Seeing as I am the only one who hasn’t posted yet, I figured I should do that. I have been reading “What You Didn’t Learn from Your Parents About Christianity”, written by Matthew Paul Turner and published by Th1nk, a division of NavPress. There was a section at the beginning of the book that hit me hard with relation to our ministry. I’m going to post a few excerpts of it here, and comment on each section immediately after.

“I started hanging out with Jesus when I was 4. I loved Him like I loved Big Bird. Of course, I knew He was much more important than Big Bird, by my affection for Him was similar. The songs we sang in Sunday School made Jesus seem more like a novelty act than a Savior. Jesus was someone who liked to give me hugs and pull me onto his lap, and every once in a while, he would teach me a great truth about how I should be treating my little sister.

See? JUST like Big Bird. Although sometimes Big Bird was actually a little cooler than Jesus. He had his own skating show: Big Bird on Ice. Jesus never put on ice skates, and he didn’t have cool friends like Bert and Ernie.”

Is this not what happens many times with our younger kids? We make Jesus look like the always happy, smiling face who always loves us. But yet at the same time, we make Him look like a total nerd who had no friends outside of church and even those friends weren’t that great. While there’s nothing wrong with singing “Jesus Loves Me” and “The B-I-B-L-E”, we have to tell kids that there is more than that to Jesus! He is deep. Many times we attempt to “dumb down” Jesus for younger kids, but it may be surprising to learn that many times they are not accepting Jesus younger because they are not learning Jesus younger. I accepted Christ at the age of 3, and I feel confident that I knew what I was doing. I don’t expect every kid to be ready then, but recognize that while you may be teaching them more, you can’t always guarantee that your volunteers are promoting the same ideology. Be consistent!
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