Train a child in the way he should go...

"They have short attention span." " They lack joy in worship." "They don't know how to pray." "We need more parents' involvement in the children's spiritual life...." "We need more teachers!" "Got more budget?"

Interesting thoughts from about 20 of us at the Children Ministry retreat held at the British Club today. I had thought that only the worship team (where Mr. Jang and I were involved) faces such issue since we deal with a big group of kids but in fact, the smaller care groups are facing just the same challenges as we do.

My 1000km/h brain immediately thought of the solutions to all these and I was wondering why PC, who was organising the session, kept asking us to hold discussions on the solutions. I realised after lunch that she wants us to think through why we are here in the first place: Our purpose (the "mission" of Children Ministry), Our product (we actually want the children to be disciples of God who produce more and more disciples!), and Our priorities (building an atmostphere of love, a dependence on prayer, a tripartite relationship with parents and the larger church, a word-centred ministry and inculcating the proper knowledge of Christ and the Gospel).

And then we think about Our processes - do we want more parents-teachers interaction, do we want to plan local missions to orphanages and old folks homes, do we try to have a greater alignment of adult worship and children worship? All these will have to be thought through with the first 3 Ps in mind.

The session was peppered with funny moments too - thanks to Mr. Jang. Our team tried to come up with hilarious acrostics e.g. for the values of Children Ministry, we had "iSWAT" - i) not "I" but "others", ii) Servanthood, iii) a heart of Worship, iv) Applying biblical wisdom to life and v) Togetherness in prayer, sharing of each other's burdens and encouragement.

I was also secretly glad that Mr. Jang and I were in the same team - more that just being husband and wife, I think we complement each other well in that I take down notes and do the writing while he does the talking (what he is good at). Also got to learn much from H and EK, who had loads of insightful thoughts.

The session was finally over after long discussions and presentations (and loads and loads of food!) The road to building an effective Children Minstry won't be easy with so many distractions for the kids today, but at least this team of dedicated teachers will persevere to the end despite occasional burntouts! A demonstration of servanthood indeed!

"Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not turn from it." - Proverbs 22:6