As a preface, I contend that the concept of “partnering with parents” is so vital in our approach to children’s ministry. As much as we’d like to think that our influence is first and foremost in the lives of the children in our ministry, the honest truth is that we will never eclipse the importance of the influence of their families, namely, their parents. Working off of this assumption, we strive to enhance this partnership by fostering parent communication, parent involvement and even parent education. In essence, we fully admit that it is very difficult to compete with the family influence, so instead of trying to do so, we instead aim to utilize parents as valuable members of our ministry.
To really conceptualize the primary elements of this vision statement, one must recognize three basic elements of direction: up, in, and out.
UPWARD (Learning)
As a child begins to develop, our first intention is to create a working knowledge of God, His creation, His love, His plan for us, etc. These foundational truths from scripture are taught as absolute facts as each child in these “sponge” years is taught to look “up” and learn these truths.
In a nutshell, before a child can reach the developmental stage of understanding (much less exercising!) faith, he or she must have a working knowledge about the object of faith.
INWARD (Being)
As the child continues to develop in all phases of life (physically, mentally, emotionally, etc.), he or she is challenged to make application of these Biblical truths to a personal walk with Christ. Our part of this process (beyond simply disseminating knowledge) is to guide each child toward this personal relationship with Christ, while allowing the Holy Spirit to convict.
After accepting Christ as personal Savior, we realize that even young children are “new creatures in Christ”, changed from the inside out. They are adopted into God’s family with new responsibilities and new strength, strength God gives them as they begin to live out their lives for Him!
OUTWARD (Serving)
After coming to Christ, each young Christian must be provided ample opportunity for service and ministry. You see, it is not only critical that children be given opportunity to further learn Biblical truth and its application, but that they also be taught and have chances to exercise their faith. In essence, after being must come doing, which is the road to finding God’s perfect will for us as His children.
Real live organisms reproduce, and so should real children of God! Seeing our children learn to use Biblical truth and their own experience in coming to Christ to see others come to Christ is the apex of what He wants our lives to ultimately become.
If any children’s ministry is to ever be successful, it will have been because we see children mature and develop into Christians who become light in a dark world. The “proof in the pudding” will be when these children naturally birth other Christians, thus carrying on the cycle of ministry to the next generation!