Children’s Ministry and Culture

An old friend visited this weekend. As we discussed the highs and lows of ministry, I remembered an old Puritan volume, The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment, that I credit God using to keep me in the ministry. This is a great book for anyone in a valley experience.

The Puritans are the butt of many charicatures of what it means to be religious, and any reasonable person would never defend the human rights atrocities at Salem. This, however, was not typical of the movement. The Puritans had a very holistic spirituality and worked out a sort of psychology to figure out what a God-centered life would feel like. The Rare Jewel patiently examines of the places one’s mind can go to when suffering. In it’s own way the book acknowledges those emotions as real and valid, and then applies the salve of God’s Word.

During my Spring break I sat down with Scot McKnight’s A Community Called Atonement as part of my preparation to worship on Easter.

I’m only halfway through the book, but I’m enjoying it thoroughly. Atonement theory (what exactly was the nature of Jesus’ saving work?) has been a source of much heated debate in recent years. Are we to understand atonement as primarily as sacrifice, or ranson, or as Victor Christus?

McKnight’s answer is “yes.” All of these metaphors, and more, are welcome and necessary. Scot writes that he’d never use just one club in his golf bag. Each are necessary to understand Jesus’ saving work.

What does this have to do with children’s ministry?

I’ve been challenged to make sure that I’m more intentional at helping children more fully understand “all of his benefits”, as the Psalmist wrote.

I grew up in a faith tradition that emphasized God’s wrath toward sinners, and that the cross satisfied that wrath (The sacrifice metaphor). This is a great foundation– it’s true, and wonderful, and a cause for praise. But it’s not the whole story.

If I stop there my faith becomes individualistic, and so will the faith of those I teach. Jesus died for my sin and God is no longer angry. A impacting as that is, I’m telling a finished story. I’m describing salvation a moment and not as abundant life. And I’ve told a story that ends the moment the child says the sinner’s prayer.  

But atonement is also communal and a quality of life. Paul teaches that God’s business is reconciling all people groups to himself. Atonement involves engaging social injustice and systemic evil.

McKnight’s book reminded me that the “BridgeKids” name of my children’s ministry is an atonement metaphor. We help children “build friendship bridges to God, the church, and the world.”

McKnight’s book invited me to move back into my own metaphor and to lead parents and children from it.

I’m halfway through Peppermind-filled Pinatas, a new book by Eric Bryant, the executive pastor at Mosiac Church in Los Angeles. I sat down to read a few chapters after a long ministry day and hours of Father’s Day festivitites in the hot sun. I expect to read just a few chapters to wind down. However, I found myself two-thirds of through the book in single sitting.

Peppermint-filled Pinatas is not a children’s ministry book. However, Bryant’s book is worth your time. Eric has written a manifesto for anyone wishing to lead the people in their church out of the Evangelical subculture and into the lives of their neighbors.

The title of the book comes from the story of his attempting to host a child’s party ”on the cheap.” Eric wanted to fill a pinata with a bag of bulk peppermints until his more child-savvy wife overruled him. A pinata filled with bad candy is Eric’s metaphor on how we relate to the unchurched. We expect them to work their way through out subculture, jargon, rules, and expectations…. only to be paid off with unsatistying churchianity.

Eric offers an alternative: We can love our neighbors enough to get to know them. Eric covers many of the rough-in-tumble issues that comes with love: Confronting racism and stereotypes; bumping up against systems of morality that run counter to Christianity (and genuinely loving the people who hold them; and loving people of other religions.

My take away (so far) was the reminder that one of my central roles as a pastor is to launch members away from the church. It’s possible to create so much infrastructure that needs volunteer energy, that I divert people away from meeting and loving their neigbhors. Reading “Pinatas” made me excited about the possibilities that the Backyard Adventures have to reconnect Grace’s members to our neighorhoods. If done right, the adventures could launch an ongoing conversations between the host homes and the parents on their block.

Off the phone again with Steve and Bonnie. 100 children are signed up for today’s afternoon Bible Club party at another city school! Pray– for many of these children it will be thier first exposure to the gospel.

I received a call from my after school club leader. Every year Bonnie invites entire city elementary schools to stay after school for a year end party. Today 129 children are staying after school for pizza and to watch a movie that presents Jesus’ life. Every child walks home with a copy of the DVD and a New Testament.

I’m so proud of Bonnie and the new volunteers who are stepping up to meet this need.

