By Pastor Joshua Hankins
This fall, our children’s ministry tried something new for our annual volunteer training. Rather than hosting a large event for all 400+ volunteers at once, we chose to focus on individual ministries in more, smaller training events. Though this meant multiplying our training event by seven, our kids ministry team walked away tired but with a renewed sense of excitement for the direction of our ministry. In these times together we were reminded of just how much our volunteers value their ministry and eagerly desire to build up our children in love. We saw them connect with laughter as a body around meals together, share common struggles and solutions, and pray together. But most encouraging to me was the way they received the vision of our children’s ministry and engaged in brainstorming, producing vision-oriented and organic ideas that we, in the office, could never have found on our own.
Here are some of the values we have presented to our volunteers. These are values we are encouraged to see being implemented across our ministry areas!
- Creating ministry environments that are marked by familiarity and consistency
- Celebrating and acknowledging living out the gospel life in our classrooms
- Leaders modeling what is being taught
One great danger of church models where generations are kept separated from one another is that we forget children are just small humans with all the same primary needs and desires that adults have. The unfortunate mindset among many generationally siloed church models is that children simply need to be entertained while the adults go to church. When children are out of sight and out of mind, it is easy to assume that everything they are doing at church is disconnected from what we as adults are doing at church. We might be tempted to think that kids just don’t need the things we as adults need. But the reality is that God made children for adults and God made adults for children. We need each other!
As our adult volunteers create environments for our children that are marked by familiarity and consistency, they end up creating for themselves a church community marked by deeper familiarity and consistency. When we flex the muscle of looking for the gospel in small actions among children, we choose to adorn our own lives with the grace of the gospel. When we model what we teach, we engage in the discipline of seeing God’s word as a mirror, as James wrote.
This winter, many of the groups that met earlier in the school year at church will be meeting again, but this time they will meet in homes to celebrate the way the Lord is working in their ministry to the children of our church. So now in a new setting, the very same values we strive to implement among our children will strengthen our adults! Please be in prayer for these ministry communities that as our adults live out the gospel life together, our children would see the fruits of body life lived out well. Please pray that our children would see a rich community marked by familiarity and consistency and would desire it for themselves. And pray that as our volunteers faithfully do the work of the ministry among our children, that the entire body of Christ at Heritage would be built up in love.