New paradigm: Are we training the children's workers the Church needs?

So, what do you need as you complete a children’s ministry course and head out, keen, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed into that job in a church or Christian organisation? How well has your training equipped you for the adventure of mission and ministry among the children of the community and locality you have been called to? And what happens when you begin to hit the seeming tsunami of demands and expectations laid on you as the children’s (and families… and possibly youth) minister?

With nearly 16 years of children’s ministry training under my belt at Cliff College at various levels of academia, let me start with some defence of fellow theological educators across the country, and say that our training and teaching, however creative, innovative and extensive can never fully prepare students for the tasks that lie ahead. Christian ministry is always a surprise, sometimes a shock, and however good our prophetic radar, new situations of which we have no previous experience are always arising. With a desire to train workers for long-term, rather than short-term ministry, a desire I am sure my fellow educators share, how do we continue to train students for Christian ministry among children?

There are many approaches I could offer here, and indeed a long list of subject areas that seem necessary to cover in the curriculum when trying to create academic courses with a focus in children’s ministry. But my starting points are the questions posed at the beginning are we training children’s workers for the roles they will be doing? Are we actually training the children’s workers the Church needs? So, what is being asked of children’s workers currently, and what increasingly does the Church need?

The changing landscape of children’s work

The very useful piece of research collated in the anthology Tuesday’s Child (editor John Sutcliffe), a project of the Consultative Group on Ministry of Churches Together in Britain and Ireland, was a review of the key developments surrounding the role of children within the Church in the hundred years between 1900 and 2000. What the collation helpfully shows, drawing on a series of readings, key thinkers and writers, was that children’s ministry in the Church has always been changing, sometimes subtly, sometimes radically. Those changes continue today, although some commentators would argue that those changes are happening at a more rapid rate now due to the speed of change in society, and the Church’s need to adapt and respond.

What does all of this mean for children’s workers? After an encouraging flurry of new children’s worker roles in the late 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s, with an emphasis on leading, or coordinating existing and mainly traditional models of children’s work activity, many a church or Christian organisation is now having a rethink, and sometimes due to economics, or a reassessment of work and mission, are cutting back or reshaping these roles. Despite the pouring in of economic and personnel resources over some years, the Church is in overall decline, frighteningly so in some areas, and with some notable exceptions, traditional weekly church activity among children is changing. No longer can the classic children’s work activity of Sunday groups, midweek clubs or uniformed organisations, monthly ‘all-age’ worship and the annual holiday club, be the assumed centre of the children’s worker role. Children’s workers are being asked to be much more flexible, engage more with the wider community, work across wider age groups, and create new models of work on a much more regular basis. The Church is increasingly looking for these workers to give guidance as to ‘what’s happening out there among children’. This can be liberating for some in children’s work, but frightening for others whose original calling and passion was just ‘to work with the children’. How can we better help them for this change of role in a time of change?

What does the Church need?

I asked a few church leaders how they currently described their children’s work specialist, and what they were looking for, and increasingly needed, in that role:

‘A focal point for children’s work concerns in the parish’

‘An advocate and a voice for the younger generation’

‘A bridge between the church and families’

‘A motivator of the volunteer team’

‘Someone who can create new work with kids’

‘Someone who can inform and guide us about what’s happening out there among children, as most of us are detached from that world’

‘A community worker’

The above is a snapshot of responses of course, and hardly extensive research, but it is interesting to see the role of the children’s worker being mentioned as interpreter and advocate, as well as creator and motivator. Of course children’s work training will cover the usual child development, safeguarding, teamwork, ethics, learning styles and a thousand other important subjects, but what is it that we are seeking to form in the children’s worker? They might be more knowledgeable and qualified as a person, but does that make them ready for the actual task, even with a good placement component to the course?

I want to suggest five areas that I believe the Church needs and is increasingly looking for in a children’s worker, whether volunteer or paid. They may offer a lens for us in the colleges as we look at our training, but may also be an encouragement to readers who are children’s work practitioners and wondering how they define themselves, and how they can present their passion for children’s work back to the Church.

