Where Are the Children?

Pentecost 19

Mark 10:13-16

“How can we attract children and families?”  It’s a question I hear frequently as I travel around the Arkansas-Oklahoma Synod.  Many of our congregations no longer have Sunday Schools.  The average age of those attending on Sunday morning has gotten older and older as the years have passed.  Those still worshipping think back longingly to a time when their own children were growing up, the Sunday School classrooms were bursting at the seams with young baby boomers, and the church was the center of family life in the community. 

How different, it seems, is the picture in this week’s lesson from Mark.  In this short text, the children want to come to Jesus.  The families are coming, bringing their children so that Jesus can touch them. Oh, how we long for that to be the case in our churches!  

We keep looking for the “magic bullet” that will draw the families back to our worship services.  Maybe if we just put together the right program.  What if we build a gym?  Some would suggest we just need to get a good band, like the megachurches down the street.  (Though that is usually immediately followed by someone saying how much they would hate losing the “traditional” service.)  There are all sorts of ideas for making the church more “family friendly”.   But, nothing we try seems to work, or it seems out of our reach practically or financially, or too far out of our comfort zone.

I think we are asking the wrong question.  The question isn’t, “How can we attract families?”  Instead, we should be asking,  “How do we reach out to families with the Gospel of Jesus Christ?”   The first question is about institutional survival, based on a desire to recreate the past, the other is a question about ministry, and grows from a desire to serve people in the present.  The issue isn’t figuring out how we overcome those things in the world that keep families from coming, but asking how we overcome those things in ourselves that prevent us from taking the Gospel out into the world where families live.

Maybe the Gospel text is more relevant than we initially thought.  Perhaps there are children, out there, in the world who really are yearning to be touched by Jesus, and we, like the disciples, are doing things – intentionally or unintentionally – that block them from coming. 

If we seriously want to minister to children and families, we need to stop looking for magic bullets.  Instead, we need to be looking for ways to go out TO the families of our communities, we need to walk with them, learn from them, and listen for what their needs, questions, concerns, challenges and struggles are.  What gives them joy and hope?  What are they yearning for?  Then, we need to help them discover the God who is already walking with them and the grace that is already theirs in Jesus Christ.  Even more, we need to ask them what kind of faith community they would find meaningful and life-giving – and then give them the space (physically and spiritually) they need to do it.  That community will probably look very different than the congregations we currently belong to and certainly different than the ones we remember…  and we need to be OK with that. 

Peace,

Bishop Mike