Be Care Full!

On of my biggest pet peeves I have is when I hear a pastor of any church call their children’s ministry “childcare”.  it’s not the worst word in the world it’s just not accurate in most cases.  Childcare in and of itself is a fairly nice word but it sounds more like “baby sitting” to me.  Baby sitting in the contrary is an awful word.  It sounds wrong and just flat out mean.  But really folks, babysitting is a low level term in children’s ministry.  It means that we’re not doing anything but making sure your kids don’t kill themselves.  It’s like saying we are doing the absolute minimum to guarantee that your child will be returned to you safely.  I’m not picking on babysitters at all, in fact, I love our family’s babysitter but I don’t expect much from her except to keep the children from beating each other with bats and to not burn the house down.  Do those two things…well maybe also get them to bed by 9pm, and that’s it.  I don’t expect Nanny McFee so the pressure is off.

Childcare is simply one small part of children’s ministry. Children’s Ministry should be and often is a ministry designed to educate, empower, excite and elevate kids into a deeper walk with Jesus.  Oh I’m sure I could come up with a bunch of other things children’s ministry is supposed to be but I like E’s so let me have some fun.  Truth is children’s ministry in any church should be the most important ministry in the church.  Bold statement? No, just the truth.  There should be more money & resources given to the children’s ministry than any other in the church, followed closely by the Youth.  If you want me to overwhelm you with stats to prove my position then just let me know and I will include them into a future post.  It will contain so many numbers it will make your head spin.   Again the truth – It should be the golden child of the church draped in a coat of many colors.

I will spend some time sharing all of the reasons why children’s ministry should be the most important ministry of the church but those will be in the next blog posts.  I’m watching Finding Nemo with my 3 year old and he asked me to stop typing now.  Good call!

Until the next blog – just keep swimming, just keep swimming!

Brian