Thechild evangelism movement is an AmericanChristianevangelism movement founded in 1937 by Jesse Irvin Overholtzer, who founded the Christian organizationChild Evangelism Fellowship (CEF). It focuses on the4/14 window, which centers on evangelizing children between the ages of 4 and 14 years.[1] The movement focuses on targeting children, as they are considered both the most receptive to evangelization and the most effective at evangelizing their peer group, with groups supportive of the initiative arguing for the need to refocus evangelization efforts on the 4-14 age group worldwide.[2]
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| Age at conversion (1996)[3] | ||
|---|---|---|
| Before age 6 | 6% | |
| Ages 6–9 | 24% | |
| Ages 10–12 | 26% | |
| Ages 13–14 | 15% | |
| Ages 15–19 | 10% | |
| Ages 20 and over | 19% | |
In April 1994, a two-day conference held byAwana Clubs International inStreamwood,Illinois hosted children's ministry leaders from 54 organizations, focusing on ways to evangelize children between the ages of 4 and 14. The conference was sponsored by Christianity Today International, along with six other groups co-sponsoring the event.[4]
A survey conducted in 1995–1996 by theSouthern Baptist Theological Seminary found that 71% of Christians in the US converted before the age of 14.[3]
In 2003,George Barna published the results of his research, showing that children were the most important population segment to minister to, as they were considered the most likely to absorb spiritual teaching due to developmental vulnerability. Barna argued that a child's moral development was "set" by the age of nine, in contrast to the tactics of many churches focusing on teaching older children.[5] Barna wrote that "habits related to the practice of one's faith develop when one is young and change surprisingly little over time", and that "the older a child gets, the more distracted and vulnerable he or she becomes" to what he described as "nonfamily influences".[6] Barna also found that children who converted to Christianity before their teenage years were more likely to remain "absolutely committed" to Christianity.[7]
In 2004, at theLausanne Committee for World Evangelization in Thailand, a group of Christian evangelists examined the state of evangelism among children. The Lausanne committee published a paper[8] arguing that evangelists should target children under 14 in theglobal South for conversion, and created theAim Lower[9] initiative.[10][11][12]
In 2005, Christian relief organizationWorld Vision declared the child evangelism movement "very important" in the 21st century.[13] Dan Brewster, a director of World Vision, argued in a paper in 2005 that "The poor and exploited tend to be much more receptive to the Gospel", and that children and young people should be targeted in areas where disease, poverty and conflict have disrupted their lives. The paper included basic ethical considerations, such as not evangelising children without parental consent, or where their families are entirely dependent on Christian charities for financial or material support, or in a way that disparages their local culture.[13]
The 4/14 window was originally conceived by Bryant Myers ofWorld Vision and later popularized byChristian missionary strategistLuis Bush, who also coined the term10/40 window. The 4/14 window is a subset of the child evangelism movement, focused on evangelizing children between the ages of 4 and 14 years old.[2] Bush commented in theChristian Post in 2009 that "Mission strategies developed for the 4/14 Window would be implemented by parents, pastors and other role model figures who play key roles in shaping a child's worldview."[14]
Proponents of the 4/14 window encourage children from the age of four to be converted to Christianity. Evangelists often use techniques such as aWordless Book to communicate religious concepts to children too young to read. Critics of this practice argue that children too young to read for themselves are too young to be able to make informed, independent decisions about religion; in the same vein, some Christian authors are critical of the use ofaltar calls,[15] wherein those who wish to make a new spiritual commitment toJesus and the Christian faith are invited to come forward publicly. Some theologians argue that altar calls may give converts a false understanding of religious salvation.[16]
Protestant criticism has expressed concern that young converts grow up to have a false understanding of the religion, and that widespread secularisation of Europe and North America is the product of false conversions in childhood.[17][18]John F. MacArthur has been critical of evangelists coercing a profession of faith from children, especially when the evangelist oversimplifies parts of the religion in order to get a large number of children to "convert", in response to a formulaic presentation light on details of the faith.[19] TheologianRandal Rauser has criticized the practice of "conversionism," which emphasizes immediate change in religion, rather than a gradual transformation of life and belief. He has also criticized the targeting of young children, who can be "easily manipulated" into confessing belief in things they do not understand to please adults.[20]
In the 19th century, the philosopherArthur Schopenhauer argued that teaching some ideas to children at a young age could foster resistance to doubting those ideas later on.[21]
In her 2012 bookThe Good News Club: The Christian Right's Stealth Assault on America's Children, journalistKatherine Stewart criticized various practices of the 'Good News Club' after-school Bible study program, including young participants being rewarded for recruiting friends of other faiths and denominations whose parents have not enrolled them in the program. She argued that children in schools were encouraged to bully children who did not share their faith.[22] Stewart has also criticised the efforts of politically conservative biblical literalists to convert young children to forms of Christian belief that advocate a literal reading ofOld Testament narratives; in 2013, Stewart argued that biblical literalists teach children to read from the Old Testament in order to understand the divinely-orderedextermination of the Amalekites as used to justify genocide.[23][24][25] In response, the Childhood Evangelism Foundation stated that they encouraged a literal reading of the extermination of the Amalekites, but did not encourage children to view it as an endorsement of historical or current genocides.[26]
As a child, I "accepted" Jesus many times. I remember Mrs. B, who conducted vacation Bible schools every summer in the Portland, Oregon, neighborhood where I grew up. She was a large person with a big voice and aggressive ways. She would gather up the children and take us to her house for Bible stories, songs, biscuits, and a fizzy drink. I recall the black, red, and white felt hearts displayed on the flannel boards she had set up in her living room—one felt heart laid on top of the next. First, there was the black heart, the sinful heart which we did not want, since we could not go to heaven with a black heart. Next, there was the red heart, which was formerly the black heart, but now it was coated with the blood of Jesus. Then there was the white heart, the one we wanted, since we could not go to heaven and be with Jesus unless we had a white heart. There was not one child who did not want a white heart, so we prayed to be washed in the blood of Jesus. Mrs. B made sure every one of us prayed; every summer my brothers and I would pray for a white heart so we could go to heaven. I believe what my brothers and I experienced were introjections rather than conversions. Introjections occur when someone, in the presence of a powerful person or group, feels very anxious and reduces his anxiety by conforming to the expectations of that person or group. He does not realize that his new beliefs are motivated by an unconscious desire to relieve the tension produced by anxiety. Mrs. B wanted to make sure we would go to heaven—so she scared the wits out of us! If we did not have a white heart we would go to hell. As children, we were scared not only that we would disappoint Mrs. B but that we would also burn in the devil's hell. As a result, she racked up a good number of "conversions."
As a pastor, I was very good at getting confessions of faith out of kids. At Bible camps, I could get every boy and girl up front praying the sinner's prayer. What about those kids later on, when they got to be 20- and 30-somethings? Might some of them have walked away from Christianity, to be counted among the de-converted? They had been told as children that they were now Christians and needed only to be baptised and join the church. Many did, and some may have been genuinely converted, but I suspect many were not. They must walk away at some point, for to be in a church in their state would be uncomfortable at best.
History of the 4/14 movement