EQUIPPING CHILDREN LEADERS
GOOD LEADERS MAKE GOOD LEADERS (A Blog by Rev. Grace Verrier)
A few years ago I assisted in ministry within a church whose adults had lost their vision for teaching children. I did try to recruit workers and offered to fully equip and train them. However, no adults were willing. (My style of teaching is an open format requiring a minimum of three teachers with some extra for “crowd control” as the number of children increases.) My husband who was traveling at the time offered his assistance sporadically and I honed my curriculum so that the lessons I taught could be taught by myself and my husband when he was available.
The children’s church began to grow and I was quickly running out of lessons that could be adapted to one or two teachers. It was then (out of desperation) that I discovered that older children were quite capable of teaching those younger than themselves. I had a meeting during class time and asked who would be willing to help me. If you work with children, then you will know that every hand in the class went up. The next few Sundays were spent “equipping the (younger) saints for the work of the ministry”. I did puppetry workshops for those who wanted to use them to teach. I gave acting lessons to those who wanted to do the teaching skits. I gave lessons on teaching the memory verse in fun and active ways. Children were taught to reinforce the solemnity requirement for the altar calls. Some children wanted to actually stand before the group and teach the lesson I provided them the lesson the week before so they could learn it. Some children offered to do the “crowd control” in an adult style respecting the other children and thereby earning respect from their peers.
When I finished that church assignment I received one of the greatest confirmations of my ministry. A twelve year old girl (who was the pastor’s daughter) said, “I now understand how and why we teach the younger saints. I will become a Children’s Pastor.”
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