Church Planting with Kids
Planting a church with young children is a huge challenge but also an incredible opportunity.
Church planting will demand two commodities of your life, energy and time. You need energy and time to keep everyone motivated, to think of new ideas, to spend time with people, and to lug equipment back and forth and back and forth and back and forth.
Young children will demand two commodities of your life, energy and time. You need energy and time to get them fed and dressed in the morning, to discipline them, to play with them, to entertain them, to do the bedtime routine and to lug them back and forth and back and forth and back and forth.
The equation goes something like this:
(church planting) x (young children) = you’re an idiot
Yes, that’s right — if you’re thinking about planting a church with three children under the age of four — you’re an idiot. Luckily (or blessings) for you that God is in the habit of using idiots like you to accomplish his work around you. We need more idiots to plant more churches.
One of the most frustrating parts of planting a church with young children is at the end of your afternoon service, when you have filled your massive car with equipment and speakers and communion cups, but don’t seem to have space for a double buggy or your wife. So be prepared and buy your spouse a good waterproof jacket.
Planting a church with young children is a challenge, but the rewards are endless. For all of the children involved in ECF Ralston, living on mission has become their norm. They don’t know or can’t remember church being anything else. Children take ownership of a new church before the adults do and this is an encouragement to all parents as they see their children jump into a new community.
We have seen the children learn how to serve from the youngest of years. Every week they help put the seats away, clear the tape from the ground and put away any equipment that their parents let them. Of course, this takes much longer than it should, but they are being discipled along the way.
Our time of musical worship needs to be appropriate to teach children how to worship Jesus and we have introduced our fair share of action songs to passages of scripture. Does ECF Ralston sound like Hillsong with a nice flow and ease between songs every Sunday? Of course not, but we have decided to give up our preferences for a period of time in order to disciple the children God has entrusted us with.
One of the greatest opportunities that we’ve had with kids is to see them grow in prayer. The children are always eager to pray for each other and for the adults and when it comes to loving and praying for Ralston, they always speak up.
I love that all of this is normal to them and can’t help but wonder how many of the children will go on to be part of church planting teams in the future.
So all in all, church planting with children is slow, is hard work and pretty exhausting, but seeing them grow in God makes it absolutely worth it.
If you have young children and can’t make up your mind — do something risky and plant a church.
Read the first blog post here.
