Peter Witkowski Children's Ministry

Why The Numbers Don’t Add Up

numbers-blogNumbers, numbers, numbers. Much of the kids’ ministry conversation is framed within the context of numbers. To get idea of how to understand someone’s ministry, we ask, “How many kids come on Sunday morning?” And we keep going. We talk about the number of baptisms, how many kids attend VBS, and how many new babies are being born. Everything from staffing ratios to the number of sippy cups in our building has a numerical value that can be discussed.

I am very thankful for numbers. Statistics offer all kinds of insights into kids’ ministry. They reveal strengths and weakness; they help us predict trends; and they help us plan for the future. I for one have spent a good deal of time expanding the amount of data that FBCE’s children’s ministry collects for these reasons and more. Numbers are great.

But numbers can also be deadly. They can shift our focus from eternity to our own immediacy. Anytime we get a group of kids’ ministry staffer and volunteers together, we will almost always get into a conversation about evangelism. Someone will start talking about how 50 kids got saved at their VBS. And as they praise God, we begin to wonder why only one kid got saved at our church this past summer. We question our methods and skills, wondering if more music or if better crafts would lead to more conversions. We begin to make evangelism about on numbers instead of the gospel.

At the end of the day, this is a huge problem. Focusing on numbers will not lead to more conversions, because we cannot save anyone. We do not lead people to Christ with just the right blend of music, crafts, and timely themed gospel messages. As the great preacher J.I. Packer said,

Can you or I by our earnest talking break the power of Satan over a man’s life? No. Can you or I give life to the spiritually dead? No. Can we hope to convince sinners of the truth of the gospel by patient explanation? No. Can we hope to move men to obey the gospel by any words of entreaty that we may utter? No. Our approach to evangelism is not realistic till we have faced this shattering face and let it make its proper impact on us. – p106.

Evangelism cannot succeed apart from God. As the Scriptures say, ‘“Then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life” (Acts 11:18). Salvation is work of God. We must never forget this central and fundemental truth.

Our job is not to save. Our job is to faithfully introduce kids to the wonders of the Scriptures. To do this well, we will have to teach hard truths starting with Genesis and ending with revelation. And, we will have to love our kids for more than a week here or there. We will have to spend time with them. We will have to play on the playground with them; we will have to listen to their concerns, and we will have to pray with them.

“The right to talk to another person about the Lord Jesus Christ has to be earned, and you earn it by convincing him that you are his friend, and that you really care about him” – p81.

We will have to invest time and energy into our kids ministry if we want to see kids saved.

Are their shortcuts? Yes. For example, we can have everyone bow their heads and then have those ‘interested in the gospel’ raise their hands. After telling them that Jesus will ‘save you from their sins’ we can then pray a prayer of repentance for the kids and pronounce them saved. Our numbers will look great. \

But, they will not add up. Because these kids have not understood the gravity of their sin and the beauty of Jesus, they have not embraced Jesus. If anything they have simply been brainwashed and can be easily convinced to leave the faith by the next well-spoken person they meet.

At the end of the day, we cannot hop over the wall of graces and save others with our human efforts. Though we all long for numbers, we must not let the success of one church lead us into a panic. That church has not excelled not at our expense.

Rather, we should praise God for working, realizing that that work did not happen over night. And then, we must redouble our commitment to the gospel. After all, evangelism “is a work in which quick results are not promised; it is a work, therefore, in which the non-appearance of quick results is no sign of failure; but it is a work in which we cannot hope for success unless we are prepared to persevere with people.”

 

Peter Witkowski Apologetics

Helping Kids Process Satan and Demons

devils and demons blogDemons are real! The devil is real. And our kids our going to interact with demonic things. I say this not to scare anyone. Nor do I wish to encourage anyone to start mixing up a homemade ghost repellent. But we do need to be aware that our kids will encounter demonic things. Our kids will meet up with other kids who own Ouija Boards, who play with tarot cards, and who know people that talk with spirits. As Paul reminds us in Ephesians 6:12, “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” Satan and his demons will come after us and our kids.

What do we do? How do we prepare our kids to handle the question, “Do you want to come over and play on my Ouija board?” We look to Jesus. And as we study Jesus’ encounter with the demonic man mention in Mark 5:1-20, we 3 see great principles for interacting with the Satan and demonic activity.

1.       Do Not Under Estimate Satan.

Jesus came to seek and to safe the lost. Satan comes to destroy. Even though things like Ouija Boards may seem innocent, we must help our kids understand where these things lead. Look at the man running around the hillside. He was screaming and cutting himself. He had forsaken the town and was living in the tombs. He was cut off from civilization.

If we pursue Satanic things, we will find death. Though tarot cards may seem innocent, we need to help our kids realize that that playing with Satanic things is never good. Though they appear as messengers of light and offer power, demons never lead us to life. They lead only to death and destruction. We must help our kids realize Satan is dangerous and deadly.

2.       Trust in Jesus.

Though Satan and his demons are real and possess great power, we serve one greater, Jesus. When he arrives on the scene the man who could not be bound by chains, throws himself at Jesus’s feet begging for mercy. What the town’s people could not do with chains, Jesus does by simply coming. The demons have to submit to the authority of Christ.

When our kids encounter demonic things, we should encourage them to appeal to Jesus. While our kids should not underestimate Satan, they also should not fear him because Jesus is Lord. And all those who follow Christ cannot fall exclusively under Satan’s power. They cannot become demon possessed. God is for us. Satan cannot win.

