There has lately been a big push back in youth and children's ministry against leaving the job of discipling young people just to the "professional", the church youth and children's worker.
Instead there has been more of a return to the Biblical idea that God has given the responsibility of bringing children up to love the Lord primarily to their parents. This shift has encouraged churches to work with families and help them to do this discipling work, rather than just employing a youth and children's worker to do it instead.
From 'youth and children' to 'families' worker
This has an impact on the role of the youth and children's worker! For churches that believe in this approach, these workers are being encouraged to work more closely with parents and see their roles as supporting and training them, rather than doing the ministry directly to the children. This results in less youth and children's workers and more "families workers." And for some churches it may well result in choosing not to employ someone in this role at all.
What do you make of this shift? There will be mixed feelings out there, but I want to make a case for the good old fashioned youth and children's worker (or minister, or whatever you want to call it!). Disclaimer though - that is my job so I do have some skin in the game!
There's lots to be said, so I'll return to this in my upcoming en articles to look at the role in more detail, but to start, I just want to make the case that while parents are given a big responsibility in bringing up their children to follow Jesus, the church has a big role to play as well.
The church's role
I have just finished reading Keeping your Children's ministry on mission by Jared Kennedy and it is really helpful on this. He encourages a 'both-and' approach to children's ministry - both encouraging families in their discipleship of their children as well as reinforcing the role the church has to play. He gives lots of reasons from the Bible arguing that it is both the biological and church families that have responsibility for teaching children about Jesus and, why parents on their own are not enough. For example, it is the church that provides a community for spiritual growth (Hebrews 10:25), the church which is called to fight false teaching (1 Tim 3:15) and the church where we are called to serve (1 Corinthians 12). These are all vital for children and can't just take place in the family.
But on an even more basic level, church is the place where people come to be taught the gospel. That is the case for every member of the church. In Ephesians 5:25-27 it would appear that husbands are given a sense of responsibility and care for the spiritual health of their wives. It surely wouldn't be right though, to suggest that this means that they don't also need to be spiritually fed at church. I think we can say the same about children - yes their parents have been given a responsibility for teaching them about Jesus but that doesn't mean the church doesn't have just as big a role to play.
So having established that, what does that mean for the role of the youth and children's worker? We'll come to that next time.
