Justification & the Shape of Children's Ministry

[This essay was initially written Fall of 2015 in Theology of Christian Leadership class at Criswell College under the supervision of Dr. Christopher Graham.]

What happens when a child who receives Jesus fails to ever understand the implications of his new standing before God? This is an unfortunate reality in the life of many churches and children’s ministries. There are children in the church who never (or late in life) come to a lived-reality that their lives are reoriented toward God’s kingdom because of their new standing before God. While they have access to God, they neither understand his power nor the worldview of his kingdom. They continue to be enslaved to the social practices and norms of their culture, rather than living under the reign of Christ. While it may be granted that responsibility lies on the individual, particularly once these children reach adulthood; yet responsibility also lies with the church and in particular within the children’s ministry.

To what end do we enact the structures, practices, and activities in children’s ministry which embodies the reality of our new standing before God? Children’s ministries have enacted structures, practices, and activities for numerous reasons. Some of these reasons have been based on pragmatic and/or theological grounds. This essay explores the relationship between the doctrine of justification and children’s ministry.

Justification is a forensic term denoting a change in our legal standing before God. Stan Grenz writes that justification “is God’s ultimate answer to the condemnation that stands over us because of sin…As a result we can enjoy new standing before God.” Thus, how can a children’s ministry structure its practices and activities to operate with this reality in mind?

1. Recognize that our new standing before God enables our worldview to be reoriented by the power of the Spirit. This includes both a (re)structuring of children’s ministry and the (re)orientation of the child’s life to this end. I fear that some Christians fail to recognize that our new standing before God has brought forth particular new realities associated with God’s redemptive activity in Jesus and by the Spirit. When we fail to recognize these realities, we fail to shape our life—ecclesial and individual—from the reality that we now are in fellowship with the Triune God and living under his reign. This failure effects not merely ourselves but those to whom we minister the gospel of Christ. Our new standing before God enables us by the Spirit to be reoriented to the practices of God’s kingdom.

2. Evaluate our practices in light of our new standing before God. Coming out of and living in a world predisposed to sin and rebellion against God makes it necessary for us to evaluate the social practices and structures in which we participate. Evaluating our practices in light of our new standing before God helps us understand and participate in God’s present reign. So how do we evaluate our practices in light of our new standing before God? It may be helpful to begin with questions, such as: How does this practice support, demonstrate, and/or embody the reality that we (Jesus followers) have a new standing before God? How does this practice support, teach, and/or help a child understand her new standing before God?

 3. Perform the realities that our new standing before God has given us. Because of our new standing before God, we live as justified ones. We are no longer alienated from God, but have put on the righteousness of Christ Jesus. This reality enables us by the Spirit of God to be in fellowship with the Triune God and live under his reign. For all Christians, this new standing before God transfers us into his kingdom. No longer are we to represent the way of sin, rebellion, and death, but we are to represent God’s way—a way of peace, reconciliation, and freedom. We are not merely made right before God in order to go our own way, but to come into fellowship with him in his kingdom. 

Central to structuring the practices and activities of children’s ministry under the reign of Christ is the fundamental reality that we who follow Jesus have a new standing before God. This is a fundamental aspect of our worldview, both for those leading children and children themselves, and must be embodied—ecclesiastically and individually. Children’s ministries cannot leave children grasping for their identity in the world and before God, but must lay the child’s foundation as one who lives in new standing with God (and all that it implies) through its structures, practices, and activities. May a child not fail to grasp the lived-reality that she has new standing before God, because we choose a model of children’s ministry that does not negotiate this theological reality.

There Is No Junior Trinity After All

[This essay was initially written Fall of 2015 in Theology of Christian Leadership class at Criswell College under the supervision of Dr. Christopher Graham.]

With the coming of age and progeny of the Baby Boomers came the professionalization of children’s ministry. No longer would children’s ministry be bound to merely Sunday school or mid-week programs. An organizational overhaul occurred in the 1970’s and 1980’s with the hiring of children pastors/directors. For some, children’s ministry, in particular children's church, has become functionally “the church” for children to the exclusion of any integration into the broader church. 

Stan Grenz argues that “[t]he Father, Son, and Spirit are the social Trinity,” which entails that “community is not merely an aspect of human life, for it lies within the divine essence” (Grenz, Theology for the Community of God, 76). How might the social character of the Trinity inform the organizational leadership of children ministry?

The concept of perichoresis, a term that helps us understand the social Trinity, may provide a framework by which children ministry is to relate to the church.[1] Perichoresisis “the teaching that the life of each of the persons [of the Godhead] flows through each of the others, so each sustains each of the others and each has direct access to the consciousness of the others” (Erickson, Christian Theology, 366). The 4th century theologian Basil of Caesarea describes the idea of perichoresis, “For all things that are the Father’s are beheld in the Son, and all things that are the Son’s are the Father’s; because the whole Son is in the Father and has all the Father in himself.” How can the concept of perichoresis inform the organizational leadership of children’s ministry? Two thoughts come to mind: (1) While children’s ministry is distinct from other ministries in the church, so should other ministries flow through children’s ministry and vice versa;[2] and (2) the church must integrate children’s ministry within the whole life and worship of the church.

