Neighborhood Ministries

While children come as a blank slate and need training in obedience and caring for others, our society believes that they know what to do and should be left to themselves to find their own way. In fact, any kind of discipline is viewed as abuse. Yet they wonder why children act like wild animals. The  Church views children as gifts from God and views their training and discipline as an important responsibility of parents. While children should attend Sunday School and learn about God, they learn how to live that out by watching those around them. In the past, children spent most of their time at home and learned by watching their parents. Our public schools and society in general reflected Christian values and reinforced what children learned at home. Today, parents are often scarce and feel they have little time to give their children, leaving the training of their children to teachers, babysitters, and even other kids. Yet they wonder why children don’t share their values. Children are involved in a lot of after school activities and spend very little time with their parents. In addition, schools and our media do not reflect Christian values. While church used to be a big part of most families, many families have no church background and have not been raised in a Christian atmosphere. As a result, they need to learn the value of children and how to train them in love. It is important that the church models love for children and trains parents in good parenting.

A firm foundation- Catechism. When I began my ministry, it was common for churches to have a concentrated time of study for those coming of age, generally considered about age twelve, to give them a basic foundation of understanding of the church and its beliefs. Few churches today, particularly evangelical churches, have any organized classes for twelve year olds to teach them the basic tenets of the faith. Even children who have been in Sunday School their whole lives need a concentrated time to pull together everything they have been taught. As a result, many children today do not have even a basic foundation of knowledge and cannot build their faith as they grow older. There is also no concentrated study for those coming into the church who did not grow up in church. The result is that few adult church members today have even a basic understanding of the faith. I have developed a basic catechism course of study for new members for that purpose (Understanding the Path We Walk-see “books” on website and Basic Christian Beliefs on UdemyURL- https://www.udemy.com/course/basic-christian-beliefs/?referralCode=45EA0BA6DAD6F47E7541)

Growing in faith-Learning By Doing-A Children learn by doing and new Christians learn the same way. Unfortunately, few churches today have training programs where new Christians can work alongside more mature Christians. By involving new Christians in hands-on ministry in the congregation and in Christian ministries under the tutorage of more mature Christians, new Christians learn how to serve Christ and the Church. They learn how to minister as they watch others minister and get to minister to others themselves. As new Christians minister to others, they not only learn to identify those who have needs and how to minister to them, they also develop a love and concern for them. However, few churches today involve many of their members in ministry. They wait until an opening occurs and try to pressure someone to take the position, even though that person may have no prior experience and may not have the gifts for it or the concern for it. As a result, many Churches today are very ineffective in training new Christians in ministry or reaching people for Christ. Involving more members in ministry will allow the church to train more people for ministry and reach more people for Christ. It also enables the church to train them for when the present leadership can no longer serve.     

 Growing in faith by watching Kingdomtide is a time when the church should be active in helping new converts grow deeper.  While few new converts are coming into the church this is vitally important today when so few churches teach members how to live a life pleasing to Christ. Many members who transfer in from other churches where they were members for many years come with very little spiritual depth. As a result, I was asked to develop the lecture series.  Surrendering to Christ does not automatically bestow maturity in Christ. When we are born again, we are like babies in the faith and must grow to maturity. Children learn by observing adults and copying the way they do things. In the same way, new Christians need to observe more mature Christians in the faith and interacting with them. It is very hard to explain in a sermon or Sunday School class how to love others or to humble ourselves. It must be learned by watching others who are more spiritually mature, and interacting with them, as they live out their faith day by day, however few churches today have the close relationships needed to help new Christians grow in Christ. With very little spiritual training, new Christians have few mature Christians to learn from. There is also no close interaction of members with spiritual leaders to enable them to grow spiritually as they see them in action. There needs to be active mentoring of new members by those who are spiritually mature,  however  many church leaders today are chosen for their financial management skills and popularity rather than their Christian maturity and do not provide good spiritual role models to follow.