Posts Tagged ‘children’

Children & the Kingdom of God

February 13th, 2009

Right now our house church is struggling through the best way to incorporate children into our community.  We are not big enough to have “programs” like children’s church or youth groups, and I am wondering if they are necessary in the first place.  Personally, I think it is problematic to consistenly separate children from the main flow of a church body.  I strongly disagree with the sentiment that children are “the future of the church” because I believe should be considered essential members of the church from the start.  Jesus certainly affirmed the validity of the participation of children in the kingdom of God.

Obviously, children learn in different ways than adults and see the world with different eyes.  So what do you do with kids?

My gut tells me that adults in the church should be more concerned about the type of people they should be to witness/model/mentor/disciple children.  Doing stuff is secondary, but how might this look?

The Bible does not have much to say on this issue.  I really like the Shema passage in Deuteronomy 6 (read it if you do not know it off the top of your head).  It seems to provide a model for partents/community members to mentor chlidren.  But how do you do this without becoming leaglistic about following a law?

For the house church I have been thinking about just including children as much as possible in our main gatherings, but not worry about trying to gear everything toward children.  I also think it would be cool to match each kid up with a non-parental mentor who will be intentional about praying/meeting/teaching the child about what it means to live your faith.

Anyone have any thoughts or good ideas?

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