Children growing up in contexts of toxic stress face a cascade of deleterious realities that impact them at every level of their being. However, when children are securely attached to healthy adults in their lives, those supportive relationships can be both protective and transformative for those young people. Given the power of secure attachment and the New Testament’s frequent use of the metaphor of family to describe the church, this paper proposes that when ecclesial communities operate as real and healthy families in their contexts, those communities can thereby create missiologically significant spaces of healing and transformation for the children in their midst. In an effort to reimagine and reshape our ecclesial communities to function as such reciprocal and mutually supportive families, Child Theology and studies of early Christian community, catechesis, and worship are put into conversation with one another.

中文翻译：

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教会作为家庭：通过对教会学的重新构想，为处于危险中的儿童创造治愈和变革的空间

在有毒压力环境中长大的儿童面临着一连串有害的现实，这些现实影响着他们存在的各个层面。然而，当孩子们在生活中与健康的成年人建立牢固的依恋关系时，这些支持性关系对这些年轻人既可以起到保护作用，也可以起到变革作用。鉴于安全依恋的力量和新约圣经经常使用家庭比喻来描述教会，本文提出，当教会社区在其环境中作为真实健康的家庭运作时，这些社区可以因此创造具有宣教意义的治愈空间和他们中间的孩子们的转变。为了重新构想和重塑我们的教会团体，使其成为互惠互助的家庭，