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Children’s Ministry
Life Steps: Balancing Children’s Ministry

Are your kids being fed? Spiritually speaking, I mean. Are they getting a balanced spiritual diet?

A whole new way of looking at children’s ministries is being unveiled this fall. It’s called Life Steps. It is a plan to help you determine how balanced your Christian nourishment is for the kids in your church.

For kids growing up, they need to be fed from all the food groups. For young kids growing up in the faith, you need to give them something from every spiritual “food group.” There are 6 of them:

Salvation

Kids need to be encouraged to make commitments to Jesus as Saviour and Lord. They need chances to tell about it to their peers. “If we believe in our heart and confess with our mouth we will be saved.”

Express Devotion

Every parent wants their baby to take the spoon and learn that skill. There are skills to learn in showing devotion to God. Kids need to read the Bible, learn to pray, develop in worship, and be introduced to the basic spiritual disciplines.

Bible Knowledge

This is the “meat and potatoes” of Christian education. We need to tell the Bible stories, and help kids memorize. Kids love to learn facts, so we should present them creatively at this stage of life.

Christian Community

Children need parents to feed them, and later to help them make good eating choices. We can’t be Christians alone. We should teach kids that it’s good to seek help from others in pursuing their relationship with God. Adult mentors and Christian peers are important for spiritual health.

Outreach

My kids have often talked about healthy eating. Similarly children just naturally share their faith. Programs like clubs and VBS, plus outreach events help them invite friends. But we can also teach them how to help a friend pray to accept Jesus; or how missionaries are doing this around the world.

Servant Heart

Kids who are exposed to the hungry of the world are very compassionate. We can develop children with a servant heart through a World Vision adoption program, or through a systematic giving program. Going out to do random acts of kindness can do this too.

As you can see, a balanced CE program for kids entails much more than just cranking up more Bible study. The Life Steps plan is being introduced this fall to help you learn more about this balanced spiritual diet. It will assist you in checking each program, and your total children’s ministry for balance. It will help you set specific goals to correct imbalances in your programming.

Timeline

Christian Education Ministries is proud to present the Life Steps Plan to all Mennonite Brethren churches. Our timeline for this year is as follows:

Booklet outlining the basic plan: released October 1996. Binder of activity and program ideas for each “food group:” released spring 1997. Workshops throughout Canada: January through April 1997.

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Last modified October 31, 2000.

Ideabank is a quarterly newsletter published by the Board of Christian Education Ministries, a board of the Canadian Conference of Mennonite Brethren Churches.

© 2000 Canadian Conference of Mennonite Brethren Churches.
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