1 of 3
Yes, Jesus Loves Me!
What are we doing? That's the question we challenged ourselves to answer.
1 of 3
What are we doing? That's the question we challenged ourselves to answer. Seems like a simple question. After all, this is church. Okay, not so simple. We all know that the possibility exists to become so caught up in church work—in new programs, creative techniques, recruiting volunteers, the list seems endless—that we can lose focus on what matters most. And whatever matters most should provide the primary drive for what we do. Key word: should. So that's where our search began. The Bible shows the desire of Jesus' heart centers on people, definitely including children, placing their trust in Him for life on earth and life eternal. To that end, our ministry believes that we exist to help kids become Christ followers and then help them learn how to follow Christ for the rest of their lives—right up into heaven. Sure, there are a variety of approaches to get this done. But let's forget about mission, vision, and values stuff for a moment. The question remains: What are we doing? Kids becoming Christ followers, and then following Christ. Determining the manner(s) in which this actually happens in our ministry stands as possibly our greatest challenge. And it should emerge from what we seek to accomplish age-by-age, room-by-room, in pursuit of what matters most. The journey to become a Christ follower and then follow Christ becomes complicated when you consider we're talking about kids of different ages (one variable among many). That said; the steps of the journey will look different when you're three as opposed to when you're in third grade. Sure, curriculum products will show you the lessons to teach at every age. Yes, I know that plenty of academic materials exist to explain kids' educational developmental levels. But I also know that someone can read all that stuff and still not clearly know what to do—at least I can. In a real pragmatic way, we want the ability to clearly describe what we hope to accomplish with children in every ministry room, and to simply state how all those rooms work together to help kids on their journeys. We need the ability to articulate this in such a way that any volunteer who hears about it will understand the journey, and how their unique contribution in our children's ministry plays an important role. To do all this requires logic profound as a proverb, yet simple as a song. When that happens, the answer to what we're doing with children will be so obvious that even people outside the ministry can understand, especially parents. And, of course, for many months we did all we could to overcomplicate everything. Here's why we spent so much time off course: We tried to define a program to push kids along on, instead of a developmental path that focuses on a child's personal journey. Focus on the kids—what a great idea! |
share this page
Average User Rating: Not rated
Submit Your Rating and Review *