Recently I had one of those oddly encouraging moments that happen every so often in the world of children’s work. Someone grabbed me just as I was leaving a church BBQ, because they wanted to talk to me about the children in the church. My heart sank. We’ve all been here and had these awful conversations, they normally happen just as you’re leaving and they live with you all week.
Sometimes they are explicit: ‘Is there any way the children could go out to their groups for longer as they are quite noisy?’ Sometimes they are more subtle: ‘Would it be better for the children if they didn’t have to sit through more of the adult service?’ So I was slightly taken aback when the person said, ‘Can I just talk to you about the children’s work?’ and followed it up with, ‘Because I pray for you and the children every day and I just wondered how it was going.’ I think it’s fair to say I misjudged that situation!
His follow-up comments were really lovely. He asked if I knew how many had a real faith. I replied that it was difficult to put a precise number on it as all of them have a faith that was growing but we weren’t in the business of counting who’d ‘prayed the prayer’. We were more interested in journeying with the kids to help us all deepen our faith and relationship with God.
He replied that he was so glad I’d said that. He’d grown up in the church and had never felt the need to respond to an appeal to know God, as he’s always had deep sense of knowing God for as long as he could remember. He said he would pray the same for the kids in our church; that they would grow up not knowing what it was like to be away from God. And with that I had to leave as my kids were already in the car and I couldn’t leave them there forever! But what an ace conversation!
I wanted to share this as I think that sometimes we feel like we spend a lot of our time fighting to persuade our churches to welcome children and we often feel like we might be losing! I often post about the importance of keeping going, advocating for children, having those same conversations with the same people and rehearsing arguments that we thought were won ages ago.
I wanted to highlight that not everyone thinks like that, there are a load of people in your church who love having children there and who love what you do. We need to seek these people out. This isn’t always easy, as the complainers will seek us out soon enough. But find your supporters, as they will build you up and pray for you and are therefore some of the most important people you know!
Sam Donoghue is the Head of Children’s and Youth Support for the Diocese of London, and a volunteer children’s leader at his church.
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