To some churchgoers, the concept of kid's Sunday school is no different from a Sunday daycare that babysits and takes care of noisy and hyperactive children while the adults listen to preaching week in and week out. But the weight and implication of ministry to children is far more than just that.
In our church, the leadership of our executive team takes kid's ministry very seriously. To our kid's coordinators, kid's volunteers and kid's director, kid's Sunday school is more than just putting up a room with some nursery music and toys to avoid distracting the main service. Kid's Sunday school is a service of its own. We put a lot of manpower, finances and teaching into it because kid's ministry matters a whole lot.
Proverbs 22:6 says, "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it."
Nowadays, we see so many teenagers and adults with difficult issues that are then so much harder and sometimes more expensive to fix because the problems run on for decades. Many of their issues were rooted in a bad foundation they had growing up as kids.
The reason why a community fails is because the past generation failed in some way or another to prepare the next generation early on. While that could happen in cities, neighbourhoods, campuses and families, we shouldn't let it happen in the church. If there's anyone who must be forward thinking and considerate of generational growth, it should be Christians.
We must think multi-generationally because God thinks multi-generationally. The past few weeks, I've been listening to my three-year-old daughter sing "Jesus loves the little children..." at the top of her lungs all across our home and all I could think of is how thankful I was that my daughter is being built up on solid foundation. Do we give every avenue and opportunity to our children to do just that?
In Matthew 18:5, Jesus said, "And whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me."
When we fail to value the raising up of the next generation by teaching them the ways of God and the love of Christ, we fail to think multi-generationally and consequently fail to think the way God thinks.
So is kid's Sunday school necessary? It's beyond necessary. It is foundational and pivotal. If we want to see God's move across the generations, we must raise children in the love of God and the integrity of living as early as now so that we do not have to wait for the day that we start building from scratch all over again.
