We’re excited to introduce The Nurturing Children Initiative!

We recognize an urgent need for a culture shift within congregations toward discipling children. Many of our American Baptist congregations are feeling pains of aging congregations, declining membership, and the absence of families with young children. We know that if families with young children do not feel welcomed and nurtured in and through our worship services and prayer practices, our beloved Christian faith traditions may be lost. Many of our elders were taught that “children should be seen and not heard,” so vocal outbursts and too much movement were seen as irreverent rather than developmentally appropriate.

Through our initiative, ABHMS hopes to fuel a culture shift that embraces children’s natural curiosity, creativity, and forms of physical expression in the corporate, intergenerational worship environment.

The Nurturing Children Initiative encourages participating churches to create opportunities within the context of corporate worship and prayer for the youngest among us to be affirmed and nurtured in who they are, encouraged in their faith, empowered in their gifts, and incorporated fully into the body of Christ.

This initiative will implement a cohort-based model that convenes thirty-six (36) congregations from 2025-2029 (12 congregations per cohort) and provides them with child-development experts, youth programmatic leadership, and resources to address the following Nurturing Children Initiative objectives:

When congregations commit to a cohort-based experience, they join a community of practice that emphasizes reciprocal peer learning. This cohort-based strategy facilitates an especially important element of collegiality and community building for our autonomous Baptist congregations for whom association must be created and chosen rather than mandated by a centralized authority. ABHMS believes that this model and its efficacy are rooted in our strengths-based strategy for congregational engagement. American Baptist congregations trust ABHMS because we do not examine congregational challenges from the outside and then dictate solutions, rather we believe all congregations have valuable kingdom-building gifts and wisdom to share. Our cohort-based programs acknowledge, affirm, and draw from congregations’ relational and contextual expertise while providing time, space, and thought partners to support the innovation process.