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What Every Church Leader Needs to Know About Children's Ministry
An interview with and comments made by Bill Hybels, Senior Pastor of Willow Creek Community Church.
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Nearly every local church offers a children's ministry program. Recent survey data from the Barna Group (2/14/05) shows, though, that only 13% of senior pastors list "ministry to children" among their church's top three priorities. Is the importance of children's ministry on the rise, or in a state of decline? Bill Hybels shares a very clear perspective on what should be the answer to that question. On a number of occasions you've said, "Senior pastors, if you have one ministry card to play, invest in your children's ministry." What do you mean? Throughout the years, society offers the church just a certain number of entrance ramps into the "non-church" world. At times it's been sports. Then came marriage enrichment. Today I believe the single remaining common interest or entrance point for non-churched people into the life of the church is children. No matter how lost a guy is, he still usually loves his son. And no matter how off track a woman is, she still has a soft place in her heart for her kids. This means we have a wide open door to almost every family in every community worldwide when we love and serve their kids. If a kid comes home from a children's ministry and says, "I met some kids, I had fun and loved it, and I want to go back," most of the time a parent will say "Okay" and then return to that church. From a strategic standpoint to reach families, it's a wise investment. From the perspective that a lot of volunteers are raised up, it's also a win. There are church-wide benefits on all sides of a thriving children's ministry. What's your outlook for children's ministry throughout the Kingdom? Seven or eight years ago during my travels, I really thought children's ministry as a part of the church was going to die. For years I never heard of a single positive children's ministry breakthrough in any of the countries that I visited. But that's changing. For example, at the first Promiseland (Willow Creek's children's ministry) conference, just a few hundred leaders from across the country gathered to get real serious about the future of children's ministry. Then the next year several more came, and even more the year after that. Now more than 4,000 attend. It's clear that an increasing number of leaders are devoting themselves to changing the belief system for the future of children's ministry; they are not going to let children's ministry fade away and die. You give a fully yielded life to God and let your passion for children get stoked on a regular basis, find your spiritual gifts, honor volunteers and put your work gloves on every day—then God will build a great ministry through you because he will notice. Second Chronicles 16:9 says, "For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show Himself strong on behalf of those whose heart is loyal to Him." These are the people helping all of us believe there's going to be a whole new run, a whole new day, a whole new revolution in children's ministry. |        
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