Peter Witkowski Children's Ministry

Are Children’s Pastors Really Pastors?

pastor-kidsDo you know what your children’s pastor does? Take a minute and work through all the images of that goofy guy or gal that just popped into your mind who likes to be dunked in green slim.

I-timothyOk. I think most everyone would agree that we need more than a clown to oversee our kids’ ministries. The constant barrage of legal worries, safety concerns, and insurance guidelines is much more than the typical confetti cannon can handle. Churches need and want someone with the skills and ability to organize, protect, and love families.

How do children’s pastor do this?

The cool new trend is to have children’s pastors that equip the family, that work alongside parents, and that help dads and moms disciple their kids. Most every job’s focus will include one or all of these phrases. I know of no children’s pastors out their dedicated to subverting the family, maligning parents, and to frustrating parental guardians.

We may all know a pastor, program, or para-church ministry that does these accidentally. But no ministry is launched in an effort to dissolve cohesive family units. Every church, ministry, and pastor circling around our kids is all about equipping the family. This is the transient sentiment of our day.

How do we equip the local family to lead, disciple, and train their kids?

Well according to most churches, children’s pastors fulfill their mission by training Sunday school teachers, by organizing events, by staffing nurseries, and by teaching kids. They help parents by creating and running programs for kids.
Programs are not wrong. They are not the boogieman. But does a children’s Sunday school class equip the family? Does nursery really help parents disciple their children? Do our programs inspire parents to share the gospel with their kids?

Do you see the delima? Churches proclaim that their children’s ministry exist for the promotion of the family. Yet almost every pastor has a job description that keeps the him from directly interacting with, equipping, and encouraging parents.  Sure, kids’ pastors tell parents how much they love working with their kids. But have they had meaningful, life changing conversations with the parents they were called to equip?

I fear that most in kids’ pastors would have to answer, “No.” In fact many of the things kids’ ministries facilitate often discourage real conversations. Instead of seeing that mom and dad who need help parenting Junior in big church, a nursery worker just redirects the angry three-year-old with a fresh cup of apple juice far away from the view of the church’s pastoral staff and the body of Christ.

And perhaps this is not as bad as it initially appears. Perhaps kids’ ministry really is just a support ministry that frees people to hear ‘the pastor’ to preach. Perhaps, kids’ pastors mainly help equip parents by freeing others to do the work of equipping. This is not wrong. Armies need baggage trains to survive. Just ask the Emperor Julian and some of the other famous world leaders who fought battles without supplies.

But if kids’ ministry truly is about supporting big church, I believe churches should think hard about redefining the role of the children’s pastor. Freeing others to do the work of equipping, teaching and discipling is not a pastoral role. It is a deacon role, a lay leader role. Benjamine L. Merkle rightfully noted,

“Deacons are needed in the church to provide logistical and material support so that the elders can concentrate their efforts on the Word of God and prayer.”

Mark Dever, the founder of the Nine Marks Ministry and the lead pastor at Captial Hill concurs, writing, “the concerns of the deacons are the practical details of church life: administration, maintenance, and the care of church members with physical needs.”

The church needs men to faithfully serve behind-the-scenes. But those men are not pastors. They are deacons.

Titus and 1 Timothy clearly teach that pastors preach, teach, and disciple. Children’s pastors who primarily or only facilitate, recruit, and host events are truly more like deacon-in-chiefs than pastors.

If children’s pastors are called to lead and disciple families, then they need to be leading and discipling parents. They should regularly teach parents, showing them how to apply the gospel to their family. They should be on hand to counsel mom and dad as they struggle with a wayward son. They should be able to help others live out their faith. I believe pastors regardless of their title’s prefix should first and foremost pastor.

What do our churches need, children’s pastors or deacons-in-chief?

Peter Witkowski Discipleship

Why Church Members Need To Be In The Fish Bowl

fish-bowl“Don’t be a goldfish; be a shark,” is a phrase that has stayed with me. The zealous motivation speaker who had chucked her family overboard to achieve her dreams used the phrase to encourage people to jump out of their mind numbing  goldfish bowls of low expectations for the purpose of devouring their dreams. Yum!  No one likes the fish bowl and those flakes floating down through the water.

Yet almost every pastor and his family will find themselves swimming in circles in full view of every kind and judgemental eye. Those occupy the senior pastor’s chair, the music pastor’s bench, the youth pastor’s closet, or the children’s pastor’s office which used to be the janitor’s closet all swim in the fish bowl. All fall victim to the church member’s opinions which ranging from comments about the guys tie, his wife’s cooking, and his understanding of ecclesiology.  Nothing is off limits. Just try putting a new house or a car into the fishbowl and see what happens.

Some pastor respond to the challenge of always being observed by taking a shark like approach. They actively find ways to close the blinds to their homes, to fence their kids away from criticism, and to protect their wives from all those ‘helpful’ comments. They proactively find ways to escape or at the very least hide their family fishbowl from view.

Though I lived this way at times, I think this approach to the fish bowl can prove to be extremely dangerous. Security, safety, and good relationships do not come from hiding from the people in our churches. These things can only be attained by transparency.

The solution to the fish bowl is not to hide nor is it to swallow the congregation. The solution is to get more fish in the fish bowl.

The family is a delicate, private, and precious thing. But our greatest family our truest mothers, brothers, and cousins are not the people with whom we share our DNA. They are the people who share are love for Christ. The truest family is the family who sees your weakness and encourages you to follow Christ. The truest family is the family who is willing to welcome your into their lives, allowing you to see their faults so that you can help them while embracing your faults. We need friendships with fellow Christians that are, “extensive enough, intimate enough, and above all long lasting and committed enough to really uncover our deepest foolishness and cowardice and to draw out our deepest capacity for wisdom and courage.”

