An Open Letter To Kids Ministry Leaders

Dear Sunday School teacher and kids club helper—cutter-upper of crafts, maker of drinks, do-er of actions, stacker of chairs and toilet attendant—

We're well into a new term now. I hope you enjoyed the summer break (although it probably feels a long time ago now) and that you’re still pumped about another turn around the year’s merry-go-rota. 

Or maybe not. Maybe you're already quietly thinking that you’d rather be in proper church on a Sunday morning—or in bed. Perhaps you have a secret sense of dread at the gaps in your team. Or you’re discouraged by the shrinking numbers or the hit-and-miss attenders; the sea of blank expressions when you ask, “So, who can remember what we learned last week?” Or you’re already feeling weary at the thought of managing those kids who just will not do as they’re told, or saddened by the needs at home you feel powerless to address.  

I’ve been that leader.

But I’ve been that kid, too. 

Don’t lose heart. However weak your kid’s work might look in the world’s eyes, God can use it.

Monday nights when I was growing up were “Good News Club”. My sister and I didn’t like going but we had to because our dad was the vicar, and the lady who ran it gave us a lift, so there was really no way out of it. 

The room was cold. It was a tin chapel on the edge of someone’s farm—who built it or owned it or why, I still have no idea to this day. 

The songs were dated, even for the 90s. Our renditions of “The best book to read is the Bible” and “I met Jesus at the crossroads” were accompanied by an accordion, while a leader held a big flip book with the words at the front. “No you can’t get to heaven without salvation”—but at least there’s a generation of church-going children who know how to spell it (S-A-L-V-A-T-I-O-N).  

And we sure gave the leaders the run-around—talking and giggling and generally not being quiet when we were meant to be. I remember the week when they introduced a new strategy for managing behaviour. Assigned to one child’s seat, we were told, was a chocolate bar. If the child in that seat was good, at the end of the night they’d get to keep the chocolate bar, but if they were naughty they wouldn’t. So we had better all be on our best behaviour for the whole evening in case it was us. 

I remember the night it was me. I was thrilled because I never won anything. 

But it was one night at Good News Club—when I was in that cold room with the naughty kids singing dated songs only because my parents had made me—that I realised, perhaps for the first time or at least the first time I can remember, that I needed saving. I was sinful. I needed to ask Jesus to forgive me. 

So in the car on the way home, I did. (Because there’s nothing like being driven round the twists and turns of a dark country road by a harried kid’s ministry leader to make you feel that getting ready to meet your maker could, in fact, be a matter of some urgency). 

So, don’t lose heart. However weak your kid’s work might look in the world’s eyes, God can use it. Not just to make memories, but to save souls—right there among your hyperactive/ irregular/tiny group, in your too small/too hot/too cold room, through your low-tech/sometimes-slightly-boring/this-story-again-already? programme. 

So here’s what to do. Here’s what I want to do more of, and more earnestly, for my little band of terrors this year: 

• Keep praying for them regularly. Pray that the “the eyes of their heart may be enlightened” (Ephesians 1 v 18), because unless God does that for them, nothing you do will be any use at all. But he can, and he will. 
• Keep loving them practically—because the Lord Jesus took a child in his arms and told his self-important disciples that “whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me” (Mark 9 v 36-37). You’re doing something beautiful for Jesus. 
• Keep teaching them faithfully—because as Paul wrote to Timothy: “From infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus”. The Bible is what kids like Timothy in the first century needed, and it’s what kids in the twenty-first century need too.   

Keep going, dear leader, because Christ is keeping you going: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11 v 28).    

Stuck for ideas? Explore our range of children's resources here.