Our Vision

We see children, youth, and adults becoming people who practice biblically based spiritual disciplines and live out and reflect God’s character in ways that impact and transform broken societies worldwide.

Our History

The Character Choice ministry consists of facilitators who are actively engaged in guiding children in the formation of their character and spiritual life. The majority have been involved with children, youth, and adults in character education and spiritual formation in public and private schools and in churches for more than thirty years. Vernie Schorr Love, president of Character Choice, is an education consultant, curriculum writer, and lead facilitator for Character Choice. 

Initially, many of the Character Choice facilitators served together with Gospel Light Publications' International Center for Learning in the training of preschool and elementary volunteer teachers in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. That team of educators expanded in 1991 when we accepted the challenge from the Ministry of Education of the former Soviet Union to develop a character education teacher seminar and a character curriculum for elementary schools. The invitation came as a result of Inspirational Films' offer to provide a copy of the JESUS film for every school in Russia. The Russian Minister of Education said he would allow a copy of the film in every school if a new curriculum also could be provided for the schools' ethics and morality classes, which up to that point had been teaching only the communist worldview.

Our team created a Bible-based character curriculum and teacher seminars, and we used these resources to equip and train 73,000 public school teachers in Eastern Europe. We also conducted character education teacher seminars in Venezuela, Central America, the Philippines, and Malawi (Africa) throughout the 1990s.

During this time, team members also served together with Campus Crusade's Children of the World, North America School Project, to equip parents and teachers to guide children in the formation of their spiritual life and character in public, private, home, and church school settings. Our curriculum was expanded to include stories and activities based on classic children's literature so that it could be used in public schools.

Writers and instructors who work in public, private, home, and church schools as well as in inner-city and children-at-risk programs continue to be added to our team. To serve as a member, individuals are required to be active in integrating, growing, and developing our character formation strategy in the program or ministry in which they work, teach, or serve as a volunteer. Currently, we have team members living and working in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Texas.

Our Present Focus

I have been a part of Christian education of children for over thirty-five years. The emphasis during most of those years was on Bible stories and memorization. As educators, we knew the fact that children think concretely, and we were careful to create concrete language and experiences that were age-appropriate. We spoke of the importance of building relationships with the children we were teaching. We provided activities to involve them in learning about God and Jesus and keep them busy.

All of these elements of Christian education have value. But often, if I am honest, I have observed that children learn to be “good,” give the correct answers, and hear “how to succeed in the world” rather than become aware of the possibility of an ever-deepening relationship and life with the triune God—the Father, Jesus the Son and friend, and the Holy Spirit who is our teacher, helper, and guide.

In 2008, I became aware of Wynn Mc Gregor’s The Way of The Child Leader’s Guide. This resource is contemplative and experiential. Its focus is on the early development of habits that grow a personal relationship with the triune God through the practice of spiritual disciplines. My Character Choice ministry team decided to use this approach with children ages six to nine years old for a nine-month period. On one level, I believe we learned as much or perhaps more about practices and habits to grow our spiritual life with God than the children did.

That experience led me to the writing of a book titled Spiritual Disciplines for Children: A Guide to a Deeper Spiritual Life for You and Your Children. The goal and purpose of this book is to give parents, teachers, and other advocates of children concrete ways to guide children into experiencing twelve spiritual disciplines, or practices. The intentional use of these practices is to form children’s spiritual life and grow their personal, intimate relationship with God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. The book has been well received and widely used. Hope International University has even adopted it as a required textbook for their children’s ministry track of their undergraduate program.

In 2016, I was accepted into the Renovaré Institute For Christian Spiritual Formation’s two-year program. To graduate, participants were required to attend four 5 day residencies, complete a vast amount of reading assignments, write multiple papers, daily practice with disciplines and spiritual exercises and create and complete a final project. My project was to create four 90-minute “spiritual formation for children” training experiences for parents, grandparents, teachers, and other advocates of children and have them field-tested.

My Character Choice team led these training experiences in four consecutive sessions in 2019 to a gathering of parents, grandparents, teachers, and advocates of children. One significant piece of feedback that caught our attention was a request for the creation of an actual curriculum of spiritual formation for children.

My joy is equipping and training children’s significant adults, not creating curricula. That said, I have already created curricula in the past for Gospel Light Publications and the Jesus Film Project.

Following the training, the Character Choice board met to discern our next steps. With discussion and prayer, it was determined that we would launch more training experiences with the intent to revisit the request of creating curricula in the near future.

During a prayer time at a retreat in the fall of 2019, as I was face down on a floor, listening for direction for the Character Choice ministry, the message came: “write the curriculum.” I resisted and even declared to my cohorts at the retreat that I never wanted to write another curriculum. However, throughout the night, I could not escape the Holy Spirit’s message to do so.

I went on another retreat in March 2020 with the purpose of beginning the curriculum. Then Covid restriction and threats of flight cancelations brought an end to the retreat. After I returned home, it became obvious that in-person training would not be happening any time soon. The board met, this time on something very new, “Zoom.” My amazing board members proposed the idea to make the training available via video. What a learning curve this would be for me.

Now, the four sessions are available on video. After each session, there is a reflection and evaluation time. One of the surprises for me was the ability to build relationships even though the participants are not “in person.”

After the videos were completed, I found that I had the time and a sense of urgency to begin to write the spiritual formation for children curriculum to accompany the video training.

The curriculum, “A Child’s Journey of Spiritual Formation,” includes ways to guide children to form true views about God—his nature and character—and ways to experience our triune God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. It also addresses ways to guide children to a deep awareness of their identity as beloved children of God; ways to “wonder” with God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit; ways to experience our triune God’s daily presence; and ways to practice having an everyday, walk-around life with God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit at the earliest possible ages.

Character Choice as a ministry is looking to launch Character Choice 2.0. While we hold to our past, we are presently seeking to be with Jesus as our Guide to walk us into the future. Will you join us?

Our Pledge

We pledge to continue to strive to be people who live out and reflect God's ways and character, being and doing..

• the right thing,

• the right way,

• for the right reason

• expecting the right result,

• to benefit others and glorify God,

• according to God's book, the Bible.

  Adapted from Anal Consultants, Austin, TX

Board of directors

Bob Dunshee (Board Member)

Linda Dunshee (Board Member)

Sharon Floyd (Community Volunteer)

Dr. Thomas Forbes (Professor Emeritus, Education Consultant)

Dr. Sterling Lands II (SWLROP, Inc.)

Vernie Schorr Love (President, Character Choice)