Creative Scribble

For years we’ve been told the statistic that people are so much more likely to come to faith in Christ before the age of 16. But today I read a statistic that was just as interesting: 90 percent of adults who come to faith in Christ report to have had at least a spiritual seed of some kind planted early in life.

With both of those in mind, we must make our ministry to children on Sundays more than just story time and a piece of candy. Eternity truly hangs in the balance for countless numbers of lives in OneLife Kidz –birth to 5th grade – each week. These kids really need to discover God and how their one life can make a difference.

Seeing that happen will take a great deal of intentionality.

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First of all, we love kids so much that we refuse to bore them with a message designed for someone much older. That means we need age-appropriate environments where kids can learn about Jesus in a way that they understand. So we have to lead two groups of people to want to be a part of that.

Parents have to feel comfortable first of all. Being a new church means they will be dropping their kids off with complete strangers for an hour. To help with that, we will first ensure our workers are qualified both in training and having background checks. Second, we will take safety and security extremely seriously. All children will be checked-in as soon as they arrive. Parents will be given a security tag that matches a tag on their child. Once the service is over, only someone with a tag can get that child. During the service, the children’s areas will be locked down and monitored and if a parent needs to attend to their child, their security tag number will be shown on the screen in the auditorium.

But those are all the boring details!

The kids are most important. We must have environments where they can’t wait to show up each week. So to start out we’ll break it up into three groups: birth-2, 3-5, and K-5th grades. In each group the environment, music, activities, and lessons will be high energy and just what a kid that age will want to be a part of. That is what it will take to keep them interested so we can tell them about the most important story ever. What about needing volunteers to pull it off? We’ll use video-based curriculum complete with funny videos, great story tellers, music with dancing, and the whole nine yards. That frees our volunteers up to act as small group leaders to build relationships and drive home that morning’s “big idea.”

Our goal is for kids to have fun and have their lives changed forever in the process. It will take volunteers at Kidz Check-In to be welcoming, small group leaders to build relationships, and large group leaders to dream up the fun environments that will have kids begging to come back each week. I can’t wait to see it all happen!