On April 20 the Vatican’s International Theological Commission stated that there is good reasons to hope that babies who die without being baptized go to heaven. For our Catholic friends, this pretty much coincides with a commonly understood application of David’s prayer after his own son died (”I can go to him, but he cannot come to me”) among other theological and biblical arguments. The complete story is at http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0702216.htm which is an interesting read for all Children’s ministers regardless of your faith community.

This Friday Evening we’re hosting our first ever Mother-to-Mother Banquet. Some of the women in our MOM’s leadership (Our version of MOP’s) started revisioning the Women’s Ministry. They’ve wisely realized the women don’t just want a break from their children or to do a craft (although they do that too), but moms need opportunites to change the world. Not an easy task for a person who has to care for children, tend to home needs, and perhaps manage a career.

Anyhow, the women in the MOM’s ministry became aware of a non-profit that creates a mentoring program in the community that pairs of challenged moms with mentors. Many of the moms in the program are young and single. Others are involved in difficult or abusive relationships. Some of their children has special needs. The Mother-to-Mother program was unable to fund their annual Christmas dinner. So our MOM’s decided to take it on!

They casted a vision to myself and the executive pastor. They raised the funds. And they asked me to create an evening of children’s ministry for 70 children for three hours on a Friday Night.

How do you say “no” to this?

I invited the elementary children from my church to join in the fun. They need to sharpen their friendship-making skills. (Get the Friendship First Curriculum to raise the friendliness temperature of your children’s ministry! Best $ I ever spent in nearly ten years of pastoring children). When it’s all said and done we’ll have over a 100 children in the building from Age 0-16. The moms and their mentors will be enjoying a fantastic dinner while their children are having a blast.

Because of the multi-cultural piece, I had to write a curriculum that would accomodate Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and unchurched kids. Instead of a traditional Luke 2 curriculum, we’re doing a “God Made You Special” Cirrculum. The preschoolers will make snowflakes from thumb-prints, customized snowmen, and then move to an exploration of how God made them special. We are using the Charlie Brown Christmas special (emphasizing how the tree become special when loved) which has the Christmas story at the end. However, after 40 years of being aired on CBS I don’t believe we’ll be getting complaints.

The elementary children will have a seperate program with a similar theme.

Here’s why I love Grace: I didn’t do a lick of recruiting. Not one call. I sent two emails vision-casting the event. Sarah, the MOM’s leader, did a video announcement. And we got all the volunteers we needed. Not one cold call.

I’m amazed: Grace is over 100-years-old and a little over a decade ago suffered from a “country club” mentality. However, God has really developed the values of compassion and social justice in the book. Pastor Mike (Outreach) and Pastor Derek (Executive) really had a strong hand in this shift of in the fiber of the church.

As I’m working on this outreach, I got a call from Bonnie, who leads our off-campus children’s minstry outreaches. She needs a ton of volunteers for a group of 45 middle school children she’s collected. Rough kids. Many of whom inhabit a trailer park. Bonnie started working with these children when they were in 2nd and 3rd grade. And they won’t go away. What started as a children’s ministry is now a youth ministry.  

I love working at a place were not only is ministry created at the pastoral level but also from a grass-roots level.

Ok, you know how blogging can be, you follow a link that makes a shift to another web link that catches your eye and soon, 30 minutes have passed and you find out that you're reading topics that are so relevant and consistent with your own fears or ambivalence or curiosity, you just keep following them.

After reading Jim Collins and Andy Stanley's review in Out of Ur blogsite, I followed the trail left by another writer at http://blog.christianitytoday.com/outofur/archives/2006/03/pimping_jesus_2.html#more who questions the theology of a "personal relationship with Jesus." This is a phrase we are all familiar with in children's ministry but which is not found in the bible per se.

I'm preparing for two speaking engagements this weekend (a conference in West Covina on Saturday and preaching at an ethnic congregation in Montrose on Sunday afternoon on Missions) preparing my notes and this just stopped me.

My thoughts are, no, the phrase "personal relationship with Jesus" is indeed NOT in the bible, but it defines what the disciples experienced and what Zacchaeus wanted in Luke 19:1 - 10. The writer of the comments in the Leadership blog sees things through more adult, abstact eyes that I'd like and arguments from silence are often subtle jabs at a conforming reality rather than an out-and-out lie–which, indeed, "persona relationship" is decidedly not…now back to sermon prep!