When the church listens with a child’s heart: Rediscovering wonder, joy, and belonging in worship
VALLEY FORGE, PA (10/31/2025)—In this interview, Anna Piela, senior writer for American Baptist Home Mission Societies (ABHMS) and associate editor of The Christian Citizen, speaks with Autumn Blalock, program coordinator of ABHMS’ Nurturing Children Initiative (NCI), a recently launched cohort-based effort helping congregations reimagine worship through the eyes of their youngest members.
Through this initiative, ABHMS seeks to spark a culture shift that embraces children’s natural curiosity, creativity, and physical expression within intergenerational worship. From 2025 through 2029, NCI will engage 36 churches in three cohorts—12 congregations per cohort—and connect them with child development experts, youth ministry leaders, and formative resources. Participating churches are encouraged to create worship and prayer experiences where children are affirmed in who they are, encouraged in their faith, empowered in their gifts, and embraced as full members of the body of Christ.
NCI invites congregations to see children not only as learners of faith but as its co-creators. In conversation with Piela, Blalock reflects on the creativity, courage, and joy of children who are already leading the church into a renewed sense of wonder and belonging.
The interview responses have been lightly edited for clarity and readability.
What attracted you to the Nurturing Children Initiative? What made you want to be a part of it?
The most exciting part of it for me was the storytelling aspect of it, in the sense that the initiative is trying to change a cultural narrative around the way that we interact with children. There are a lot of really good educational programs teaching people about child development, but there aren’t many programs that engage faith communities and how we interact with children. I come from an arts education background, so using storytelling, play, and joyfulness to interact with children is the cool part.
What is your role with the initiative?
I’m the program coordinator. I’m responsible for building relationships and communicating with the faith communities in the cohort. I am helping with organizing the events and answering questions that folks might have. I am the first point of contact for inquiries about the program.
Have you had any surprises on the job yet?
I’ve had so many surprises! I have been surprised by just how hungry the American Baptist community is for an initiative like this! Even churches that go, “Oh, we don’t have a lot of children in our congregation, but we really want to learn about this, so that we can support families in our neighborhood.”
I think it’s part of why I find the storytelling aspect so important, because these are the stories that aren’t being told loud enough—that there are people who are really hungry for the results of this initiative. I was surprised by that, and by that real enthusiasm.
I was surprised by the number of churches who have more children than adults. There are also so many churches that say, “Our children are leaders. Our children are bringing their parents and families to this faith community.”
And then I was delightfully surprised by how well Daryn, who’s the program director, and I really clicked together. We are from very different backgrounds, so it is great to see how we have merged our approaches to child development and faith formation in children specifically. It’s been a surprising process, but in a lot of good ways.
How diverse were the churches that applied to be a part of the cohort?
Yes, we were looking at many different categories of diversity in the selection process. For example, congregational size—there are congregations that are small with two to four children but are very intentional about nurturing the kids. Others have dozens of children. We’ve seen diversity in where people have been applying from in the United States and Puerto Rico and just how far the word has spread about the program.
We’ve also seen a diversity of theologies. There are churches that have created space for more than one theological view within their congregation, to the point where they have Sunday school lessons where they tell the children that some people believe “ABC” and other people believe “XYZ.” So even just in individual congregational context, there’s been a surprising amount of diversity, I think.
What are you hoping for in terms of the outcomes from this first cohort?
I hope that we develop a cohort that is proud of the gifts that they nurture in their children. I hope that we build a cohort that at the end of this process feels comfortable leaning on each other in a larger faith context and as siblings in Christ, in their ministry. I hope we build a cohort that will have children that feel proud and confident in their ability to talk about what they believe and how they believe it, and how they express that. I really, really want to see an increase in self-efficacy with the cohort by the end of this cycle.
What good memories do you have from your childhood church?
My family was connected to a very specific church where my parents met when they were younger. And so, my earliest years were spent on the dance team at the church. All the children were encouraged to do some sort of service. My family had different physical access and abilities, and so oftentimes, my family could not make it to the church space in person.
What that often meant was that I was finding other families that I could be with. And you know, we had grandmas and aunties who weren’t physically a part of our family, but they were my grandmas and aunties! That was my auntie because she was watching me while I was at church. This is who was taking me to choir rehearsal. And so, my earliest memories of church were of community and of service, first and foremost. Less as a theological expression and more as an expectation.
Children who were a part of this service were there because they were contributing—they were working. And as you got older, you really got the option of theological exploration. It’s been really exciting to see how different churches engage children. At the church I grew up in, you could get baptized at whatever age your parents let you, but you could not participate in a lot of the discussions until you were 18 or older. And before 18, you could be on the dance team, or you could be in the children’s choir, or you could usher, but you could not participate in faith. My parents instilled very strong faith in us from a young age, but it wasn’t highlighted in the larger church context. It’s been really fun to see how different churches nurture faith, even before the age of 12. There are children who can say what their faith is and what they believe by age five! They might need help to pronounce some of the words, but they know within their core what they believe. That’s really exciting to me.
Are there any things you would like to mention that I didn’t think to ask about?
Yes! One exciting aspect of the Nurturing Children Initiative is that we hope to be putting out resources as the program goes on, so whether it’s ministrElife or social media, or the ABHMS website, we’re hoping to put out publications, reports, and information that churches can use, so they’re not waiting for the new cohort cycle. We really hope to include people in the conversations as we go, because community is such a foundational aspect of this. So yes—whether you’re part of this first cohort or not, we want people to be in the conversation.
Who will be creating these resources?
We have a team of people: a child development expert and a program evaluator who will help us put together effective and meaningful resources that we can then share, largely on digital platforms, with the wider community. They will include images, videos, and text. We’re planning to have them translated into multiple languages so that they’re accessible culturally.
Wonderful. Thank you for your time!
Interview by Rev. Anna Piela, senior writer for ABHMS and associate editor of The Christian Citizen
