My church has a good children’s ministry. I’m impressed every time I hear our children’s minister present a children’s moment during the church service, and every time I’ve encountered the children’s programs myself, including the couple of times I’ve been invited to speak.
The children are learning a great deal about Christianity, their church, the Bible, and how to live. The problems are challenging and sound. I’m likely to always push for more challenging material, but it’s possible that I would go overboard on that.
I was talking to a church leader a while back who told me that one of all the things going on in the church, the children’s ministry made him most hopeful. Despite the fact that my children are grown, and they’re taking my grandchildren to churches in other cities, I would agree.
So how can I have a problem with this exceptional ministry?
The problem I have isn’t with the program. In fact, I suspect that your church has the same problem as does mine. I’m wondering just where the needed backup is. No matter how good your church’s children’s program is, you can’t depend on other people (children’s ministers, teachers, pastors, and so forth) to nurture your child’s faith.
Just as the home situation is a better predictor of how a child will do at learning, so the home is where most spiritual formation takes place. The church can help, but it cannot replace the parents (or grandparents!) in preparing children for life.
My parents were quite willing to talk about their faith, though they were much more willing to live it. I know my parents prayed, not because they told me they did so, nor because they talked about praying, but because I saw and heard them doing it. I know they spent time studying the Bible, again not because they said so many pious things about the Bible, but because I saw them do it.
I have in my possession one Bible from each of my parents. One is a pocket sized King James Bible that belonged to my father. There isn’t a page in that Bible that isn’t packed with the notes my dad wrote as he read it year after year. It’s in doubtful shape now. But I don’t have to wonder just how much my father cared about his Bible.
I got the Hebrew Bible I carry from my mother. It’s the smaller edition of the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia. She wanted to stick with the larger edition because the print in this one is too small. But this Bible reminds me that not only did she study all her life, but that she eventually took the time to learn both Hebrew and Greek to use in her personal study.
It was not uncommon to hear the words of scripture from my parents’ lips. But even more importantly they tried to put those words into practice, from the various places the practiced medicine here in the United States, in Canada, in Mexico, and in South America. They gave of themselves.
And that is the true formula for seeing your children involved not just in church but in service throughout their lives. Let them see you do it. Let them know that your faith is important to you, not just because you send them to a Sunday School class, or because you attend a worship service, but because you have made it part of your life.
They’re going to remember a great deal more of what they see you model than they will of what you or someone else tells them. And if you make prayer and Bible study a part of your daily life you’ll also find that those wonderful folks who work in children’s ministry can accomplish much more than they can otherwise.
Don’t make your children’s faith an afterthought. Live your life of faith. Let them see something worth choosing and pursuing.
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