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

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?

Peter Witkowski Children's Ministry

Why There Are More Babies Than Mean, Old Ladies in Heaven

The mom panics, the dad’s face turns a touch red, and the old ladies begin to shake their old ladyheads. The baby has cried. As the baby is run out the sanctuary back door like patient about to be airlifted to the hospital for a brain transplant, the murmurs start: “Why did they bring that kid in?” What a distraction; I can’t focus with all that noise.” “Nursery, anyone?”

And while parents with young children should seek to be considerate of others, most of the people who dislike having kids in their services don’t have a people problem. They have a gospel problem.

When the disciples rebuked the parents who wanted Jesus to bless their kids, Jesus rebukes his disciples. And Jesus rebukes his disciples not because kids’ ministry is his number one passion. He rebukes the disciples because they get the gospel wrong.

The disciples didn’t want the kids interrupting Jesus’ day because they thought salvation was a matter of works. I.e. you help God help you be what God wants you to be. Because the little babies being thrust before Jesus could do nothing meaningful for the kingdom of God, the disciples shewed them away. Jesus only had time for those who belong in Big Church. No distractions please. Or so they thought.

But the disciples got the message of the gospel wrong. Jesus flipped the religion on its head. Jesus said, “Let the children come to me; do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God” (Mark 1:14). Jesus was saying that the church doesn’t belong to all the cranky, self-righteous people. The church, the kingdom of God belongs to the children! How can this be? The babies don’t vote, tithe, or lead Sunday school classes!

Well it all goes back to our understanding of salvation. According to the scriptures, crying babysalvation is a free gift of God. Our Lord saves us not because we were able to focus on the sermon for 50 straight years, not because we earned our 100th Sunday School Pen, and not because we tithed 3% of our income for the last 60 years. God saves us by his grace. He saves us not because of works that we have done but because of his love (Eph. 2:8-9). And because God is loving and merciful, he saves little babies and children that die. (For a full look at how this happens, see my blog Onesies: the doctrine of salvation.) As John MacArthur wrote:

The salvation of young children…is a deathblow to any form of legalism, since such children obviously can do nothing to merit salvation.

In a since the disciples were right. The little children could offer nothing to the kingdom of God. But they missed was the fact that they too could offer nothing to the kingdom of God. If we view children as a nuisance, as a bother, or as an unwanted distraction, we need to check our hearts for pride. We need to ask: “Are we impressed with what we and our church is offering to God? Do we think ourselves as being more worthy and deserving than little babies? Have we forgotten that we add nothing to our salvation?” And then, we need to welcome the little babies like Jesus did. We need to be glad that they are with us.

At the end of the day, the church does not belong to the senior adults. Is also is not supposed to be the millennials’ new coffee house. The church belongs to those who are trusting in Christ alone for their salvation. The church belongs to those who have been saved by grace. As a result of God’s mercy, there will be more crying babies in heaven than self-righteous old ladies. Shouldn’t our churches reflect heaven?