many; and fell and bark timber. In the spring and summer, the women weed the corn; and enjoy a second harvest in September by hop picking… The inhabitants enjoy a share of health and longevity; and the parish swarms with children.

Stratford,15 writing of the period around 1780, paints a very different picture:

Great outbreaks as the mobs of London and Birmingham burnt houses, flung open prisons, and sacked and pillaged at will… they16 were ignorant and brutal to a degree which is hard to conceive. The rural peasantry, who were fast being reduced to pauperism by the abuse of the poor laws, were left without moral or religious training of any sort.

However, a warning is necessary. The historiography of the eighteenth-century church is profoundly ideological. Victorian historians defended their class, professional and intellectual interests, and diverted attention from the need to change by consciously depicting their predecessors ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Praise
• Dedication
• A Word From The Author
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Issues of Ethics
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Part 1: The History And Practice of Children’s Outreach
• Part 2: Connecting With The Unchurched Child
• Appendices
• Bibliography