Ashley Nichols is Children’s Minister at Christ Church Cockfosters. Here, he adds some thoughts and views into the debate about the future of children’s ministry.
I’d like to join the conversation with Sam Donoghue, as well as writers such as Dave Csinos and Ivy Beckwith, as we reimagine how we do children’s ministry. Like my fellow children’s workers, I look with anticipation to how children’s ministry should evolve to become more than childcare, a church growth strategy or meaningless fun, to becoming effective whole-life discipleship of children, so we see a generation passionate about their faith in Jesus.
There’s so much in their ideas I’m keen to see more of in children’s ministry, such as creating opportunities for children to ask questions, giving them the confidence and tools to read God’s Word independently, making more time for quiet, prayer and worship in sessions. We need to be modelling a passionate Christian life as leaders and regularly talking to them about what they’ve been doing in their lives to help them think Christianly about how they live and apply what they are learning.
What does this new model may look like practically? To what extent should we give children space to ask questions, discuss and reflect on a Bible passage? Like me, you might be asking, ‘How far should we step back?’ How do we show them what the Bible says but not be so prescriptive that children don’t get to think about it? When should we instruct and when should we let children decide meaning for themselves?
Here are some questions I’ve been considering:
- Should we help children understand the meaning of a passage if prior knowledge of the Old Testament, historical context or knowledge of the world is necessary to interpret the story?
- If we give children authority to decide truth about the meaning of a passage for themselves, what could be the consequences when it comes to deciding morals or ethics in their teenage years?
- No one comes to the text neutrally – how can we help them not to impose secular thinking onto the text, so that we don’t get a ‘Disneyesque’ version of David and Goliath where the learning point is trusting in yourself (which does not align with the Bible’s teaching)?
- How can we help children distinguish between their imagination and what the text says when they wonder about the story?
- How much of the adult-teaching-children model that we see in places such as Proverbs, where the father calls his son to listen and remember his lessons, is prescriptive to how we should teach or parent?
- How should we respond at times when children want absolute answers, don’t like uncertainty and look to adults for assurance from Scripture?
- If sin clouds a child’s view of God, how might they correctly hear his voice and examine their own hearts?
In helping children come to the Bible independently and discern meaning for themselves, the framework we provide to help them interpret the Bible should consider these issues carefully. Children need to know the true God of the Bible rather than the God made in their image – I imagine lots of what we do in children’s ministry is about giving children this framework.
I hope these may be helpful in fleshing out how we enable children to find meaning in God’s Word. These thoughts should also prompt us to think and discuss further how we can develop children’s ministry to help them discover sincere and deep faith in Jesus that will last a lifetime.
What is your opinion about the future direction of children’s ministry? Add your thoughts in the comments below!