If you’re a Sunday School teacher, mentor, parent, or other adult who’s looking to support kids and teens in sharing their healings with the Christian Science magazines—thank you. You’ve come to the right place.
Explore the page or jump to a section
Making introductions
It can be very helpful to introduce the Christian Science magazines to the kids or teens in your life. Here are some activities you might do together to learn about the periodicals:
- Read kids’ or teen content at home or in Sunday School.
- Listen to other kids or teens read their own testimonies.
- Discuss why someone might decide to submit their healing.
- Show them print copies of The Christian Science Journal, the Christian Science Sentinel, and The Herald of Christian Science.
Supporting the writing process
Our team accepts youth articles that share healing experiences. We currently don’t accept poems or songs from kids or teens.
As a parent, Sunday School teacher, or other adult working with youth, you are perfectly positioned to help a child or teen with authentic sharing, independent thinking, and the submission process.
- Focus on the healing ideas. Our editors can help with small writing details, like word choice, grammar, and sentence structure.
- Ask questions that allow your young person to think through how to share their experience (please see the kids’ and teens’ pages for example questions).
- Visit the kids’ and teens’ pages.
- Suggest that your young person read their healing aloud to catch mistakes.
- Celebrate how thoughtful it is to share healing ideas with others.
Download kids’ map Teens’ map coming soon
Logistics
Anyone under the age of 18 needs their parent or legal guardian to agree to the Copyright Agreement on the submission form.
- In the submission form, feel free to share your relationship to the young person in the section called “Author comments.”
- Verifiers are required for kids’ and teens’ submissions. Verifiers should be over the age of 18 and only one person can be a family member. To learn more about verifiers, check out the “Submitting” page on Writer’s Corner. (You might make a great verifier.)
After submitting
After your child or teen submits their piece, there are several ways you can help support the process. You (or your young person) will receive an email letting you know if their piece was accepted for editing:
- If a kid’s piece is accepted for editing, we would love your support working with our Youth Editors and the child to edit their piece, including filling in any missing details, etc.
- If a teen’s piece is accepted for editing, encourage them to check their email and bring their ideas to the editing process.
- If the piece is not accepted for editing, please encourage your young person to keep sharing their healings. We always love hearing from youth.
Once a piece is published, help your kid or teen find their published submission in print and/or online—and you might encourage them to share it with others, including their church family or Sunday School.
FAQs
Healings that sound like the author are always the most effective. Guiding your kid or teen to think about the beginning, middle, and end of their healing experience can help them share their ideas clearly. Asking them questions that enable them to reflect and self-edit their piece can ensure that the young person’s voice comes through. Our editors will check grammar, spelling, and word choice.
Sharing your love for the periodicals can make a big difference to students. You might bring in print copies of the periodicals, show JSH-Online to students, or explore some of the resources below:
- Kids’ content
- TeenConnect
- “God is all around me” kids’ collection
- Missions of the periodicals, established by Mary Baker Eddy
- More information about the periodicals
Once the editing process begins, it is usually fairly quick—a matter of weeks to a month at most—and very little of that time will actually involve the contributor. However, healings that are season-specific, such as camp healings or school-related healings, may be held until the appropriate season so as to best meet readers’ needs. Sometimes we also have a lot of the same type of healing (soccer healings, for example) and so we have to space those out over a period of time. If you’re ever wondering about the status of a submission, you are always welcome to check in with us!
It can be helpful before submitting a piece to let your kid or teen know that it may or may not be accepted for editing and that this is a normal part of the writing process when working with any publisher. Even as editors of these magazines, we have our pieces returned and edited. Encourage your young person to keep sharing their healing experiences with us. They are also always welcome to ask for feedback about why their particular piece wasn’t a fit.
We value every submission as a gift inspired by divine Love. Whether or not your young person’s piece is ultimately published, writing and articulating gratitude for God and Christian Science always brings the blessings of spiritual growth. The thought and effort are a living prayer that blesses the global readership of these publications—and will continue to bless your young person’s spiritual growth, too.