I have given myself a challenge for the next 26 days – post the complete A-Z of Ministry to Children.
Y… young, yearn, yesterday…
Y is for Yahweh - So there it is. I didn’t choose J for Jesus, but put Y for Yahweh. The bottom line is that God came into His creation to reveal His plan to humanity and you and I and the children we lead all have a place in the grand story.
Jesus told His disciples “Let the little children come to me”. You and I are called to do just that.
Amen.
*Hey, I am at Kidshaper conference this week. Welcome any new readers, make sure you suscribe in the top right.
I have given myself a challenge for the next 26 days – post the complete A-Z of Ministry to Children.
X… xylophone, xenophobia, xerography…
X is for Xenagogue – From Greek, to lead, leading; bring, take; plus a “guest” or stranger. A reference to someone who conducts strangers or foreigners; a tour guide.
The tour guide is a brilliant description of your mission as a minister to children. Your job is to give them a tour of the Kingdom of God, show them the sights, the sounds and the places that make up this diverse and mysterious universe. A world that is often opposite to what we know. Where up is down, the first are last, and when you give you receive.
But unlike the all knowing New York local on the top of a red double decker bus, you are here to learn as well. In fact, sometimes will be operating as a reverse tour guide, learning more than teaching and experiencing more than describing, because if we are not like little children we cannot inherit the very thing we are showing.
So go forth you Xenagogue and I will see you later, the tour will stop for a manna lunch in the wilderness.
I have given myself a challenge for the next 26 days – post the complete A-Z of Ministry to Children.
W… water, witness, woah, wapenshaw…
W is for Welcome – One of the most important moments in your ministry to kids on a weekend is as they arrive. Not only kids but parents. How good is it for them to see their child welcomed like a champion, like one of the family. High fives all round, names remembered, discussions about what happened that week and also sometimes the injury of the week (for the boys usually).
It will probably be one of the only two moments during your program the parents get to see, the other being pickup.
When I see as a parent, my boy running into a room and welcomed well, it gives me a confidence and sets my mind at ease. It is no different for the parents we serve.
Your team can out do Disney and the biggest budgets in the world if their welcome is personal and fun!
I have given myself a challenge for the next 26 days – post the complete A-Z of Ministry to Children.
U… undies, uniform, uncle, Umbratious…
U is for Unexpected – Give them half a chance and I bet the kids in your ministry would surprise you. I have lost count of the times that I have heard something about a child, or see them do something that is surprising… unexpected.
Sometimes negative like one of our regular boys who returned to me (Mum right behind him) a number of air hockey pucks he had stolen over a number of weeks.
But usually positive.
The 6 year old girl who exhibits her art
The 9 year old violinist getting a major scholarship
A 7 year old in the lead role in a major touring show
All surprising.
Some of the biggest surprises are when I see the resilience of children going through major life situations.
So don’t be surprised when you get surprised by a child. In fact, the more surprises you get, I believe the better you are in connecting with kids and families.
I have given myself a challenge for the next 26 days – post the complete A-Z of Ministry to Children.
R… radical, repossession, remoulade, road…
R is for Respect – Now I don’t want to go on a rant here about how the ‘young’ people of today have no respect for their elders. I’m sure your great great Grandfather faced the same problem.
I want to talk about the respect you should have for your kids.
Paul said it straight to Timothy… let no man despise your youth (I Timothy 4:12). Children are capable of a lot more than we expect, I am reminded about this when watching videos on YouTube like the one below.
Expectation is a huge spiritual principle… Jesus when healing a lame man asked if he wanted to be healed… what a question! But He knew that not every person in pain wants it to go away, because then they also lose the attention it brings.
So expect much of your kids.
Expect them to enter into praise and worship
Expect them to serve
Expect them to show compassion, to care about the world
Expect them to give generously
Expect them to listen and learn
Expect them to surprise you with their gifts and talents.
Enough of them not showing enough respect, grant every child in your ministry YOUR respect!
[NOTE: push play on the video on the bottom WHILE you read this. It's a musical score and will make this post even more epic that it already is - trust me give it a go]
O is for Obedience – Okay. When you hear that word, don’t think straight away about little Johnny on Sunday morning squirming around distracting others. Rather think about the life of a legend of faith reaching the end of his or her life on earth having run the race and finished strongly!
That is the motivation for obedience.