1. While children’s ministry is distinct from other ministries within the life of the church, the ministries of the church flow through children’s ministry and vice versa. Children’s ministry should not be a ministry within the church that stands separate and unrelated to other ministries within the church. Children’s ministry ought to participate with other distinct ministries within the church. The outflow of children’s ministry into other ministries can express itself as children learning from and ministering to those involved in other ministries. The structuring of a church's ministries can give rise to the complaint that some of the senior adults do not know our younger families well and vice versa. A potential solution here introduces our children to our senior adults, having our children pray for and interact with our senior adults during an event or Sunday school. Although these ministries have distinct functions, they flow through each other and sustain each other.

2. The church must integrate children’s ministry within the whole life and worship of the church. This is worked out importantly through participation in the sacraments. One Sunday morning, I walked into the nursery after church. As I walked in to the nursery, a little 4 year old girl ran up to me and asked, “Did y’all eat with God today?” referring to the Lord’s Supper. While I have made efforts to integrate our children into the life and worship of the church through participation in the ordinance of the church, full integration has yet to occur. When serving at Hickory Tree Baptist, children left children’s church to participate in the Lord’s Supper and baptism, while our infants and preschoolers remain in the nursery. As inadequate as my  solution was, I made efforts to integrate our infants and preschoolers by taking the elements of the Lord’s Supper to the nursery to explain the elements, to read Scripture, and to take communion with the nursery ministry leaders. 

 The social life of the Trinity can inform the outworking of organizational leadership within the church and distinctly in children’s ministry. Through the use of the concept perichoresis, the life of children’s ministry is grounded in theology, particularly a Trinitarian theology. It is unnecessary for us to throw the baby out with the bathwater. We maintained a children’s ministry which is integrated into the life and worship of the church and yet is functionally[3] distinct. The life of each of ministry flows through each of the others, so each sustains each of the others and each has direct access to the others. There is no junior Trinity after all.

[1]The way in which kid ministry relates to the church has become a perplexing and complicated question. Churches structure and run their kid ministry in various ways. While some children’s ministries are more static than others, but children’s ministry as a whole is in a state of becoming. Kid ministry, like some other specialty ministries, isolate themselves to the point of being “the church”. The challenge for the church to express the concept of perichoresis reminds the church despite its structural model that the church is unified in the midst of its diversity. It is most important to identify the unity of Christian worship in categories that are experienced by the local church unity-in-person: (1) declaration of the kingship of Jesus by his bride as given by the Father, (2) observance of the ordinances/sacraments in recognition of the bride's solidarity with the sufferings of Christ, (3) the Spirit's empowered unity of a diverse people, and (4) etc.

[2]Kid ministry is not the center or central ministry of the church. However, it is a ministry of the church and as much it flows through the life of the church as do other ministries of the church into the life of the church.

[3]It is not ontological distinct. Kid ministry is only distinct in regard to function, that is its ministry to children. It is ontologically unified to the makeup of the church.

Inescapably An Eschatological Leader

[This essay was initially written Fall of 2015 in Theology of Christian Leadership class at Criswell College under the supervision of Dr. Christopher Graham.]

“Leadership is the act or task of making an intentional contribution toward the direction and motivation of a group in the framing and pursuit of a common purpose,” David Starling writes. Leadership according to Starlings’ definition has purpose and direction. When we consider these two characteristics of leadership within Christian leadership and theology in particular, we will soon discover that Christian leadership is eschatological. Stan Grenz observes that in the study of eschatology “we speak about God’s goal or purpose for his activity in the lives of individuals, in human history, and in creation.” As a Christian leader representing the purposes of God, we lead people toward his telos and in expectation of the consummation of his new creation. This transforms the way we approach Christian leadership within the church and within children’s ministry. It requires Christian leaders (and the church) to model God’s new humanity in so far as possible, and affects our disposition in the present dying and decaying world.

God’s eschatological plans provide us with confidence as a participant in his divine program in the present evil age. Jesus encourages his disciples on the eve of his crucifixion to take heart because he has overcome the world (John 16:31). Though opposition opposes, we are able to have confidence in God’s eschatological plan, because Jesus has first overcome the world.

God’s eschatological plans motivates us toward an urgency for gospel proclamation. God’s imminent plan to finalize his rule and reign, thereby destroying his enemies urges me to call men, women, and children under his reign. 

God’s eschatological plans provokes us to have a present joy, knowing the telos of God’s divine program. While Jesus conveys to his disciples that they will have much sorrow, he affirms they will have much joy when they see him again (John 16:22). The apostle Paul describes it “as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing” (2 Corinthians 6:10).

God’s eschatological plans encourages us toward steadfastness in holy living. Paul in Romans 13:11-14 calls us to holy living because “the night is far gone; the day [of salvation] is at hand.” By the power of God’s Spirit, I am able to presently participate in the holy life which will be consummated in God’s new creation.

The disposition of the Christian leader is inescapably affected in the present by God’s eschatology plans for his new creation. God’s eschatological plans form the backbone of Christian leadership, and the Christian leader depends upon God’s consummative action in the future for his/her mission and direction today.