The apostle Paul said it this way,

For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us, because we were not idle when we were with you, nor did we eat anyone’s bread without paying for it, but with toil and labor we worked night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you. It was not because we do not have that right, but to give you in ourselves an example to imitate. – 2 Thessalonians. 

Christians need both the word and relationships to thrive. Paul taught the gospel and he lived the gospel. He was with people showing them how to apply the gospel to everyday life.

Pastors must be doing the same thing. We should embrace the fish bowl, happily working out their faith before others. We must show others how to work by working and how to parent by parenting, and how to manage a budget by budgeting. We must invite people into our lives for the expansion of the gospel. By God’s grace, We must reveal how the gospel can and should transform everyday life. We are to model both the weakness of our flesh and the amazing power of the gospel. As we depend on God, the gospel will go forward in the lives of others.

Pastors need the fish bowl and so do you. Andy Crouch warned

“If you don’t have people in your life who know you and love you in that radical way, it is very, very unlikely you will develop either wisdom or courage.”

If your local church is never in your business, you will be one stunted Christian.

The fish bowl is only a problem because it is a one-side affair. Church members want to reserve the right to attack, demean, and belittle the pastor and his family every time one of their sins bubbles to the surface. When the Pastor comes to confront the deacon about stealing or the piano player about her sexual dalliances, the church holds an impromptu business meeting to tell the pastor to stand down. As one church member told a pastor friend of mine, “I wish you would stop applying your sermons to our church.”

Church members often refuse to swim with the pastor because they do not want to their pastor to challenge their sin with the gospel. Quite often, we pastors are ok with this arrangement because we do not want to have to spend hours counseling messy, dirty church members. As a result, the church creates a dangerous fish bowl for one instead of an aquarium for many. Dietrich Bonhoeffer rightfully said,

A community which cannot bear and cannot survive such a crisis, which insists upon keeping its illusion when it should be shattered, permanently loses in that moment the promise of Christian community

The Christian community that fundamentally fails to grasp that we are all sinners in need of saving is ultimately not a Christian community. A church membership that consists of people who maintain an air of self-righteousness by never inviting others into their homes and hearts is not the church God sent his son to redeem.

For pastors to pastor well, we have to model the gospel, confront sin, and be open to correction.  We have to embrace the fish bowl. For the church to function well, all of its members need to jump into the fish bowl with their pastor.

Are you ready for the fish bowl?

Peter Witkowski Apologetics

Why Do People Dislike Christians: A Review of Good Faith

Good-FathGrade-schoolers wearing cross necklaces, sleep-deprived college students witnessing to their coeds over a carb loaded lunch, and a flip-flop wearing forty something telling her neighbor that she believes marriage is between a man a women are not usual images that Christians associate with extremism. We picture guys with long beards blown themselves up and crazy white dudes driving cars into monuments.

But most Americans are just as likely to associate the first group of images with ‘extremism’ as they are later ones. According to the Barna Group, most Americans label their neighbors who uphold traditional marriage, believe Jesus is the only way to heaven, and who publicly share their faith to be extreme. (p.11, 42). Now while we may not like the term ‘extremist,’ most Christians would agree that America’s culture has shifted away from its Christian heritage. Sixty-five percent of evangelicals feel misunderstood, and sixty percent believe they are already being persecuted for their faith. What happened and why are Christians viewed as extremist?

Seeking to answer these questions and to chart a way forward through Babylon, David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons published the book, Good Faith back in 2016. After combing through ridiculous amounts of data, the authors discovered that most Americans view people like you an me who sit in a church-pew most Sundays to be irrelevant and extreme.

The modern stance towards Christendom in some instances is the result of poor education. People simply do not know what the church does for society. Almost half of Americans believe that a majority of charitable work happens outside the church (p.29).

good-faith

However in many cases the perception that Christianity is dangerous can be traced back to a new religion, the religion of self. Americans today find Christianity extreme because the new moral code declares you to be the source of all truth. Eighty-nine percent of Americans believe people should not criticize other’s life choices (p.58).  “And according to that moral code, any competing morality – say, a religion – that seeks to constrain someone’s pursuit of personal fulfilment must itself be constrained” (p.59). Christians are no longer interacting with a secular world. They are interacting with the world of Ireligion.

After showing their readers the current dispositions of our American culture, the authors turn their attention to helping Christians navigate their way through the new culture landscape. They show that Christians can meaningfully engage those who disagree with them by affirming the truth of the Bible. 

While the culture believes the Bible is outdated, the book is actually the very thing are culture needs. And if we are willing to humbly step forward and love our neighbors, the gospel can and will still go forward as we tackle issues ranging from homosexuality to racism. And as the authors tackle these various topics, they bring many insightful stats and personal stories that help everyone better understand the Biblical solutions to today’s problems.

In an encouraging note, the authors also promote the local church and expository preaching. Instead of encouraging people to abandon the church to save the gospel, they are encouraging people to dive back into the church so that the gospel can go forward.

If you have a heart to better understand your neighbors, to reach the lost, and to influence the world for Christ, you will want to grab a copy of Good Faith. To date, Good Faith is the best resource for understanding how the world outside our churches thinks. If you have a couple of hours and heart for seeing the gospel expand in the United States, read Good Faith.

Click here to buy a copy of Good Faith