The older I get, the more I wish I was obedient to what I believed God was saying to me. I am glad for the big decisions of obedience like moving to Australia to go to bible college and giving that offering with my wife in 2003 that led to incredible miracles back then and today. But I wonder what I missed, IF I missed anything?
Obviously because of God’s grace there is no point dwelling on what might have been except for the reminder that I don’t want to miss out in the future.
SPOILER ALERT (kind of)
In the recent remake of The Karate Kid, there is a large portion of the training that involves the student trusting the master and performing the basic task of taking off and putting on a jacket. Our Kung Fu master is trying to teach many lessons here but the one that stuck out for me is one of obedience.
In order for our hero to reach his goal he needed to simply obey and trust that it would bring him closer to the desire of his heart.
Help your kids see that obedience is important by imparting: 1.Faith – trusting in God no matter what, and 2. Gratitude – a heart that is thankful to God for everything in their lives. Help them see the reason ‘WHY’ to obey… then we will see a generation who live radical risk-taking, kindgom-seeking, epic, significant… in short… obedient lives.
After all, that’s what you want in your own life right?
I have given myself a challenge for the next 26 days – post the complete A-Z of Ministry to Children.
L… love, Lionel Richie, laughter, lost, lozenge…
L is for Longevity – After five years as a Children’s Pastor (in one Church), I started to feel like I was beginning to see some momentum building in the team. It wasn’t that amazing things weren’t happening and growth wasn’t going on, but I just hit that milestone and reflected on the things we were able to do that would have taken SO much longer in the past. I reflected on the fact that within the staff I had proven myself faithful and worked hard to build a trust. And the biggest secret to that? Just keep turning up.
My calling is NOT a career.
A common theme that appears throughout the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell is the “10,000-Hour Rule” (basically to be good at something you have to do it a lot). Gladwell claims that greatness requires enormous time, using the source of The Beatles’ musical talents and Gates’ computer savvy as examples.
Your Dad would have called it good old-fashioned hard work.
For a moment, think about the leaders and pastors you admire, you aspire to be like. There is a very good chance that like me, they have served in one place for a long time.
J is for Journey - (Yes I know Jesus starts with J) Our kids have a lifetime of faith to discover. Salvation is not a one-time event but rather a lifetime journey. Sure we make a big deal about the ‘event’ of making a choice to receive salvation and redemption, but there is so much more to it than that.
For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God (1 Cor 1:18)
I think with children, one of the the important things to remember it that phrase ‘being saved‘, we have been saved, are being saved and will be saved.
Jesus has of course accomplished salvation on the cross (2 Timothy 1:9), and we will eventually be saved from the presence of sin (1 Peter 1:5), but there is a long time in between that we should work out our salvation with fear and trembling (Philippians 2:12).
I used to get pretty frustrated with kids who just didn’t cope well in our programs, you know the ones who perhaps should be on a slightly higher dosage of medication. But as I have aged and mellowed out , I have realised that we need to take a long view of a child’s life.
I met last weekend a 14 year old I hadn’t seen for about 2-3 years when he was in our programs. He admitted to me that he was a ‘bit of a punk‘ when he was in Hillsong Kids, which I did seem to recall. But this is a young man who is still ‘being saved’, and I am looking forward to see him start serving and helping in our pre-teen ministry.
I am taking a long term view of his life for sure.
I have given myself a challenge for the next 26 days – post the complete A-Z of Ministry to Children.
I… Igloo, ignoramus, ice age, itinerant…
I is for Inclusive - This year at our annual Hillsong Conference, we made our most concerted effort to include children with special needs. It held, and still holds many challenges but I believe that God has called the Church to lead the way in making sure the most vulnerable people in our communities have a place, and in many cases that is children with neurological and physical disabilities.
Don’t put it in the too hard basket, don’t relegate it as someone else’s job. Prayerfully consider just what you need to be doing in this important area.
I am not a expert by any means, but I have a couple of experts on our team. The best resource I know of is a new blog called The Inclusive Church. It’s written by Amy Fenton Lee… in her words:
I am not a credentialed professional from the education or medical field. I am not the parent of a child with special needs. I am not on staff at a church. I AM a children’s ministry volunteer, the daughter of a church pastor, a writer, and a passionate Christian who believes that the bride of Christ, the church, is still the most effective instrument for developing and discipling Christ followers. And out of my desire to equip churches, this blog was born. This is the passion that fuels every post.
I don’t know Amy personally, but there is a lot of great content developing at the blog, so check it out.