 But our kids do not simply have to run away when others mention the demonic realm. Rather, we should encourage our kids to do what Jesus did. We should encourage our kids to share the gospel. The best way to defeat Satan is not to chant some words while wearing a crucifix. The best way to defeat Satan is to present the Word of God. Jesus saves. And it’s quite possible that your kids may get the opportunity to share Christ because a classmate brings up the subject of a Ouija Board. We should encourage our kids to be quick to avoid Satanic activity and to be quick to proclaim Jesus.

3.       Don’t Expect To Be Popular

After Jesus cast out the demons, the towns people come out to see what happened and to see all the dead pigs floating around. And the text records something strange. The people ask Jesus to leave. They people could tolerate a crazed lunatic, but found Jesus scary. If our kids refuse to talk to the dead at a sleep over, they will take some flak. They will be deemed lame. And we must prepare our kids for this reality. We must help them understand that obeying Jesus will not always be popular. But it will always be good. And after all, how can we not obey Jesus? He has far more power than any demon. Instead of playing with allusions of power, we should seek out the one who rules over all principalities and powers. We should trust ourselves to Jesus.

Peter Witkowski Apologetics

Does Your Church’s Birthrate Matter?

birth-rateWe do often talk about birthrates at church. Well at least not in those terms. We discuss delaying conception until after we accomplish some life goal; we discuss how 1 or 2 kids is our ideal family size; and, we discuss why modern society no longer needs a family to have 12 kids. We examine birthrates through the lens of modern convenience and societal success. And as a result, evangelicals increasingly prize smaller and smaller families. At last check, the birthrate for Southern Baptist couples sits at 1.96, appreciably below the replacement birth rate of 2.1.

As Southern Baptists and as Bible believing Christians, we need to start looking at birthrates through the lens of biblical truth. But we need to do more than just talk. We need to act and act soon.

We need to begin advocating for large families. We need to encourage our young couples to have kids. The Bible commands it (Gen. 1:28). The survival of our churches depends upon it.

Why The Birthrate Matters

Let’s say we decide to be cool and start a new church plant called Last Baptist Church with fifty God fearing couples. Theses couples adhere to the Southern Baptist birth rate and have 98 kids. The couples’ kids grow up in great Christians homes where church attendance is a must. They attend Sunday school, Bible Drill, and Disciple Now weekends. They get baptized. Eventually, most of them go off to college. According to George Barna, somewhere between 30%-40% of these kids will stayChurch-retention-rate actively involved in church. We will assume that our Last Baptist church is a really godly church and will go with the higher number, predicting that 40% of the kids stay involved. The next generation is now comprised of 39 people. Thankfully, studies by Steve Parr have shown that about 40% of those church kids who walked away from the faith will decide to come back to church. As time goes on, 24 of the kids who left will return to our church’s pews. The second generation now consists of 63 adults.

These 63 adults get together and start their own families. They have 61 kids. And they grow up, leave and come back. Last Baptist’s third generation now consists of 39 people. In a matter of three generations our Last Baptist Church will see it’s young adult attendance drop from 100 people to 39.  After another generation has passed, the church adult attendance goes down to 24 and then 16.

Population Bubble

Now this does not happen immediately. There is a lot of generational overlap. The initial three generations will all attend church together for some time. The church members will think that Last Baptist Church is relevant, expanding, and reaching people. After all it has gone from a 100 people to an average attendance of 202 people in a period of 30 years. Life is good; the Senior Pastor gets invited to speak at church planting conferences. But then the senior adults begin to pass away and the kids begin to leave. The population bubble bursts. As the second generation moves into the leadership roles, the church’s attendance slowly drops from 202 to 1126. Although the church begins to struggle, the sanctuary is still relatively full. After a few more years pass, the third generation moves into leadership. Now the average attendance is down to 79. And then bottom falls out when the fourth generation takes over. Only 56 people are regularly attending. You have 24 senior adults, 16 adults and 16 kids. The leaders of the church wonder what went wrong? They wonder were all the people went. And though the answer is simple, it is a hard one to swallow. The people were never born.

Last-Baptist-Generation-BreakdownAdmittedly, no church goes through such a simple, straight forward process as Last Baptist Church. People move off, join other churches, and new members come through conversion. There are a whole host of variables at play.

But in many cases, I believe those variables do not favor the church. Some little towns will see large portions of their second and third generations move away. Of those 63 kids, perhaps only 20-30 of them will actually stay in town. Instead of going up, the birth rate will most likely continue to drop with each succeeding generation. All of these factors will serve to expedite Last Baptist’s decline. Instead of taking 60 to 80 years, the decline I’ve described could happen in matter of 15-20 years. I believe that many little, country churches may be dying today because their previous generations did not have kids. Their bubbles have begun to burst.

I know that the birthrate is not the only thing that determines whether or not a church is about to die. Tom Rainer has written several good little books such as I AM A Church Member and the Autopsy of A Deceased Church that tackle many of the heart attitudes and bad theology that undo a church. I highly recommend them to all who want their church to thrive.

But a church’s birthrate must be considered. I believe that the birthrate is a contributing factor to a church’s decline. According to the book Spiritual Champions, almost 64% of all people embrace Christ by 18. Adults are not nearly as receptive as children. Only around 6% of people over age 19 will be open to the gospel. Can we and should we reach out to adults with the gospel? Yes! I have personally seen God radically transform fifty-year-old men and women. Yet a church that does not have kids will miss its best chance to reach one of the largest and most approachable demographics. As a result, the church that is content will a low birthrate is a church that is content with decline. The SBC is already seeing this phenomenon take place. Membership continues to drop despite our best evangelistic efforts. And unless birthrates change, I predict the decline will continue.

If we want our churches to grow, we must encourage our families to grow. Are you ready to do this?