How does the commitment level model of youth ministry function among children? Before youth leaders copy what they have done among teenagers they should consider how the model should be applied to a younger age group. In applying the model, the following options could be used:
1. Uncoordinated Department-Based Ministry
Here different ministries that have been developed within the local church, such as Friday children’s group and Sunday School are run with no attempt at co-ordinating efforts. This is obviously the least effective option - but probably the most common model that is used at present.
2. Coordinated Department-Based Ministry
One of the options in ministry among children is to co-ordinate the various ministries that are targeted at children and work at getting each ministry to identify at which commitment level they are targeted. Here, for example, the Sunday School may decide to focus on Christian education and cater primarily for Christian children - to ground and grow them in the faith; while the Friday children’s group may decide that they will aim at contacting and evangelising children with the gospel. One of the dangers here is that insufficient attention may be given to the unique life stage of children and a purely evangelistic event aimed at Children may well produce converts, but some responses may well be pre-mature and actually more appropriate to a later stage of development, such as during adolescence. There is no doubt that the majority of conversions take place during childhood and early adolescence, but a lot of children who make decision to follow Christ during childhood do not integrate into the church as they grow older. With this option it is essential to have an adequate follow-up programme in which new converts can be helped to understand the implication of their faith response to Christ.
3. Duplicated Teenage Commitment Ministry
This option suggests that children are no different to other age group, so the model should simply be duplicated for them. Here the same number of levels of ministry are used as with the teenage group. As with the teenage model, the youth leader could develop the model with separate levels on different evenings or separate levels in different events. Unfortunately, children are not just mini-teens - their social, cognitive and spiritual development differs significantly from that of teenagers, so the model must be contextualised.
4. Adapted Commitment Ministry for Children
This option suggests that the youth leader should carefully consider how the model relates to children and come up with an age-appropriate adaptation of the model. The following guidelines are suggested:
A. Developing Child-Appropriate Ministry
The various developmental theories of childhood suggest that the child should be handled differently to teenagers or adults. Socially they are looking to grow in initiative and industry while being dependant on others; cognitively they readily accept what they hear without critical evaluation; morally they are motivated to obey rules out of a desire to avoid punishment or to satisfy their needs; and spiritually they are developing a healthy image of God as they learn about him and experience him through prayer, worship and devotions.
John Westerhoff says that children are at a stage of experienced faith - here their patterns of believing, trusting and doing are the product of what they have learned from others. They are about to enter the stage of affiliative faith - where they identify with the beliefs of others (a second-hand faith). For Westerhoff, the crucial issue for ministry among children is to emphasise Christian nurture - to lay a foundation that can be built on during the later adolescent phase of searching faith - where as a result of critical reflection and doubt, the child can experience conversion.
Lawrence Richards, in Children’s Ministry, Page 76f, says the following processes influence the growth of faith: (1) Belonging to a faith community - children must feel like they belong in the faith community which helps them to accept what they hear and encourages them to give and receive love - essential to developing faith; (2) Participating in the faith community - children need experiences where they minister as well as where they are ministered to, so they must get involved in service where they can reach out with the love of Christ to others; (3) Modelling on people in the faith community - leaders have an impact in the lives of children as children identify with them and imitate them; (4) Instruction in the Word of God - Instruction should be woven into daily life (Deuteronomy 6:7) - so leaders should show children from Scripture how to live with God and with others in the world; and (5) Opportunities for responsible choices - children need to have opportunities in which they can practise their ability to make responsible choices - they must be lovingly corrected when their choices are bad, and praised when they choices are good. A children’s ministry must include an emphasis on each of these in the total programme.
These factors emphasis the important of children being nurtured in the Christian faith. They need to be included in an environment where they are taught the faith - even before they have experienced a conversion experience. The same things happens in a Christian home where children are socialised in the faith (they pray, say grace before meals, read Bible stories, attend church, etc) before they come to a point in which they are given a chance to make a personal response to Christ’s offer of salvation.
Lawrence Richards is not suggesting that conversion is unimportant, as later in the book he addresses the issue of evangelising children. He says that (a) becoming a Christian involves a supernatural work by God (it is more than being born into a Christian family or participating in a church - there must be a conversion experience), and (b) becoming a Christian involves a faith response to God (it is more than just believing certain things - there must be a personal response to God). He stresses that children can make a faith response to God even if they do not understand the gospel, like Old Testament believers (Children’s Ministry, Page 372f).
A further area of concern is the role of the home in the nurture of children. Throughout the Bible the emphasis is on parents teaching and developing their children in the faith. Unfortunately, in our broken and busy society many parents are either not able to fulfil their role or they are not interested in developing their children spiritually. The church need to equip parents for the work of nurturing their children and provide structures where children from broken, blended or non-Christian homes can receive the nurture they need. Having family worship, where children who attend a service without parents are adopted by an adult during the meeting is one way in which churches can nurture children.
B. Building Ministry on Christian Nurture
In thinking about the various commitment levels that ministry among children could or should be target at, following levels are suggested: (1) evangelising the seeker; (2) following up the new convert; (3) nurturing the believer and (4) involving the worker in service.
The Windsor Fellowship church merged their Sunday School with the Friday night children’s group. Sunday morning is dedicated to family worship. The focus of the Friday night children’s event is educating children in the Bible and in missions. Many new children come to this event through invitations from their friends. The event includes outdoor games, competitions, worship, teaching in classes, a missionary slot and refreshments.
It is tempting to think of developing the ministry by moving away from a one-event-targets-all commitment levels to (1) handling different levels on different evenings of the month; (2) having totally separate ministries at each commitment level functioning at different time (see an example of programmes aimed at different levels - ie. evangelism, education and worship); or (3) aiming different parts of the evening at different commitment levels. On much reflection, it is possible that a more effective approach is still to be discovered for commitment level ministry among children - one which takes childhood developmental insights seriously.
This approach suggests that children’s ministry should be built on the foundation of Christian Nurture. The aim of ministry here is to expose children to the Christian faith, teach them the basic beliefs on which the faith is based, and involve them in various aspects of practising the faith, such as in prayer, worship, study and serving. The goal is not to socialise children into the kingdom of God, but rather to provide an accepting and educational context in which children can develop a positive image of God and themselves as his creation.
This model moves away from having a periodic evangelistic slot. It also moves away from the altar call type of evangelism which often causes children to make a response because of the emotional persuasion or out of a desire to please or copy their friends. The key to integrating conversion into this model is to train leaders to be able to recognise when a child is ready to make a commitment to accept Jesus as Saviour, and to know how to lead them to Christ.
Read more about Evangelising Children and equipping children's workers to lead children to Christ.
Opportunity should be provided during small group, sports or refreshment time, for leaders to get alongside children to communicate the gospel one-on-one with them. Follow-up could take place during the teaching time - in a small group that is consists of children who have recently made a commitment to accept Jesus as Saviour. Children who have grown to a stage where they are ready to serve others, should be involved in areas of ministry within the group. They could be used to help with various aspects of programming, be involved in intercessory prayer, help with setting up or cleaning up before and after events, etc.
So, in this suggested model, evangelism takes place in a context of Christian nurture and through leaders who individually follow-up children that are ready to respond to Christ’s offer of salvation. While a funnel such as the one below will happen in reality, it is done without four different events or clearly defined ministries operating at different times.
The model could be shown graphically as follows:
The following graphic attempts to show how the model works in practise:
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