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The single most important charge to everyone who ministers to children is to get the Gospel right and keep it central in all we do. The apostle Paul calls the Gospel the message of first importance:
For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures. (1 Corinthians 15:3-4)
If we get everything else right in our ministry to children but miss keeping the Gospel our number one priority, we’ve failed in the task God has given to us. The message of the cross is not one story that comes late in the Gospels; it is the big-picture story of the entire Bible. But that is a reality I didn’t understand coming into children’s ministry. It was something I had to learn. Let me tell you a bit of my story.
During my first days as a new pastoral intern, Alan, the assistant pastor, handed me a crate full of files and announced, “Congratulations! You are our new children’s ministry pastor.” My task: Pick out a curriculum for our ministry to use.
The first sample I took from the crate contained a lesson on creation. A good place to start, I thought. But the focus of the lesson was human-centered, charging the children to save the whales and the other endangered animals of the planet. I’m not against good stewardship of creation, but I knew that was not the main message of Genesis 1–3. I tossed that curriculum in the trash. By the time I completed my curriculum reviews, the crate was empty and the trash can was full.
From there we experimented with various curricula. Some came full of games but were weak in theology. Others emphasized teaching the Scriptures but were not as fun for the children. When something new came out, we would give it a try, but I still didn’t know the importance of keeping the Gospel central to our program.
Everything changed when a church member encouraged me to read a four-volume book set called Promise and Deliverance, written by S. G. De Graaf, a pastor in the early 1900s from Amsterdam who held a weekly class for children’s ministry teachers to help them understand how to teach the Bible to children. De Graaf’s lessons became the content for his books.
De Graaf taught that Bible stories are not primarily moral lessons. Rather, they teach us about God and His Gospel plan to restore the fallen creation.
As I read De Graaf’s books, God helped me understand that every lesson we teach should showcase the Gospel. I began to read other books on biblical theology. Suddenly the Old Testament came alive to me. From the creation of Adam and his fall into sin to the new creation and restoration of all things in Revelation, the Bible is one story! The problem was, I couldn’t find a curriculum that theologically pointed every lesson, Old and New Testaments, to the saving work of Christ.
“What we need someone to write,” I told a fellow children’s pastor friend, “is a curriculum that teaches children of every age the same story and showcases the Gospel of Jesus Christ every lesson. That way dads could follow up with one Bible story, which could also serve as their family devotions.” My friend agreed. “Why don’t you write your own?” he said. So for the next 10 years, I labored to write a curriculum that fulfilled that focus, one we still use at my church today.
It’s been 38 years of leading our children’s ministry since I first received that crate full of curriculum samples. We are not looking for the latest and greatest curriculum. Each week we simply tell the old, old story.
Here are three principles I’ve learned along the way that can help you keep your ministry to children focused on the Gospel:
Don’t Trade the Gospel for Good Morals
Choose a curriculum that showcases the Gospel and explains how each story or passage points forward to the coming of Christ or points back to what Christ did when He died on the cross. If you are using a curriculum that is human-centered and teaches children good behavior, look for a curriculum that teaches the Gospel. Then drop your old one in the trash.
If you are currently using a Bible curriculum that is God-centered but stops short of making Gospel connections in each lesson, you can make those connections for your teachers and give them the tools they need to learn to do that for themselves.
Read the following books:
- Show Them Jesus: Teaching the Gospel to Kids by Jack Klumpenhower
- The Unfolding Mystery: Discovering Christ in the Old Testament by Edmund Clowney
- God’s Big Picture: Tracing the Storyline of the Bible by Vaughan Roberts
- According to Plan: The Unfolding Revelation of God in the Bible by Graeme Goldsworthy
Give every teacher in your ministry a copy of Show Them Jesus and encourage them to use the principles they read in their classrooms.
Teach Your Children That They Are the Sinners in the Story
As I began writing a Gospel-focused curriculum, I asked our fifth and sixth grade class one question: “What is the Gospel?” Out of the 25 students in the class, only a handful gave a complete answer. Most of the class did not have a clue.
Our old curricula taught them to identify with the hero in the story. They should be like David who conquered Goliath and like Moses who delivered God’s people. Sadly, we taught them self-sufficiency: that they could conquer the giants in their lives. If that were true, if we could save ourselves, we wouldn’t need Jesus. But it is not true. Apart from the Spirit of God, we are helpless to change ourselves.
Our children are not the heroes in the story. They are the sinful Israelites who disobeyed God and shrank back in fear of Goliath, who need someone to deliver them. They are the sinners who perished in the flood, who need the ark of rescue (Jesus). They are the grumblers of Israel who rejected Moses and longed to return to Egypt. They are Peter, who denied Christ, and Thomas, who doubted. Our children are the sinners in every story who always need a Savior.
By God’s grace, today we have a steady stream of youth who testify at their baptisms how they knew the Gospel from an early age, and they often mention our children’s ministry and its influence in their lives.
Let the Holy Spirit Do His Work
When giving his defense before King Agrippa, the apostle Paul shared a three-pronged ministry philosophy. He said, “I preached that they should repent and turn to God and demonstrate their repentance by their deeds” (Acts 26:20, NIV). It is helpful to keep Paul’s example in mind as we minister to children. While a child can declare repentance and a desire to turn to God in a moment, only time reveals true Spirit-wrought change. Only God can cause the seeds we plant to grow (1 Corinthians 3:6-8).
Let’s not manipulate children in the classroom to make a quick profession. Let’s allow the Holy Spirit to do His work of conviction, repentance and sanctification in our children’s lives. You cannot thwart the work of the Spirit by being slow to label a child a “Christian.” You can, however, give an unbelieving child false assurance by asking them to raise their hand to become a “friend of Jesus” and then declare them saved on that basis.
In my experience, most children pledge their lives to Christ in their middle school and high school years rather than in earlier grade school. We work to sow the seeds of the Gospel and call our children to repent (turn from their sin) and believe (put their faith in Christ), but it is the Holy Spirit alone who causes those Gospel seeds to grow and transform lives.
I don’t know how many more years I’ll be leading our children’s ministry before I pass leadership to the next generation. But I will say this: While I hope the next leader of our children brings new vision for the ministry, I also hope they continue to teach the old, old story of Jesus and His glory. For it is this same Gospel focus that the Holy Spirit will use to save the next generation, mature their faith and lead them to carry the baton to yet another generation.
Check out Awana’s newly released book, From Children’s Ministry to Child Discipleship: A Journey to Faith That Lasts.
