This comes from Fowler’s Faith levels adjusted for the purposes of discipleship.
Very Young Children: Undifferentiated Faith.
Pre-images of God, Care, Safety, and Trust are essential to learning
Pre-school Children: Intuitive-Projective Faith
It is primarily a reflective of parental faith. Children at this age are not able to think abstractly, to take someone else’s perspective on things or think through complexity. It is a faith based on impressions, mostly from their guardians.
This is a informing stage. Their faith talk with reflect the faith in their home and church. Children at this age like repetition.
Middle School and much of HS: Synthetic-Conventional Faith:
Identity Formation, Psycho-Social Development. See Piaget’s theory of cognitive development suggests the ability to handle abstraction. They realize a more personal past and personal future. They also are able to see things from the perspective of other people – a skill they often use to look at themselves. This also can fuel self-absorption – adolescent egocentrism. They are now about to put the Bible stories into the larger picture of faith.
Fourth Stage is the Individuate-Reflective Faith:
Religious language is like any other language: to learn to speak it, one needs first to listen to native speakers using it a lot, and then one needs plenty of practice speaking it oneself.
Commentaires