Ministry to Children?
Pastor’s Note, The Door Newsletter, October 2024
A few weeks ago, we participated in lunch and conversation with the strategic planning team. Before the event, the team asked for feedback: “Help us to identify one need in our community that you believe our congregation would be well suited to address.” The feedback was summarized, and introduced to you on easel paper that now lines the hallway. During the lunch, you all were given three stickers in the form of green dots, and circulated among the easel paper to place your stickers on the top three needs our congregation would be well suited to address. In the end, the newsprint that received stickers from more of you than any other is: “Children / Families with Children need Christians to serve them.”
What was Jesus doing when you were inspired to identify, more than any other area, a need for Christians to serve children and families with children? Were you thinking of children in our geographic area, or perhaps a particular group of children with special needs? Why would children become a central focus for the attention and resources of First Presbyterian Church Edwardsville?
There are several possible answers. Perhaps some feel that children always have been a focus of this congregation’s ministries, that it’s essential to our identity and mission. Perhaps some feel that we need children and families with children to bring down the average age, that without children and their families the congregation eventually will cease to exist. Perhaps some feel that our legacy as a church depends on how we value future generations.
Let’s shift the question from “why” to “how.” How would children become a central focus for the attention and resources of First Presbyterian Church Edwardsville? The number of children participating has been decreasing and is relatively small. What exactly would we would be doing in ministry to children that hasn’t been tried? How could we expect to do it any better than by a young pastor trained in the latest methods of faith formation, who herself was a parent with children, and a full-time staff member? Those questions seem more difficult to answer.
In many Presbyterian churches like ours, children’s ministry looks much different today than it did just a few decades ago. However children’s ministry changes among us, I understand the impulse of many of you to focus on it. The way we shepherd children says that we value future generations. According to Jesus (Mark 9:30-37), welcoming children can be an important measure of the church’s hospitality and faithfulness.
May God continue to grant us wise minds and compassionate hearts as we discern what it means to be in ministry to children.
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