The Role of the Church in Enabling Parent Nurture Children’s Christian Faith: A Case of Selected Churches in Nairobi County

Abstract

The church needs to enable parents to nurture their children’s Christian faith at home. Little research has been done in Nairobi to analyse how churches use the home church platform to nurture children’s Christian faith through the parents. The objectives of the study were to find out whether churches in Nairobi had programmes to equip parents nurture their children’s Christian faith at home and the rationale used for these programmes. It also sought to find out how effective the programmes were. In the study, literature review with an exegesis of Deuteronomy 6:1-9 was done and a conceptual framework was drawn. The study employed an exploratory correlational design. The sampling was purposeful. Four churches from the four different major protestant denominations in Kenya were selected. A sample of one hundred and ten children worker and five pastors was targeted. For data analysis, Statistical Package of Social Sciences (SPSS version 20) was used. The results revealed that 65.2% of the respondents in the selected churches perceived that their respective churches did enable and train parents to nurture their children’s Christian faith at home. The converse was true specifically in their response to the questions employing Valarie Zeithaml, A. Parasuraman, and Leonard Berry’s five dimensions of assessing service quality. These results revealed the respondents misinterpreted service quality for there was a significant difference between what they perceive and what was actually supplied. The study concluded that parents received no significant enablement by the selected churches towards nurturing their children’s Christian faith at home. To reduce the gap between perceived and supplied service, the study recommends that the churches re-evaluate the strategies they employ for enabling parents to nurture their children’s faith at home