Peter Witkowski Children's Ministry

3 Steps Towards Developing A Great Kids’ Ministry

3 steps to essential kids ministry blogI’ve talked with children’s workers all over the South. Regardless of the size of their church, we all have the same passion for reaching kids with the gospel. But to do so effectively, we must be prepared for the children we will interact with. We must create times, spaces, and lessons that facilitate the proclamation of Christ crucified. After 15 plus years in kids’ ministry, I have can point to three things that keep kids’ ministries thriving:

1. Get Organized: Whether we are teaching 3 kids or 300 hundred, we must be organized. We should plan activities and lesson in advance. Each teacher needs to know what their roll is and how to fulfill it. The teacher lecturing needs to have his lesson prepared, including analogies, stories, and activities to engage the kids. The teacher leading the craft needs to have all the supplies in the room before the kids arrive. And remember, our classes begin when the first child arrives and end when the last child leaves.  When we host lock-in at FBCE, we have the kids watch a movie both as they arrive and about 10 minutes before they leave. This way kids who arrive 30 minutes early and those who leave 45 minutes late have something to do.

2. Get Your Building Ready: One of the biggest turn off for new parents is dirty, old
facilities. If the paint is peeling off the ceiling, if there is a hole in the wall, or if the playground backs up to a blog lego manfreeway, parents aren’t going to trust you with their kids. I don’t care if your kids’ director is Charles Spurgeon. New families will not stay. You wouldn’t house a corvette in an old barn. Don’t put your kids, the future of your church, in a dark, dirty basement fit for child-molesters. I’m not saying you have to spend a million dollars on constructing an indoor playground to reach kids. But, you may need to spend some money here or there to clean things up, to make things healthy. To reach young families, we need facilities that look clean and that smell like Lysol.

3. Prioritizes Safety: Run background checks on all your workers; maintain worker to kid ratios; and, regularly sanitize your toys. But most of all keep your program orderly. If parent’s fear that their kid’s glasses will get broken when they attend your church, they won’t come. (I can speak from experience on this one.) I like to joke that as long as drop-off and pick-up look orderly, it doesn’t matter what you do the rest of the time. And while touch overstated, the sentiment is true. If parents sense that things are chaotic they will not leave their kids. Fight to keep things orderly and safe. Workers will buck you on safety issues and kids will not always like having to follow the rules. But the success of your kids’ ministry depends on you keeping everyone safe. Don’t give up!

Admittedly organization, good facilities, and safety doesn’t produce salvation. But they do open the door for gospel proclamation. If we don’t do these things, we limit our opportunities to minister to parents and to reach kids. And here is the sad thing. Parents and kids who find your church scary, don’t necessarily move on to the next church. They may simply just dropout because their relationships, their connections are to you and your church. Maximize your opportunities to reach the world for Christ. Get prepared to minister to the next generation!

What steps have you taken to reach faithfully reach the kids in your community?

Peter Witkowski Discipleship

Kids’ Ministry Changes Everything!

free kidMost every church says it values kids. And, we should want our churches to have this perspective! Jesus loves children and our heavenly father says children are a blessing direct from him. Kids are also the group most receptive to the gospel. Most Christians embrace Christ by age 13. As the great preacher Charles Spurgeon observed,

He who receives things simply, as a child, will often have ideas which the man who is prone to use deductive reasoning could never discover.

Christians, who want to have greatest possible influence upon the world, must “consider employing those resources in ministry to young people (Barna 2003, 19).”

The Great Disconnect

Sadly, many churches don’t actually invest money into their kids’ zones. On average, most churches spend somewhere around 3% of their budget on caring for kids. As one pastor concluded,

Many Christians today assume they value children, but in practice often treat their kids like the disciples did (Reju 2014, 13). 

Because they grew up in impoverished and understaffed kids programs, today’s adults are often content to let their kids use free babythose great flannel graphs located in the back room. Then, the adults run  over to Walmart to get a new coffee pot for the fellowship hall.  Not surprisingly, kids and young families feel unwelcomed in many churches who say the opposite.

Thankfully, this has not been my direct experience. I have been blessed to be a part of churches that recognize the biblical value of kids and invest heavily in reaching the next generation. Currently, I serve at a church with by far one of the best children’s facilities around. But as important as financial gifts and facilities are, they are not the sum total of what it means to biblically welcome kids.

Getting Reconnected 

We actually have to be present with our kids. When Jesus welcomed the little children, he was physically with them, caring for them. He was their savior.

To welcome kids, we too have to be with them. After we create a welcoming space for our kids, we need to fill the space. We have to be ready to hold crying babies, to chase wiggly toddlers and to teach bubbly grader schoolers. And I get that this is not always easy. At times, babies are stinky, preschoolers are messy, and grade schoolers are easily distracted. But our efforts are absolutely necessary.

Kids have to hear the word of God to be saved. And when we take the time to lead a Sunday school class, God uses our lessons and wacky crafts to save the lost! I truly believe God uses Sunday school teachers and nursery volunteers to save and disciple numerous future pastors and missionaries. Though we may have to wait 20 or even 30 years before we see all that God is doing, we now he is moving; our labor is not in vain! Today, I invite all my readers to join with Jesus and invest in the next generation. Get involved in kids ministry and start changing the world!

May God send to his people a more firm belief that little buds of grace are worthy of all of our care. – Charles Spurgeon

Works Cited

Barna, George. Transforming Children Into Spiritual Champions: Why Children Should Be Your Church’s #1 Priority . Ventura : Regal , 2003.

