Ministry Monday: The whole Bible for the whole church
How do you grow a church? Is there some secret step-by-step plan?
How tempting it is to embrace the latest fad to try and get young people into church. After all, they are the ‘church of the future,’ and if we don’t get them in and keep them in, we’ve had it.
But allow me to suggest that the most important thing we need to do in order to grow the church among young people, is simply this: we must teach, live and share the whole Bible with the whole church.
Before beginning ordination training, I spent two years as an assistant minister at St John’s Church, Over, Winsford – a church that is small but growing in an urban and not very affluent area. I had particular responsibility for developing the children and youth work, and we soon adopted the following ‘mission statement’ to guide this part of church life: “To support parents to grow well-taught disciples of Christ, engaged in His word and integrated into His church.”
Four principles are contained here; namely, (i) partnering with parents, (ii) teaching the whole Bible, (iii) engaging the children, and (iv) including them in the life of the local church. Here, I’m going to unpack something of my thinking about principles 2 and 4.
Teaching the whole Bible
In Psalm 78, the Psalmist declares his godly ambition to pass on the ‘praiseworthy deeds of the LORD’ to the next generation; that is, to the children in the covenant community. We want the next generation to hear the great news of God: His power, His work and His gospel. We want them to know and remember God more than we want anything else for them.
In doing so we don’t want to leave things out. We want to teach them everything the Bible tells us about God, ourselves, and our salvation in Christ. Of course, it is tempting, and very common, to leave some things out. More often than not, published material for children will give plenty of crafts and stories on parables, and some Old Testament characters, but will seldom if ever tackle, say, Romans or Isaiah. But though we must admit they are not as simple to teach to kids, these books and others like them are part of and interpret God’s praiseworthy deeds - knowledge of which deeds we want to pass on to children in the church.
If we are to obey biblical principles, we must teach children from all the Scriptures. Children no less than adults need to grow up with a balanced diet, not a sugary pick-and-mix. Otherwise they will end up under-developed and fussy ‘eaters’ of God’s Word.
We must teach the whole counsel of God, to all ages, in appropriate ways. At no point do we want younger ones to deal with basics and move on to ‘harder things’ as they get older. We want our young people to form and nurture a biblical worldview. Everyone has a worldview which affects the way they live. So it’s important to teach well, teach all, and start early.
My job, therefore, was to write material for the children and youth that tied in with what the adults were learning on Sunday mornings and in house groups. The advantage of home-written material allowed us to apply the passages in the context of the children’s lives well, as well as keep up with what the adults were learning. It also forced us – in a good way - to tackle passages and topics not often found in off-the-shelf material.
This conviction also let to our decision to keep the youth group in during the whole service with their own talk handouts. This was a big step, as our youth group is aged 11 upwards. Some churches have their 11-14’s out of the service for their own teaching; this can work well – but we couldn’t resource it, so we kept them in the main service. Necessity soon became a virtue: they have loved it! They were provided with handouts of their own containing the sermon points, questions for them to answer, as well as sentences from the sermon script with some words missing for them to fill in. These helped them engage really well. Their youth group time on the Sunday evening was then to go back over the handout together to reinforce and newly apply the teaching the church had received. Additionally, keeping the youth group in the main service gave them the chance to learn to love and serve their church family. Real spiritual fruit has come from this change.
Integrating into the local church
It is not true to say that children are the church of the future: they are just as much as part of the church now as anyone else. We tried to reflect this by enabling children and young people to take as much of a part in the morning service as they were able and as was appropriate. When I arrived at the church, the children left after the first song and didn’t return until right near the end. While retaining Sunday School, we worked to extend the children’s time in the service – including them in first sections of the liturgy (some or all of the prayer of preparation, confession, and creed) before leaving. We included a new slot in the service led by the leader or preacher that would tee up what the children would learn when they went off to their group, and we introduced a feedback slot on their return in which the kids explained what they had been learning (which served, of course, to remind the adults too!) We also prioritized and ‘intentionalized’ time for the generations to mix after the service; God-willing, this begins to establish relationships in which the young can see how older church members live and speak distinctively for Christ.
How do we equip the next generation? The same way as we equip the current one and how past generations were equipped: ministering to the whole church, with the whole Bible.