I've been going through a metamorphosis. I've never considered myself to be a children's teacher. On the other hand almost all of my adult life, I've been an adult teacher of one kind or another. Before I became a full-time pastor, I taught adult Sunday School - usually young married couples - for two decades. Then I taught a larger group of men on Saturday mornings. When I made the decision to become a church planter 3 years ago I was sure that the group I would most attract would be adults.
I'm so glad that God is not impressed with my resume. This year He has been bringing children to Church Requel. For sure, there usually are adults connected with them somehow. Without any question the fastest growing demographic in our small church are elementary age children. And I'm thrilled!
This past weekend we invited our children to read the story of David and Goliath from 1 Samuel 17. One of our parishioners, Diana, took some great photos and posted them up on Facebook last night. (I'm pretty sure you need to have a Facebook account to see them. We hope to have them on our public website soon. UPDATE: The photos are now also on our public website here.) The picture above is one of those pictures from Sunday night, when I had the privilege to talk with our kids afterward.
That brief conversation has stuck with me. I asked the kids what they learned from the story. Little Cohen with all the pre-Kindergarten wisdom he could muster said, "God is bigger than anybody!" Anna wondered if it really was appropriate to talk about such violent stories in church as she pointed to the verse where David cut off Goliath's head.
When I was a kid, I took for granted being in church Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night. Sunday School was an automatic. Then there was Bible Quizzing and Awana. While I've never thought much about it before, all of those experiences have a lot more to do with me now being a pastor than any of my seminary training.
When I then think of today's kids, including my own grandchildren, I'm wondering what the next generation of Christians will grow up to become. Seated in my small congregation could be one of the next great pastors. Perhaps Church Requel is not so much about my ministry as it is about the next generation's ministry. Another way of thinking about it is this: Maybe my ministry is about training them for their ministry.
I know this is true for all of my congregation, adults included. All year, though, I've been reminded about the brutal honesty of children. They have the same questions about God and the spiritual life as everyone else, but they haven't yet been trained to ask only polite and acceptable questions. This is the time to reach them. This is the moment to answer questions - while they're asking!
I don't know exactly what God is calling me to do about this. I do know this - I need to do more for our kids than what we're doing now. I also know one other thing. This is not something that I can just assign to someone else and check off "children's ministry" from the list. I know I can't accomplish it alone. We will need a team. But that team will have to include me.
I want the kids who grow up at Church Requel to know that they had access to their pastor. I want them to grow up knowing that their faith was as important as more important than soccer and music lessons. I want there to be a time in my weekly schedule when I can interact with our children, teaching them, modeling the Christian life to them, sharing life with them, knowing them.
This is the real change. The big change is not what God has been doing to bring children to CR. The big change is the what God has been doing in my heart to love our children and see them for who they are - individual souls with their own need of our Lord and Savior. The big change in me is that I no longer see our children as the church of tomorrow, but as the church of today!