Reju, Deepak. On Guard: Preventing ad Responding to Child Abuse at Church. Greensboro: New Growth Press , 2014.

Peter Witkowski Children's Ministry, Discipleship, Parenting

Should Kids Go To Big Church

Do We Really Want Kids In Church?

Do kids belong in church? It’s a simple, straight forward question that has existed even before the first church was launched at Pentecost.   Remember back to Mathew 19. Jesus had to tell his disciples to, “Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven” (vs. 14).  Speed forward a couple of thousand years and we find the evangelical church once again asking, “do children belong in church today?” Do they belong in our sanctuaries and services? Sadly, many evangelicals say, “No.”

should kids go to churchNow there are some pockets of old fogies who all but recite the disciples’ mantra. They diligently strive to keep those “darn” kids in the colorfully painted rooms in the basement through ugly looks and cruel comments. Most  of these people have no clue about what the four gospels teach. They happily go on church sponsored sightseeing trips, unaware that Christ welcomed children and rejected the self-righteous who boasted in their fat wallets and moralistic programs (Mathew 19:13-23).

 But the majority of Bible believing Christians who devalue kids are actually well meaning adults found swirling around the children’s department. Their catchphrases go something like this, “I can’t come to church if I have to watch my child; children’s ministry should be about giving parents a well-deserved break; children really need activities they can handle; big church is well, big church.” Once these phrases become a church’s ministry philosophy, the congregation will most likely cease to be a place where families come together to experience the community of Christ through worship and fellowship. Although we may have given the kids their own snazzy wing of the church, we have restricted their access to community of Christ.

Being smart, our children quickly pickup on the messages we are sending. They understand that big church is not for them. If anything, they know that they are a bother or hindrance to the rest of the church community.  Most of our kids will reconcile themselves to the idea the church consists of nothing more than eating crackers, drinking apple juice, and playing a few cool games. The glories of communing with the people of God is just not reality. Not surprisingly, the children who regularly attended all these cool kid based programs are the most likely to leave the church when grown (Ham, Beemer, & Hillard, p. 38).

To reach the next generation for Christ, we as parents need to once again embrace a church paradigm that welcomes children into the body of Christ. Regardless of how gifted a Sunday school teacher is or how loving a nursery worker is, parents are called by God to connect their children to the church. So how do we do this?

Five Ways To Get Ready Kids For Church

 

1. We worship at home.

I suspect that many children stress their parents out at church because they’ve never encountered formal Bible teaching at home.  We cannot and should not expect our children to calmly sit through a sermon if they have never learned how to handle a five minute devotion. Such expectations are unfair. Naturally, parents often try to compensate by handing off their child to church volunteers. At the very least, parents think they’ve kept their child from disrupting the service and they hopeful junior even learn a thing or two about the Bible. Let’s not abdicate our calling. Its hard, but discipling our children at home is essential to our kids spiritual well being. Let’s help them see that God is hugely important and worthy of respect and attention (Duet. 6)

2. Pray with our children.

Ask God to give them us patience. Ask God to give our kids a love for his word and his people. Ask God to give you wisdom to reach your children with the gospel.

3. Be in involved with your kids at church.

Find opportunities to serve with and around your child. Teach a Sunday school class, be a substitute, or sit in and see what they are learning. Be excited when you drop them off and be excited to pick them up. Ask them about what they learned in Sunday school.

4. Bring church home.

Before you go into the service tell your kids that you expect them to tell you two things that they have learned. Have realistic expectations. Do not expect your 5-year-old to be able to list all of the pastor’s five points. But your child should be able to tell you if the sermon was about Jesus or Moses. And then talk about the sermon after church. Help your children find ways to apply the sermon to their hearts. Pray through your pastor’s application points, asking God to make your family more like Christ. 

5. Be loving.

Children will make mistakes and will at times be a distraction. Instead of giving the mother with a crying baby a dirty look and pointing them to the nursery, lovingly smile and offer to help the young mother. And remember when we see children squirming in the seats, it’s possible they find our church services boring because we have made them boring. As the Charles Spurgeon noticed, “when children are not quiet in a meeting, it is often as much as our fault as theirs” (2011, p. 132). Let’s be sure to get the log out of our own eye before we make a big deal about the speck in the eye of the child sitting next to us. Let’s make sure our services represent that awesome glory of Christ. God is not lame and our services should not be lame.  Let’s resolve to be like Christ and welcome children into the churches!

Don’t Give Up!

The best place for children to learn about God is at the feet of their parents. As parents, we alone have the ability to connect church life into the home, reinforcing the lessons learned through discipline, prayer, and conversations all week long. We alone have the power to create a family culture with God at the center. If we punt our responsibility to connect children to Christ, we will teach our children to value personal comfort more than the commands of God. Raising a family is hard work. My four siblings and I definitely put my parents through the ringer at times. My son often causes me to wonder, “What am I doing?” And, I’ve seen the tired looks on the faces of moms as the walk into our church. But, we can do it! Another generation for Christ can be reached. Your sowing will not be in vain! “The one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up” (Gal 6:8b-9).

Works Cited

Ham, K., Beemer, B., & Hillard, T. (2012). Already Gone: Why Your Kids Will Quit Church and What you can do to Stop it. Green Forest: Master Books .

Spurgeon, C. (2011). Lectures To My Students. Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers.