Church Parenting Support Systems for Character Formation of Young Children in Kenyenya District, South East Kenya Field, Kenya

Christian children’s moral development in today’s technological society is a complex issue. Many Adventist Christian parents and Christian communities in Kenyenya District, South East Kenya Field (SEKF) sometimes do not know how to parent in such technologically determined environment. There are acute parenting dilemmas with parents and their children resulting into long-term Christian character failures and frustrations among children in their early age of life, which deeply jeopardizes their entire moral life in the future. This calls for the need for church-based parenting support systems to enable parenting to realize its goal of developing the worrying situation of Christian moral character of young children, especially in imparting moral values consonant to Christian teachings. The study was informed by the perspective of three theories. Faith Development Theory (FDT) by John Westerhoff and the Attachment Theory by John Bowlby explained the independent variable, which is the Christian parents’ involvement, while the Social Learning Theory by Albert Bandura explains the dependent variable, which is character formation in children. However, the theories supplement each other as the gaps of one are covered by the other/s. The target population was 685 respondents with a sample size of 206 informants. The study found that the Adventist church in Kenyenya District, SEKF, has church parenting support tools/systems for the character formation of young children with 156 (77.1%) respondents expressing their agreement, but they are not fully active and therefore not effective in supporting parents to realize their parenting role for the character formation of young children. The study recommended the Adventist church to seriously train family life ministers and parenting groups to equip them with necessary skills as they accompany families experiencing moral challenges. To help family ministers, leaders, and groups to program their pastoral activities together with families for effective ministry that will impact the modelling of parents for children’s moral character development.