Five Smooth Stones For Transformational Children’s Ministry Overview

During the last thirty years of my life God gave me the opportunity to experience ministry work in a variety of cultures all with their own unique features, values and distinctives.

On several occasions I was introduced to preach and was greeted by the pastor at the front of the church with a kiss, lip-to-lip. In another country I was walking down the street with a male church elder who reached over and held my hand as we walked.

In yet another country the Sunday service featured three sermons lasting about ninety minutes total. In an East African country, the Sunday worship was very expressive and featured dancing that certainly would be considered immoral by many Eastern European Christian standards.

On one occasion I was told to make sure that my tie was tucked inside my jacket, because if it was out, it pointed to hell, an offense in their Christian culture. You get the idea.

In that kind of cross-cultural environment, a Christian leader has only one resource that is transcultural--the Bible. This focus on biblical principles is a staple in any decent cross-cultural training program.

The desire to be dependent on Bible teaching and biblical principles has been a feature of the last thirty years of ministry.

In so doing, I have come to realize how so many biblical principles are in direct conflict with popular children’s ministry philosophies, programs, models, and best practices in US churches.

Many of those children’s ministry models do not flow out of Scripture, but rather from secular educational models. They are dressed up with Bible proof texting but remain at their core secular. They advocate methods often at odds with God’s Word.

Before elaborating on that next week, I thought it might be helpful to review the biblical ground we have gone over.

The Five Smooth Stones For a Transformational Children's Ministry

Over the last five months we have reviewed Five Smooth Stones essential for a transformational children’s ministry. In the same way that God equipped David to battle the giant of his day, God has equipped the church for battle against the principalities and powers that our children face. 

These Five Smooth Stones are found in Deuteronomy 6:4-9 one of the key and essential passages in the Bible dealing directly with children’s ministry. Those Five Smooth Stones are Relationship, Experience, Discussion and Response.

They can be summarized as follows:

Relationship

Transformational children’s ministry is relational ministry. In a relationship time with their leaders, children experience for themselves the amazing love of Christ. They also learn from their leaders’ example what it looks like to live with Jesus as the Lord of every aspect of life.

The Holy Spirit works through these honest, caring relationships that ministry workers develop with the children to bring life change and genuine transformation. In addition, the children form healthy relationships with each other, as modeled by their leaders (Deuteronomy 6:4-6).

Experience

Experience is a crucial element of the learning process, and experiential teaching helps connect biblical truth to the children’s real life. Experiential teaching engages both the heart and the mind of boys and girls and prepares them for what God wants to teach them today. (Deuteronomy 6:7)

Truth

Children need to hear Bible Truth—and they need to hear it repeatedly. After all, the Word of God is more than a collection of stories, doctrines, and ideas. It is life-changing truth that teaches us who God is and who we are. The Bible is the handbook for living the life God intends for all children. Its truth stands at the core of God’s transformational work. (Deuteronomy 6:7)

Discussion

Connecting the Word of God to the children’s real life is essential to our being able to effectively minister to them. Transformational children’s ministry means the workers engage the children in discussion of the Truth of God’s Word and, in that context, about the challenges they face at home and at school.

Encouraging children to talk about what God’s Word says about specific aspects and certain circumstances in their real life helps them understand the Bible and come closer to experiencing its relevance. (Deuteronomy 6:7)

Response

Helping children respond to the truth revealed in God’s Word is every teacher’s goal. So transformational children’s ministry makes sure that children are given the opportunity to respond to God’s Truth in personal, practical ways.

This putting into practice what they learn is the next crucial step on the path toward life transformation. When we keep on responding to God’s truth, He changes us. In fact, He transforms us into the likeness of Christ! (Deuteronomy 6:8-9)

These five qualities flow directly out of an exposition of Deuteronomy 6:4-9 and are also evident in the ministry of the Apostle Paul and Jesus Himself.

The following table summarizes the Bible exposition done over ten weeks on my blog.

In addition to this we also showed over the last five weeks how these same qualities are evident in God’s calling of Moses, a kind of “lesson” from God in Exodus 3-4.

These five months I have argued that God explicitly urges that life changing children’s ministry as outlined in Deuteronomy 6:4-9 include all these five elements. I have also shown that these five qualities are evidenced in the ministry of Paul, Jesus, and God Himself.

Over the next few weeks, I will examine some of the popular models of children’s ministry in US churches and offer a helpful critique.

My goal is to encourage a fresh new dialogue regarding the very core of our children’s ministry so that we might remain faithful to the Great Commission given by Christ to His church, to make disciples of all nations, including boys and girls.