Capture the heart...

I spent about four hours with a few Children Ministry leaders today.

The leadership team of ICM and the children's ministry leaders of GT Church hung out at my place for a few hours, then hit a chinese buffet. 

We tried to focus our discussion around capturing the heart of the leader, the child, and the parent.

Some thoughts from the discussion:

Capture the heart of the leader

• Children ministry often takes you out of adult services--especially in churches with only one service. This could make you feel isolated.
• We often are task driven, thus our our spiritual life can take a hit.
• We need to be spiritual self-feeders.
• We need to encourage our volunteers to be spiritually healthy, especially because they are feeding our children.

Capture the heart of the student

• Children "get it" more than we give them credit for. Don't simplify the Gospel just because you don't think they will not understand. (This is a delicate balance of providing what they need to know, but not so much they get loss.)
• Children must know who Jesus is. Don't just talk about a generic "god".
• There was some discussion regarding virtue-driven teaching as a dangerous method. I would say...as someone who uses and loves virtue-driven curriculum that you can teach virtues through powerful Bible stories.

Capture the heart of the parent

• Everyone agreed that parents need help, and need to be involved in the process. 
• There was discussion that including family/parent ministry into the children ministry philosophy must be done top down....meaning the senior pastor has to help this happen. It needs to be a church-wide philosophy, not just a children's ministry philosophy.

I love hanging out and talking about ministry stuff. It's great to hear different ideas, view points, personal soap boxes, and challenges everyone face.

Wanna hang out? I'll buy the coffee.