Kids’ Ministry: A New Scorecard for Success

As we’ve discussed in our last few posts, though traditional churches may make every effort to reach our children, a consumer-based paradigm of children’s ministry has serious flaws. As one calls it, pep-rally, just add water Christianity has been tried and found wanting.

As we seek a church home for our children, we must ask ourselves what our highest goal really is. For indeed, if our only goal for our children is to keep them in the church, off the streets, and off of drugs, our current mode of youth ministry will do just fine. But if our goal is a higher one, that our children might passionately love Jesus, youth ministry as we know it needs a radical overhaul. Survey after survey underscores the indisputable nature of this truth.

Suppose your child spends his entire life in the church, and passes through children’s church, junior high church, and youth group unscathed. Suppose he or she is one of the 10-20% of kids that not only graduates from youth group, but stays in the church. If everything goes according to plan, and even if he bucks the odds and stays in the church after all is said and done, is he really any better off? Kids’ church and youth group as it is presently constructed will produce children just like us; interested in Jesus, but not fully dedicated; loving Jesus, yet loving themselves; having a heart for the lost, but having little impact; wanting adventure for God, but shackled by the American dream. I don’t know about you, but my hopes for my children are so much more than this. If my children aspire to being just like their old man, that is a sad state of affairs indeed. For if I remain the highest example of the successful Christian life to my children, unoffensive, meek, and mild, I have failed in my mentorship of them. My hope and prayer for my children is that they might transcend the meager example that I have set, and truly “turn the world upside down” as the early church did. I truly believe that this will only be possible if they know a different church world than I have, where radical service, countercultural living, and the contagious spread of the gospel is the rule rather than the exception.