1. A prophetic minister

The worker needs to be reminded and taught that they are a minister of the gospel, and even though most likely lay, and very often unpaid (or poorly paid), and also that their work is a calling of God. In theological training for ordained ministry, there is a great deal of emphasis on ‘testing the call’ and of the meaning of responding to that call. I believe that children’s ministry needs to be described as just that: a ministry of God, which is delivered by ministers of the gospel. So, a proper exploration of the role of a minister is needed, and the prophetic role within that ministry to speak out and on behalf of ‘their people’, the children. This touches on the role of advocacy mentioned by one church leader earlier. We often talk about children’s work being the Cinderella of the Church, and bemoan its recognition. I think that a proper understanding of Christian ministry could help to place children’s ministry in its rightful place within the Church.

2. A spiritual disciple

The worker needs to be trained and supported to be a disciple of Jesus whose life can be examined (by young and old alike) as reflecting Christ. While this naturally means a life focused on the activist side of the Christ life, which tends to come with the job, disciples also need to learn the spiritual disciplines of prayer, fasting, simplicity and celebration, as well as scripture reading. Reflections on some of the historic Christian traditions could also be useful. Christian workers are much better able to offer a richer and deeper ministry when they are drawing on personal spiritual resources, rather than just programme materials (however wonderful), and a training that is rooted in this area of personal formation I believe reaps rewards in the sustainability of ministry. When does the congregation hear that the children’s work coordinator or family worker is on retreat praying and fasting for discernment about the way forward for the children’s work, or the children hear the worker talk about their own walk with Jesus?

3. A resilient servant

Building on the role of ministry, and the spiritual resourcing of that ministry, I believe that building resilience is a key area in children’s work training and ministry development, which warrants further reflection. Challenges and knockbacks will come in ministry, and it is often at these times that Christian workers lose heart, begin to question their own passion and calling, and sometimes sadly even walk away from it. Being advocates of children and motivators for the cause of children can cause a reaction from others, and does need inner strength, as sadly too many Christian workers have been lost to key ministries over the years. This strength and resilience also needs to be placed alongside understandings of servant-heartedness. A minister of the gospel is called to serve the people, and so the seeming paradox of resilient strength within compassionate service is key, otherwise resilience can end up looking hard and edgy within ministry.

4. A theological interpreter

We turn to an area that college educators are very keen on: the developing of the worker as a theologian. This is an area that can often be challenging for practitioners, but the formation of a children’s worker as a theological interpreter of their work and ministry among children is essential. While this does not seem to be the main cry and request of the Church, and might be just a hobby-horse of this author, it seems to me that the change of role within children’s ministry demands that those who are trained learn good skills in theological reflection. When a church leader seeks someone who can ‘inform and guide us’, this has to be more than just good ideas and programmes of work, but insightful understandings and interpretations of what is happening among children, families and young people within and outside of the Church. The teaching of a robust theology, and reflective skills to apply to changing situations, seems very important.

5. A missional adventurer

Which brings me in no particular order to the last of my five areas, that of mission and evangelism. In our changing culture, with less church attendance overall, and more of the population of the UK becoming disconnected from the Church year-by-year, missional teaching must be at the core of our training. It has been exciting to see new developments such as Messy Church within the last ten years, and greater understandings of family and intergenerational ministry, and of gender-specific research and practice (see Lings, Anthony and Edwards for some examples). These explorations have taken children’s workers back out to the edge of the Church and into the mission field, as in years past. In the important research gathered in his book One generation from extinction, Mark Griffiths looks back at that past and points forward to ways in which the Church needs to, and can, connect again with the unchurched child. The trained children’s worker is going to need to lead the way here into the community, and become the ‘missional adventurer’. Our training, as in all theological education into the immediate future as I see it, needs to move from models of pastoral nurture to fully embracing the centrality of the missional task.

What does the Church need from its children’s workers? I have suggested from anecdotal research, and using some of my own phrases, the following five ideas: a prophetic minister, a spiritual disciple, a resilient servant, a theological interpreter and a missional adventurer. Not all churches will immediately recognise these needs yet, but if we are truly ‘to equip God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up’ (Ephesians 4:12) then maybe these are some of the key areas that our training should address.

Not all will agree, and I expect the reader may have other categories to add, or as a practitioner may want to reflect on what that could mean for them. So, as all good educators tend to say… ‘Discuss’.

Ian White is Programme Leader of the undergraduate part-time BA in Mission and Ministry courses in Children’s and Youth work at Cliff College ( cliffcollege.ac.uk), and lecturer on the MA in Mission (Children & Youth) programme. He also heads up Micah68 ( micah6-8.org.uk), a ministry across the Middle East working with disadvantaged and disabled people.