Sara Pantazes joins the Rev. Sara Hayden for a two-part talk on cultivating justice in young people
by Mike Ferguson | Presbyterian News Service
LOUISVILLE — Just two weeks ahead of the Covid pandemic began in March 2020, Sara Pantazes started the Young Justice Builders Club at First Presbyterian Church of West Chester, Pennsylvania, which she serves as Director of Faith Formation.
“We never fully finished the original, how it was originally envisioned,” Pantazes told the Rev. Sara Hayden, host of the “New Way” podcast that can be heard in two parts here. “But in those first two sessions that we were able to do in person, I got positive feedback from the families that participated.”
The series has grown each year, with more recent units on poverty and Creation care, as well as a unit based on the children’s book “Cory and the Seventh Story.”
“Kids already know that things are hard in the world and that bad things happen,” Pantazes told Hayden. “The goal is to intentionally talk about those things so that as they grow in their understanding, part of their understanding of those things is … how God as at work in the world.”
“You’ve been so generous of the ways in which you’ve both invited people to access this material to form their own clubs … and uncovering and recovering the roots of our faith,” Hayden said. The host then asked Pantazes what role she hoped children of faith might play in standing up for justice.
Pantazes recalled an early lesson where the point was “to explore the difference between what we call charity and justice, which are imperfect terms, both of them. But the point was that acts of charity … meet immediate needs. So, the back-to-school school supply drives and the food cupboards and the clothing closets — those are meeting immediate needs, and churches do that all the time. That’s good work and that’s important work, but if that’s all we’re doing, we’re never going to stop needing to do that for people.”
Justice, Pantazes pointed out, “is the other side of that, where you look at the big picture of why are people in need of these things and what can we do to change that situation so that we get to a place of more economic parity with people, which is a big dream to say to a person of any age.”
“But that’s where our faith comes in,” she said. “The point is that God can get us there.”
Pantazes said she has no “concrete expectations of any kid who might do these lessons that they will grow up and make that come to reality in the world. However, I choose to believe — I really hope — that if we raise children with that sense of God’s empowerment and vision as part of who they are, then maybe they will grow up to be adults who make different choices in the world and work together in different ways than the current adults in the world seem to be able to.”
During the second episode, Hayden and Pantazes continue their conversation on the Young Justice Builders curriculum. “I’m just hoping it is planting some seeds of ideas. I’m hoping that the parents listen to what we’re talking about so they can bring it up at home,” Pantazes said. “You know, when there’s connections in the home life, [children] don’t have a hard time with it. I think they just take it in. And my hope is that it’s just percolating.”
Some of the lessons written for children might also be helpful for more seasoned church members, Pantazes said.
“In some ways, I think it could be therapeutic for adults to look at something on a not overly complicated level and just be able to rest in that question” about “how we think God would respond,” she said, “and just rest that God has got this.”
The Rev. Sara Hayden
“You’re providing such an accessible path to see those issues as part of the work of faith and the praxis of faith and not political issues or economic issues or issues in the news, but not in the Bible,” Hayden said.
“You know, they’re talking about a specific Bible story and then, oh, here’s this thing that’s happening in the world that connects to that,” including one country invading another and then going to war, Pantazes said. “I would love to see more and more churches adding justice to the list of things that they want to make sure their children are learning about and engaging in.”
“It’s a beautiful gift that you have given the larger church,” Hayden told Pantazes. “The lessons are so compelling and thoughtful and excellent.”
The New Way podcast is a ministry of 1001 New Worshiping Communities.
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