Why I hate info-tainment

Info-tainment isn't a real word. It was made up some years ago to describe an all too common methodology. We've been led to believe that people today simply cannot learn things unless the learning process itself is entertaining. So every lesson is wrapped in a game, a video, a song, or something...

Nowhere is the methodology more damaging than in the children's ministry of a local church ...

Talk to a dozen school teachers who are followers of Christ and the odds are excellent that they'll complain about the short attention spans of children these days. They'll talk about the difficulties associated with teaching them anything that takes more than 4 minutes to explain.

Why is this? As usual, I won't pretend to know all the answers, nor to be definitive about this subject. But I believe part of the problem to be the whole notion of info-tainment.

Once upon a time, we had some young school-age children who had a hard time focusing in class. Somewhere along the line, some creative teachers discovered that by "fooling" these children into thinking they were at play they could actually teach them things. But instead of using this methodology sparingly and with careful wisdom, somehow (does anyone know how?) it became increasingly the norm.

Today, it is basically assumed that all children have an attention span the length of an ant and that you simply must entertain them while you educate them if you hope to have any chance of success. To the witness stand I call all of the "educational" video games and cartoons that have flooded the market in the last number of years.

But set aside the image of the public school for a moment and envision instead your local church's Sunday morning children's ministry (CM). If your assembly is like most, regardless of what specific program they use, the fundamental methodology is likely built around info-tainment.

"Kid's church" (or whatever you call it) often becomes nothing more than slightly-controlled chaos filled with loud music, bold videos and plenty of play time.

So what's the problem?, you might ask. Here's why (in a nutshell) I hate info-tainment in CM:

1. Rather than mediate them, it actually encourages short attention spans.
2. It demeans the fundamental ability God gave children to learn.
3. It's lazy and easy.
4. It promotes a consumerist mentality - we're implicitly teaching our children that the life of the local church exists to entertain them.
5. It sets the bar so low that many children (most children, I would argue) are short-changed.
6. It over-simplifies theology and the Christian life, leaving children with one of two logical conclusions: a) God and the Bible are more like fairy tales than reality, or b) the Bible is so simple that in-depth study is not necessary and sound sermons are frivolous.

We - as the local church - are to be about the business of discipling young children, giving them tools necessary to develop into faithful followers of Christ as teens and adults. But far too often we short-circuit this responsibility and do worse than nothing - we actually teach (implicitly and explicitly) what will later need to be un-taught.

Things must change, folks.

Hatushili