Special needs issues are affecting churches of every size. Congregations with a regular attendance of 80 and 8000 are both impacted as children with neurological and physical disabilities seek inclusion.
I have given myself a challenge for the next 26 days – post the complete A-Z of Ministry to Children.
H… hope, happiness, Harry, highjinks…
H is for House – There are two ‘houses’ in our lives, the ‘house’ of God and our own family. In a NT theology the house of God is the gathering of the Church, and there is always a tension between promoting a works based religion and a relationship with our saviour. Church attendance does not equal salvation, just like living in a garage doesn’t make you a car, just like eating a hamburger doesn’t make you Ronald MacDonald.
But then I began to see how little time we get with our kids as the Church and all the competing activities there are in the life of a family.
Faith without works is dead (James 2:20).
All of the examples I want to follow when it comes to family life just have so much in common, they are passionate about passing faith on to their kids AND live a life of service to their local Church.
If a family would simply model a life of dedicated service, our calling as pastors to children would be infinitely easier and far more powerful, impacting, fruitful and significant!
Just watch this very recent video of Benny Hinn talking about how he neglected his family. The home and the family NEED to work together.
If I lose my family in my pursuit of ‘ministry’, I have lost everything!
I have given myself a challenge for the next 26 days – post the complete A-Z of Ministry to Children.
G… granny, gigantic, gross, gravity…
G is for Growth – When I was a school child we had a backyard… this was the countryside in New Zealand… everyone had a backyard. One day I shall take my son outside of Sydney and show him this mythical square of land called the ‘backyard’.
And on this backyard we had a garden, and for a brief period of time I grew my own vegetables. Notice the use of the word brief… it was a school project and like most projects was abandoned upon getting a C+.
But the thing I realised in this project was healthy plants grow. Because not many of mine did.
So many of the parables of Jesus were about seeds, planting etc. because he was part of an agrarian culture (thank you Bible college). As a farmer you don’t spend your time measuring the height of your crop each day, you just make sure that they get everything they need to grow. Sun, water, insecticide and whatever else helps a seed sprout.
Your job as leader is to make sure everything is healthy, because healthy things grow.
Even if you have reached every single family and individual in your community, if your Church is healthy the growth in the lives of the people will be evident.
We will often talk as a team about the kids in our ministry, comparing them to when they first started coming to Hillsong Kids compared to now and it is often amazing the growth that has taken place, because we work hard to ensure it is a healthy environment.
Just today in our Sunday 12pm service, I helped a first time 6 year old visitor who was clinging onto Mum and wailing about not wanting to leave her, come into our program and have a great time. I can’t wait to look back at the growth in his life over the next few months!
I have given myself a challenge for the next 26 days – post the complete A-Z of Ministry to Children.
F… fun, fanatic, friends, forgetful, friar Frank…
F is for Fun – Hey you, yeah the fun police! Listen up… only 4% of the kids in the state of NSW in Australia have any extended contact with Church. Most of the families I want to reach and help in this community have no reference point to our ‘Christian’ sub culture. They don’t know the rules of religion, they don’t get the subtleties of pre-millennial vs. post-millennial rapture discussions, nor do they care. If you ever dare to try to talk/debate with me about how the ‘Church’ needs to stop being ‘edutainment’ and get back to getting deep into the word… listen… you wanna ‘get deep’… go and share your faith, go and serve someone who desperately needs a little help in this life… that’s deep!
Bottom line is this – Your efforts to take away laughter from the gathering of the Church community is taking away the very thing you are striving to obtain — real, passionate, engaged learning happens best… no wait… happens ONLY in an environment where there are smiles. Give me a child who has just laughed until they pee’d their pants (metaphorically) and I will show you a child who has given me permission to speak into their lives. I will show you a child who has put aside the pressures (and in some cases pain) of a 21st century, busy, urban, city life and has the space to take on board the word of God I am about to present to them.
This is from Dayspring Church here in Sydney. They must have changed the way they signed in kids… anyway it’s a brilliant example of how to explain something that could have been confusing and make it simple.
A couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine and I were talking about a study she’d just read, which concluded that people without children were happier than people with children; or, to put it more precisely, despite what conventional wisdom holds, the study found that having children did not increase anyone’s happiness.
At which all I could do was burst out laughing. Because, well. Duh.
Only an academic would undertake a study like this, defining happiness as something along the lines of “satisfaction with life” and “feeling rewarded by your work.” If there’s an occupation more likely to make you feel incompetent and unrewarded than being a parent, I have never heard of it.
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