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Gospel-Centered Children’s Ministry Part 2: Gospel-Centered Values
By Anna Sargeant
This submit is a component two of a three-part collection about what makes a gospel-centered ministry: gospel-centered educating, gospel-centered values, and gospel-centered interactions. I coated gospel-centered educating in Part 1, which you could find right here. In it, we found {that a} gospel-centered ministry is extra of a mindset than the rest. The second factor that kinds and shapes that mindset is your ministry’s values.
Gospel-Centered Values
Values are important for any group. They say, ‘This is who we are and what we care about.” They establish purpose and priorities and guide the group in making significant decisions, like developing programs and policies, and in small decisions, like what brand of pencils to buy. Because values are so foundational for your children’s ministry, your volunteers should hear them repeatedly, dad and mom should know them, and children should sense them. Ultimately, your values will talk what you suppose is a “win” in ministry, and that’s why they should be rooted within the gospel.
During the tip of my time on workers in kids’s ministry, we lived and breathed three core values: Truth, Fun, and Love. Everything was measured in opposition to these values. If no matter it was didn’t match underneath one in every of these, we didn’t do it. I’ll summarize them right here.
Truth: We sought to show the Word of God clearly and boldly, presenting tough truths in child-friendly methods and never watering down the gospel. We sought to carry the Word of God within the highest esteem by loving our Bibles personally and educating Scripture with precision and care.
Fun: We needed the children to chuckle, play, be foolish, and dance. We sought to interrupt down partitions by video games and levity in order that the children would possibly see that life in Christ is an plentiful and joyful life, not a inflexible or legalistic one.
Love: We needed children to sense the supernatural, grace-filled, and limitless love of God by us. By following researched-based approaches to self-discipline and educating, we sought to care for each baby, together with these with particular wants, in ways in which had been finest for his or her improvement. We needed children to really feel God’s love in order that they might flip round and love others!
These three values performed off of each other. We believed kids couldn’t be taught the reality except they felt cherished and had been having enjoyable. But that didn’t imply the worth of reality performed second fiddle! Our aim was at all times to introduce children to the Truth (Jesus) in order that, by a relationship with Him and belief in His Word, they may love a extra joyful, love-filled life.
As a sensible instance of how these values performed out in decision-making, our worship staff created a kids’s worship album that mirrored these values. The musicians wrote doctrinally wealthy kids’s songs (reality), choreographed dance strikes for them (enjoyable), and recorded the albums and movies to sing alongside to at church, at house, or with pals as an outreach instrument (love). Our values knowledgeable our plans. There are numerous kids’s ministries who would have by no means achieved this. But with the sources at our disposal and the values in place, it was a no brainer to us!
Ultimately, no matter your ministry values, you’ll discuss and be enthusiastic about. Whatever you worth, you’ll put your time and vitality towards it. And no matter you worth, you’ll spend cash on. This is why you should know what you worth and ensure it’s rooted within the gospel.
To be clear, Truth, Fun, and Love usually are not the one gospel-centered values a ministry may need! Your ministry values is likely to be Hospitality, Diversity, and Worship. Or perhaps Pursue Wisdom, Show Grace, and Seek Outreach. There are dozens of phrases or phrases that you could possibly select that may give your ministry course. The level is that it’s very important to decide on gospel-centered values deliberately and stick with them. Otherwise, dad and mom gained’t know what to anticipate, volunteers will find yourself working in accordance with their very own units of values, and your ministry to the children shall be much less efficient general.
So as a frontrunner, ask these questions on your values commonly:
- Do I do know the ministry’s values and the guts behind them?
- Do my volunteers know the values and the guts behind them?
- Do these values mirror the gospel? In what methods?
- In what areas are we upholding our values?
- In what areas are we deviating from our values?
- Are there any values we have to let go of or change?
Having sturdy, gospel-centered values will assist everybody concerned in your ministry keep a gospel-centered mindset. And with the continued steerage of the Holy Spirit, this may domesticate a extra gospel-centered ministry.
Anna served on the kids’s ministry staff at The Austin Stone Community Church in Austin, Texas from 2009-2017, first as a volunteer, then as full-time workers. She additionally wrote for six years for The Gospel Project for Kids curriculum. Anna presently works as an acquisitions editor for B&H Kids in Nashville. When she’s not writing or modifying, you could find her studying a e-book, sipping tea, chatting with family members, making an attempt to document a podcast, or strolling within the woods.