Rosters and Missing Church
Originally published at Youthworks.net on 25th July, 2022. © Youthworks 2022.
How many weeks a year can I ask parents and other adults of my church to join the Children’s Ministry roster?
This is very familiar question that many of us in local church ministry wrestle with. While some larger churches can form their teams with members from other services, many Children’s Ministers find that rostering in teenagers, parents and other adults from within the same service is the best option available to them.
So how many weeks is the right number?
1-2 per month or per term?
A term block each year?
One month on, three months off?
There are as many possible combination as there are churches.
However, this is not the real question we are asking, is it? There’s a question behind the question. Not, “How many weeks can I roster a church member on?” Instead, the real question we (and they… and our senior leadership team) are asking is, “How many weeks can I ask a church member to miss church?”
The assumption behind this later question is that when we serve in Children’s Ministry we are, in fact, missing church. But is this the right assumption? Do we miss church when we serve in Children’s Ministry?
The answer to that question depends on two further questions. (1) What do we believe we are doing when we come to church? (2) What do we believe we are doing when we serve in children’s ministry?
What do we believe we are doing when we come to church?
Why do you go to church? Why to the teenagers, parents and other adults that you are asking to join your Children’s Ministry team go to church?
In his writings, David G. Peterson has provided a biblical theological understanding of “gathering” and argues that every church gathering between the resurrection and New Creation is “anticipating the ultimate gathering”.
“As believers are gathered to Christ through the preaching of the gospel and have access to the Father in one Spirit through Jesus Christ, they are drawn to each other by this new relationship with God they share…
Every Christ-centred gathering is an expression of our union with him and with each other before God’s heavenly throne… God ministers to us through the fellowship of his people and we respond to him as we pray, praise, and listen to his Word.” [1]
While much more could be said about the purpose of church, sufficient for our purposes is to be reminded of these simple (and yet profound!) truths. God gathers us, with each other, to respond to God, thereby ministering to each other, through prayer, praise and listening to God’s Word.
If this is what we do when we “go to church”, then it is understandable that we would want to minimise the disruption to this healthy pattern of gathering for our members. We would absolutely want our members to miss church as little as possible.
But are we missing church when we serve in Children’s Ministry? That all depends on our second key question.
What do we believe we are doing when we serve in children’s ministry?
What are you doing when you lead your children’s ministry? What do the teenagers, parents and other adults believe you are asking them to do when you ask them to join your Children’s Ministry team?
May et al. in their book Children Matter discuss the power of metaphors to shape ministry.[2] Perhaps one of the most common metaphors for children’s ministry, especially in my context, is the “schooling model”. There’s the obvious connection to the original Sunday School movement. However, many of those who have dropped the name continue to structure and lead their ministries in ways that reflect a school orientation; an emphasis on learning content, age segregated classrooms, reviews and quizzes to motivate learning and rewards for correct answers.
Leaving aside the strengths and weakness of this metaphor from the child’s perspective, what does a schooling model indicate the role of the adult in the room is for? They are, of course, the teacher. And if not the teacher, then they are the classroom helper, whose role is to assist in maintaining good classroom management for the sake of effective learning.
This metaphor emphasises the difference between the adults in the room and the children. The children come to children’s ministry to learn, the adults to teach. The adults minister to the children, and the children receive ministry from the adults. Children’s ministry shaped by a schooling metaphor is for the sake of the children, but not for the adult. Therefore, the adult is indeed missing church. They are missing out on receiving the ministry of the gathered church through prayer, praise and listening to God’s Word in a way that ministers to them.
But what if we change the metaphor? What if our children’s ministry becomes less like a school classroom—a model that has more cultural and historic foundations, rather than a directly biblical warrant—and more like a gathering together of God’s people? What if our children’s ministry wasn’t primarily viewed as ministry to children, but churching with children?
The Pilgrim’s Journey
May et al. propose three other possible metaphors for ministry; the Carnival Model, the Dance with God model, and the Pilgrim’s Journey Model. While I do not uncritically advocate for any of these metaphors, it is the Pilgrim’s Journey Model which I believe can help us find an answer to our dilemma of asking teenagers, parents and other adults to miss church when they serve on children’s ministry rosters.
