Continuing from my article “Becoming a Passé Pastor – 10 Hot Tips,” I have been dissecting the ten different elements that I contended were very important to continued relevance in kid’s ministry.
Missions – local and global in context, should be one of the paramount teaching topics in Kids Churches around the world. Not only should it be a topic of teaching though, it should be something that you as a minister to children should be doing and investing in. Let’s get straight to the point here: there is a world out beyond your church walls that needs the Gospel of Jesus Christ and, if we are honest with ourselves, we really more often than not don’t focus on it. That’s a big statement, I know, but if we are really honest with ourselves, at times I think we need to step back from building an empire with lots of bums on seats and consider what we are doing to reach people locally and beyond. I want to consider this from both perspectives, locally and globally.
Local Missions
Dear children’s Ministers – You have a missionary force at your fingertips, a group of people who are pre-occupied all day with socializing with other people who are developing their worldview. They are much better at evangelizing than you are, they understand the mission field much better than you do, and if you mobilize them they will be much more fruitful than you will ever be alone. We need to stop thinking of ourselves as the evangelistic force, but instead change our attitudes to become facilitators of evangelism in our local community, understanding their fruit to be our fruit. What we need is disciplers in the schoolyard; we need to teach, enthuse, excite and release children in the area of evangelism. One of the biggest obstacles that stand in the way of this missionary force is the popular media sources focus to convince children that everything is all about them, in order to create insatiable consumers. I would contend that our focus on global mission’s can be the very thing that challenges that worldview.
Global Missions
Lets face it global missions is exciting. It is exciting for adults, and, it is exciting for children. You need to be doing mission and you need to convey the global task to children. When kids start to get passionate (and compassionate) about others, particularly the lost in a worldwide sense, this will often spill out into their everyday lives. This doesn’t mean you ship kids over to the developing world necessarily (though whole families experiencing what your church is doing overseas is a great thing and something the church I am a part of has done in the past) but finding smaller, yet deliberate, ways to get kids to own your churches global vision.
Here is an example of what I have done to get kids to own our churches mission vision: Our kids ministry supports four Compassion sponsor children from Kenya; Kenya being a country which our church has a huge heart for. I once heard Tony Campolo repeat Jesus’ words in Matthew 6:21 in relation to why Christians should have sponsor children, “for where your treasure is, your heart will be also.” His train of thought was that where we put our money is often where we end up putting our heart, so if we wanted a heart for others we need to invest in others. I wanted kids to have a heart for the world, and a heart for other children, so sponsoring Compassion kids make sense. Not only do our kids give money into sponsorship; they also build relationship with them through letter writing. This starts to chip away at the media reared concept middle class kids have of children in developing nations as being the “other’. What I am saying is the letter writing (and receiving) process is chipping away at the idea that these kids in Kenya are people UNlike us, that they shouldn’t be described as “them” or “exotic” or even in some kind of bizarre form of political correctness be considered a lesser human, such as in colonial missionary days (which is why I somewhat dislike the term missions, but it serves a function for this article). Being able to visit the homes and churches of the children that my kids church sponsors, as I was lucky enough to do with five other members of my kids team whilst doing child safety training in Kenya, brings the connection into reality. These are real people, not just photos on a screen; seeing their pastor and leaders standing beside the kids they sponsor really brings that home.
That is only one example of what you can do to get kids on track towards having a global mindset. It is my firm belief that if you want effective local missionaries from the kids in your ministry, global missions can often (I’m not so idealistic to say always) be the tool that can get consumer indoctrinated children to see past themselves; to stop being such a zealous evangelist for the latest gaming console, and to become passionate about spreading the good news of Jesus Christ whilst playing with their friends on that said console. Furthermore it is a trait (a love for missions) that will hopefully stick with a child for the rest of their life. I can’t think of anything better than that; being a part of raising kids that are passionate about spreading the Gospel for the rest of their lives? That sounds like every children’s pastors dream!
So let me surmise it simply like this: Raising up children with global mindsets will reap a local reward for you now, and for the church in the future.
If you don’t have a compassion child personally, or for your Kids Church, you really should. You can get on board the good ship here.
