CGMC Day Conference

UK Population 63 million 18% m boys 5.3m girls 15.7% m men 5.5m women 26.4 million Households 29% single person 18.2 million families

UK Families 26.4million Households 29% single person 20% million families – 38% with dependent children 12.2 million married couples 2.9 million cohabiting (1.5m 1996) 1.8m children (0.9m 1996) 2.0 million lone parents (1.6m 1996) 89,000 looked after children Fertility rate (Replacement rate 2.075)

Childhood in Britain Commercialisation Sexualisation Media-fication Family Breakdown Poverty Education

Reports Compass –Commercialisation of C 2008; UNICEF Report Card 2007 & 2012 Children’s Society – Good Childhood Mothers’ Union – Bye Buy Childhood 2010 Bailey – Letting Children be Children 2011 Action for Children – Child Neglect Review 2011 Loughborough University Sue Palmer – Toxic Childhood

Children & Church ,800 under 15s ,700?? ,000 left (256,000 predicted) Baptist Union Children +2.5% 78,648 Young people +3.5% 39,602 Most people come to faith before they are 13 25% Primary Schools in England C of E 8% Secondary Schools 1,000,000 children in church schools

Children & Christian Story 38% 5-7 year olds didn’t know Christmas Day celebrates birth of Jesus (DJ Research 2012) 20% Thought - Simon Cowell’s b’day Basic details about the Easter story are known by as few as half of the people polled in a survey.

Theology Human Development – Attachment, Brain, Morality, Cognition 0-7, Play Faith Development Theories – Fowler & Westerhoff Children’s Spirituality – Rebecca Nye, Jerome Berryman Child Theology Movement – Keith White Brueggemann – ‘Missed the child in the Scriptures’

Study & Training Yet how much of this context do we allow to shape our study and training? How seriously do we ‘place the child in the midst’ and see what happens? How are we helping future leaders to ‘become like a child?’