As a young seminary student, I rushed into the classroom having driven ninety minutes through traffic from church. It was an evening class that I took to fulfill the seminary’s requirements.
When the professor introduced the evening lecture, he commented on how many Christian leaders were not really familiar with the Bible. He said the following:
- “You would be amazed at how many Pastors have never read through the entire Bible.”
- “You’d be amazed at how many Christian leaders have not memorized at least one key passage from every book of the Bible.”
- “You would be shocked to know how many Pastors could not tell you the main theme of every book in the Bible.”
At that point, you could feel the guilt swirling through the room. Then he let everyone off the hook with a quip “and when you stand in heaven, what will you say when Nahum asks you how you liked his book?” There was an awkward laughter and then we moved on.
Too often, ministry assumes a commitment to God’s Word but in so doing actually neglects that Word.
The Information Model of children’s ministry does not make that mistake.
The Word of God is front and center in this model. In fact, the primary strength of the Informational Model for children’s ministry is the emphasis that is placed on the Word of God as the primary transformational tool that God uses in the life of a child.
The Information Model of Children's Ministry
From what I’ve seen in four decades of international ministry, this model is the most common children’s ministry philosophy in churches around the world.
Some of the key characteristics of this model are as follows:
Content – Bible content is a central element in this model. A premium is placed on Bible information, Bible knowledge, and biblical thinking. Remembering where Bible passages are located is valued. Being able to explain biblical ideas correctly is lauded. Establishing a solid biblical foundation for the children’s faith is a central goal. Advocates of the Informational Model believe that biblical knowledge and right understanding of God’s Word will naturally lead to transformation in a child.
Bible Memorization – Memorizing Bible verses is essential; not just rote memorization but being able to explain the meaning and understand the application. Knowing the order of the books of the Bible is important as well as their main ideas and themes.
Evangelism – Many of the ministries and churches advocating this model are very evangelistic. In many cases every Bible passage is viewed as having some kind of message of salvation that should be explained and children given the opportunity to respond. This is a characteristic feature of Child Evangelism Fellowship.
Incentives and Competition – Children are rewarded for accomplishments and competition is encouraged to help children excel in various activities. This is a characteristic feature of AWANA with the emphasis on excelling and not on “win at all costs” or compete to put others down.
The dominance of this model is evident in the standard question adults everywhere ask when they pick up their kids from their children’s ministry.
Our EGM teams have seen this exchange happen in at least fifteen different languages. At this point we don’t even need a translation!
We all know the parents are asking that cognitive/informational question “What did you learn today?” This is essentially an Information Model question.
The Strengths and Weaknesses Of The Information Model
The major strength of this instructional approach is its emphasis on Bible Truth. We all know it doesn’t matter how creative, engaging, applicable, or otherwise awesome your teaching is if you aren’t teaching the truth.
The truth sets us free (John 8:32), love rejoices in the truth (1 Corinthians 13:6), and our worship of God is to be rooted in truth (John 4:23-24). God calls church leaders to rightly handle His Word as the truth that it is (2 Timothy 2:15). And departing from the truth leads to all sorts of evil, sin, and loss (2 Thessalonians 2:10, 2 Timothy 4:4).
A potential weakness of this approach is evident in the school system it replicates at church: the education can frequently be unrelated to real life.
Students may attain a high level of knowledge, memorize vast quantities of material, and know the correct answers to the test questions—and not know how to do anything!
Most university graduates will tell you that after they graduated, they got out into “the real world” and learned how to do things. That’s definitely my story. When I graduated with my undergraduate physics degree, I really didn’t know how to “do” anything.
When I was a physics student, I had a unique professor. First, if Cindy Lauper married Albert Einstein, their child would have looked like this professor. He had a wild white mane and a slightly quirky demeanor. Contributing most to his uniqueness was the fact that he hardly ever spoke.
Many times, he walked into the room and wrote a problem on the chalkboard at the front of the room. Then he proceeded to solve the problem, filling the other chalkboards around the room as he did so. Often, he spent the entire 90-minute lecture period on that single problem.
Then, when he finished, he just walked out the door opposite the one he had entered by. Many times, he never said hello or goodbye; many times, he never even spoke at all. He was brilliant but completely lacking in people skills.
Later in my seminary studies, when I was introduced to the “school model” of education, that physics professor became its poster child. This label is in some ways unfortunate and even unfair because many schools don’t operate at all like that, and most teachers don’t teach like this.
However, we probably all know children who are filled with Bible knowledge but whose life shows little evidence of spiritual transformation.
In fact, the result of this paradox is common in two circles, and each has a label: PK and MK. Pastors’ kids and missionaries’ kids are notorious for behaving poorly despite being very knowledgeable about the Bible. I am personally familiar with this phenomenon.
It seems evident that the Informational Model does not flow out of direct exposition of biblical material. I would suggest that instead, the Informational Model is rooted in traditional educational models and then elements of those models are supported by “proof texts” from the Bible. It is an example of “the cart before the horse,” so to speak.
In other words, Bible passages are pulled out (often out of context) to show that the elements of the Informational Model are “biblical.”
The weakness of this approach is in the tendency to misinterpret a Bible passage to support one of the elements in your ministry philosophy. We will look at several examples of just that in the weeks ahead.
A New Information Model
In contrast, we have shown that God offers a completely biblical model for ministry in Deuteronomy 6:4-9 with several key elements that work together to lead to transformation in the life of children (and adults).
These elements are evident in the Apostle Paul’s work as well as in the ministry of Jesus Himself. We have also shown that God used these same qualities in His teaching of Moses (Exodus 3-4).
Transformational Children’s Ministry should flow directly from the Bible, not from educational models developed by people and then supported with biblical “proof texts.”
Therefore, it seems appropriate to analyze the Informational Model through the lens of the five principles found in Deuteronomy 6:4-9, Relationship, Experience, Truth, Discussion and Response.
Element | Information Model | Comment |
|---|---|---|
Relationship | *** | Relationships are important, but often the focus on “truth” teaching can minimize a relational ministry approach. |
Experience | ** | Object lessons are more common. |
Truth | ***** | The strength of this model and the core of any effective children’s ministry. |
Discussion | ** | Questions tend towards “right” or “wrong” answers and are designed to make sure the children “understand” the truth. |
Response | * | “Talking” about application is an essential element. Actual response is something different. |
Clearly, the strength of this model is the focus on teaching “truth” and believing in the life changing power of God’s Word. The following three additions could greatly enrich the Information Model:
- Experiential Bible Teaching – engaging the senses of the children as in Deuteronomy 6:4-9 or in Jesus’ ministry (cf. Luke 5:4-11).
- Discussion – creating an environment where children can “talk about” the Bible truth and the challenges of real life without “right” and “wrong” answers.
- Response – Giving children the opportunity to respond to the truth of God’s Word in the teaching setting and afterwards in their daily life.
The Informational Model has a long and cherished history, filled with changed lives and effective children’s ministry, by God’s grace. The addition of these three elements to that rich tradition would significantly add to this already fruitful ministry approach.
Next week we will examine the Participation “Fun” Model!