TITLE:
Determining Parental Involvement in the Sunday School of Burundi Free Methodist Church in Buterere Parish
AUTHORS:
Gilbert Hafashimana
KEYWORDS:
Sunday School, Parental Involvement
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Social Sciences,
Vol.10 No.12,
November
18,
2022
ABSTRACT: To educate children, it is the task of both church and parents to raise
them in God’s way. As we know, formal education needs a school. The church has
a Sunday school program, so the children’s ministry must be a priority.
Parental involvement is the key element for children’s success in Sunday school
education in the church or at home. The focus of this study was to determine
parental involvement in the Sunday school, which refers to the many different
behaviors and practices at home or at school, including parental aspirations,
expectations, attitudes, and beliefs regarding their child’s education. This
investigation used questionnaires and face-to-face interviews. A descriptive
research design was conducted to identify the problems met by the parents in
getting involved in the Sunday school. A cross-sectional survey based on
parental involvement in Sunday school of the Buterere parish was done in
October 2020 of research based on Deuteronomy 11: 18-19,
the passage that reveals that parents were responsible for the education of
their children. Thirty Parents were selected according to their availability
and required to have children in Sunday school. They were chosen randomly from
the Buterere Parish, which is made up of two local churches with 100 Christian
parents. Some are widowed, married, and divorced. There are illiterate parents,
and those with literacy levels from primary and secondary schools, to
university level literacy. The analysis and interpretations of the data were
processed by using Word and Excel. The findings confirmed that the parents were
not significantly involved in the forms of Sunday school education, there are
barriers to involvement for parents, and the respondents were not involved in
forming strategies for overcoming these barriers. Due to the findings, the
researcher formed recommendations to the stakeholders.