Rewarding Participation

All of my children just completed swimming lessons this past month. All of them received their participation certificates and were passed onto their next level of swim lessons. One of my children, though, spent more time out of the pool during swim lessons not wanting to do swim lessons than in the pool actually learning some basics about swimming. At the end of the week, this child too received a certificate. Upon receiving the certificate, I kind of scoffed to Tarina that this child didn't swim enough to merit a certificate. She gave me the 'are you serious' look that I am accustomed to getting after sharing my wisdom, muttered something about the scrapbook, and left it at that. For Sioux Falls parks and rec, participating is what mattered and what they rewarded (full disclaimer: as the kids get older, they have to master certain skills, like not drowning, in order to pass to the next level).

Contrast this rewarding participation approach with some of the children's discipleship programs you see in some churches. Whether it's AWANA, Pioneer Clubs, etc, the goal seems to be the same: for children to grow in their relationship with Jesus through memorizing scripture. The leaders of these various programs figured out too that kids will do what you reward, so the more you memorized, the more you were rewarded (trophies, patches, dollars to spend at the store, etc). This had a great effect for those who could learn verses well. But for the child who had difficulty learning verses, the results were often disastrous, especially store night, where Bibleman had 200 dollars to spend while the child who didn't memorize as much had only a few bucks to spend.

I grew up in an AWANA program and learned so much from it; it also fit my personality and learning style well. I also led AWANA programs and begin to see some of the unitentional damage being done by such a heavy focus on rewarding those who memorized the most. The prgoram in and of itself isn't bad, but sometimes how we work it out can be.

I find it interesting how one youth program, swim lessons, rewards participation (again, at the younger levels) while another youth program (children's discipleship) rewards achievement. You might think that it be the other way around, that the 'secular' program would reward achievement and the 'church' program would reward participation.