In another week, I'll make my first face-to-face meeting with a dozen other children's ministry professionals who have embarked on an educational journey together. We are all members of a cohort assembled by Bethel Seminary-San Diego, in pursuit of not only our master's degrees, but I'd like to think some truly innovative ideas about how to minister to kids better.
Anytime I have the chance to interface with others who think about and practice children's ministry, it provokes introspection - both healthy and overly critical, I suppose. But just when I think I have this monster called ministry figured out, I encounter something that throws me for a loop or makes me wonder if the "progress" we're making with kids is really what it seems to be.
Anytime I have the chance to interface with others who think about and practice children's ministry, it provokes introspection - both healthy and overly critical, I suppose. But just when I think I have this monster called ministry figured out, I encounter something that throws me for a loop or makes me wonder if the "progress" we're making with kids is really what it seems to be.
Our program naturally involves a lot of reading about ministry models and the assessment of spiritual progress, and every book is a humbling reminder that there is more than one way to skin this cat, but also provokes a reassessment of what we are working towards. Frankly, there are a lot of opinions about the ultimate goal of children's ministry, and not all of them complement each other, and not all of them are correct. By "ultimate goal" I mean what we hope to see in kids at the end of all of our efforts, not the week-to-week goals (a smooth running program), year-to-year goals (that participation will build), community building goals (that kids will make friends), or instructional goals (that kids will learn X, Y, and Z).
It's become fashionable and strategic recently for children's ministries (like churches) to develop mission statements. In our ministry, we have one too: our passion is to have the biggest dreams, the best discipleship, and the most care. But language is limiting. What does that mean? Absent constant clarification and re-explanation, those just become words on a page. Now, there's some truth to the observation that you can tell a ministry's values simply by observing what it does - and that's why we've also developed these values and distinctives. They are our guideposts to define the boundaries. If, in delivering ministry, we stay within those markers, it should keep us on course for the ultimate goal. But what is that? If the ultimate objective remains fuzzy, then assessment becomes really difficult.
How many times to we hear of churches that want to turn people into "fully-devoted followers of Jesus Christ"? Or who encourage kids to "follow Christ" or "live in obedience to God" or "develop a biblical worldview"? Yet each of those descriptors, while partially helpful, fail to capture the totality of what we would hope for our kids. On the other hand, it's easy to get hooked on specific outward behaviors - do they speak, act, dress, or comport themselves as a Christian should? - when in reality, Christian maturity and growth is more than the sum of its parts. A vital, growing Christian is not just the accumulation of a set of behaviors.
The other limiting factor is that no ministry undertaking meets the ultimate goal perfectly. Small groups, retreats, music, midweek programs - all of them establish supports for kids' spiritual growth, but none is "just" what kids need in their entirety. That's why I put little stock in any approach to child development, parenting, or ministry that involves the word "just". We are sometimes told that you "just need to teach kids to respect their parents" or "just give kids consequences" or that kids "just need to learn responsibility" or "just need to spend time with their parents." We "just need to listen" to this speaker or "just read this book". The answer is never to "just" do this or that because ministry happens among people and people are organic and constantly changing. Thus, the lesson I used six months ago that went over like gangbusters may not work in another three years. (In fact, sometimes what work on a Saturday night bombs the next morning!) Camp experiences are singular and won't minister to everyone in the same way. Evangelistic crusades bring some to conversion and spiritual decisions, but not everyone.
So the target may, in fact, appear to be moving. But in reality, I think it's not dissimilar to the re-aiming that happens anytime you shoot an arrow. Because regardless of how good the last shot was, or how good it felt, you have to lower the bow, re-focus, and calmly take another shot. There is no such thing as "merely" repeating what was done before.
Above all, we need to acknowledge that spiritual growth doesn't exactly happen because of what we (parents and churches) do to a kid; rather, when spiritual growth is happening, it's the work of God in a life. Sometimes our best work is to notice and come alongside the process that's already happening, and to be patient with that process. Exhorting kids to diligent human effort is giving them religion. But a spiritual life is just that - a life. It is dynamic and changing, and implies a transcendent relationship with a higher power, with kids reaching out to God and God reaching out to them, and the change that happens in kids as a result of that.
How do we keep after this elusive target? We need to try different things. We need to operate on many fronts. We need to be working to build the greater Christian community so that kids are fortified in every environment - in their homes, among school friends, in their neighborhoods, on their teams, and of course, at their churches. We need to be sensitive to kids' questions and listen to their insights. We need to make conversation about spiritual things as natural as talking about what we saw on TV or YouTube yesterday. And we must be willing to constantly revisit and reframe the goal, lest we fall into a pattern of "just" doing this or that. What a shame if kids spent 18 years under our diligent watch, only to come away no personal relationship with God, no sense of his calling on their lives, no desire to know him, no real understanding of how he works. What if, at the end of all we've done, our kids don't need God? Will we be ok with that?
