Children’s Church. Kid’s Worship. I am not sure what this special ministry is called in your church, but I can guess there are only a few reactions to these phrases. Some reading this will smile sweetly, calling to mind happy memories perhaps as a participant, perhaps as a leader, of Bible memory verses and crafts and snacks.
For others, “Children’s Church” causes sweat to pop out and a fear to fill your chest almost as bad as a public speaking event. In many cases, the children’s church teacher is sent to the church basement only to emerge 58 years later. For others, it is a quick trip.
When my husband and I were first called into ministry we excitedly signed up to help with the upper elementary age group at our church. Three short months later we begged for a reassignment. We were still fairly certain we were called to ministry, but we were confident it was not with that sweet little age group. We thankfully found our niche during that time with the middle schoolers. Regardless, children’s church serves an important role in the ministry and discipleship of our youngest students.
Fast forward 11 years, knowing its importance, our new church leadership began praying about what this ministry should look like. What would we want our own children experiencing and learning during their time in this service? God had already been drawing our hearts toward two specific areas: discipleship and teamwork.
We knew we could only begin a part of discipleship in our Sunday morning services with our students, but it could be done with a powerful team of teachers. We started by praying about who to talk to about helping in children’s church. It was decided we should have teams of two adults and possibly one teen each week, but with no one serving more than one Sunday a month. We have teachers who also serve in nursery, on the worship team and who teach a Sunday School class.
It was important to us that our teachers be adults, women AND men, who were growing in their faith and preferably plugged in to a small group of discipleship themselves. If they were to be teaching our students how to grow in their faith, then we wanted them living that for themselves.
We began by asking couples, parents of our students, and other men and women who were in discipleship groups to prayerfully consider serving on this ministry team. The details were spelled out: one other team member, on a rotation of no more than once a month, and agree to complete one year. At the end of the year, we reassess how this ministry team is working for each of our team members. Many times, they agree to another year of serving. However, there are also years when a team needs a change or a break. Our intention is for this yearly assessment to prevent burnout and ultimately resentful serving. It gives our leaders a chance to change ministries and encourage healthy transitions.
The team approach also helps teaching be a little less intimidating for those who do not feel as “natural” in that role. Our children’s church serves students in pre-k through 5th grade. We split the group in two and have the younger students begin with snack and Bible memory work while the older students go to their lesson time. At the halfway mark they switch classrooms which gives the students a change in scenery and allows the teachers to interact with all the students.
Our curriculum has changed over the years, but we have currently landed on one with enough material to last Sunday morning and Wednesday evenings. The Scripture lesson and Bible memory work is taught on Sunday mornings and then Wednesday evenings are spent reviewing the lesson and adding in fun activities.
As we focused on discipleship, we wanted our students to retain the information and live it out and we felt that could be better accomplished by focusing on one weekly lesson. In order to create rhythms for our students (and a schedule our teachers can remember!) we have the Children’s Church teacher teams take a month at a time for teaching Wednesday nights.
We have been doing VBS on Wednesday nights in August, and then we begin our semester with our first set of teachers in September. This allows the other teams to attend our adult Bible study until it is their turn to teach. Again, we want our teachers growing in their faith, too.
Our goal has always been to disciple our students and teach them to worship Jesus, however, as we were beginning to restructure our system, we realized our students did not know how to transition from student ministry to the adult corporate worship time. With that goal in mind, we implemented a new component of our Sunday morning children’s ministry called Family Sunday.
The last Sunday of each month we have all our students remain with their families for the main service, but we still offer nursery for our youngest children. This Sunday offers a break for our teachers, but we truly believe in the power of our families worshipping together.
We are one full year into this specific team of teachers and curriculum. Of course, it isn’t perfect; however, I believe we are seeing one of the healthiest teams our church has developed in many years. It is a team that has been flexible, eager to serve, and perhaps most importantly, growing in their individual faiths. As a result, we are watching our students grow in their faith and knowledge of our Lord Jesus.
Our prayer is that this ministry and part of their discipleship will develop a foundation that they will build upon as they grow and become disciple makers themselves.
Lyndsey Reese is first and foremost a disciple of Jesus. A few of her other favorite titles are “wife” to Tim and “Mama” to their two daughters. Lyndsey is a small town girl who moved back to the family farm where she and her family serve in their local, rural church. She can be reached through email at tnlreese@gmail.com.