In May’s description, a Pilgrim’s Journey Model emphasises the aspects of discipleship which are shared amongst the faith community. Each person in the faith community—child, teen, adult, senior saint—are each learning and growing, becoming “mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ” (Eph. 4:13). In this metaphor, both the children and the adults in the children’s ministry are journeying together, learning as they go about God through his word. Rather than being exclusively teachers or classroom helpers, the adults in the ministry become guides in the journey. There remains an acknowledgment of experience and maturity in the faith of the adults—after all, Christ does give pastors and teachers so that the body of Christ may be built up (Eph. 4:12). However, the ministry is more easily imagined as churching with children, rather than exclusively ministry to or for children.
If “going to church” is the recognition that God gathers us, with each other, to respond to God, thereby ministering to each other, through prayer, praise and listening to God’s Word, then the Pilgrim’s Journey Model provides for us a metaphor of imagining our children’s ministry as church. Asking our teenagers, parents, and other adults to join the children’s ministry roster does not mean asking them to miss church. It means asking them to gather as the church with our youngest brothers and sisters in the faith.
Churching with Children: FAQs
How can adult ministry leaders grow as disciples of Jesus in children’s ministry?
This requires a significant mental and heart shift in ourselves and our ministry leaders. If we’re honest, the majority of children’s ministers and ministry leaders come to children’s ministry to teach, not to learn. We do not expect that ministering to children will have a reciprocal benefit in ministering to us as well. There are two mistakes here. Firstly, in my theological tradition, it is common to conflate maturity as a disciple with learning. We assume that we come to church to grow in our cognitive knowledge of God. But notice that learning is not in Peterson’s definition of gathering. If gathering as church is “anticipating the ultimate gathering,” then it is an expression of who we are. We grow as disciples of Jesus through the very act of being gathered together as God’s people and responding to him in prayer, praise and listening to his Word. The purpose of this article is to emphasise that there is nothing preventing adults “anticipating the ultimate gathering” with a group that is primarily made up of 2-5 year old’s or 6-10 year old’s in the children’s ministry. We are not missing church by serving. The second mistake is to assume that even when we do church with children, that we will not learn new things. This is also mistaken, but not the focus of this article.
What about age-appropriate learning for the adults?
In my passion for intergenerational ministry, I do not advocate for “all in all the time,” an approach sometimes called inclusive congregational.[3] I do believe that there are times when it is good for children, youth, young adults, mature adults and senior saints to gather together as peers, and to grow in their knowledge, love and obedience to King Jesus in ways that honour their particular developmental stage. Gathering as church in children’s ministry should not be the only way in which these ministry leaders gather with brothers and sisters to pray, praise and listen to God’s Word. However, my emphasis in this article is to make the case that each of these generations are not missing the opportunity to gather with God’s people and grow in maturity of faith when they are leading in age specialist ministries.
Conclusion
So, how many weeks a year can I ask parents and other adults of my church to join the Children’s Ministry roster? There’s no fixed answer to this question. Your ministry resourcing needs will be context dependent and need constant revision.
How many weeks a year can I ask parents and other adults of my church to miss church to join the Children’s Ministry roster? I hope that you agree with me that this is a false question. When we have a clear understanding of what church is, and what children’s ministry is, we can recognise that serving in children’s ministry does not involve missing church. Rather, we are gathering together with the youngest brothers and sisters in our congregation, responding to God through prayer, praise and the listening to his Word, and anticipating—alongside the children of our church—the ultimate gathering of God’s people in New Creation.
[1] David G. Peterson (2013) Encountering God Together. Cf. Peterson (1992) Engaging With God for Peterson’s full biblical theological treatment of this topic.
[2] May, Posterski, Stonehouse & Cannell (2005) Children Matter: Celebrating Their Place in the Church, Family, and Community.
[3] Cf. Malan Nel’s chapter on the “Inclusive Congregational Approach” in Mark H. Senter III (2001) Four Views of Youth Ministry and the Church for a clear articulation of this intergenerational option.