Want To Help Kids? Shut Down Your Kids Ministry
Please don’t misunderstand; God does a lot of incredible work through children’s ministry and youth groups. Kids need places where they can be known, loved, and taught about God. Christians who invest their time and resources into the next generation are faithful servants doing an invaluable job.
But I think it’s a mistake to treat children’s ministry as the church’s best way to serve young people. Veteran Sunday School teachers will be quick to affirm that all the work they pour into kids once or twice a week can never compare to the ongoing influence of the children’s parents. No matter how much we work to attract young people, Gen Z and Gen Alpha are less committed to church than ever before. It’s worth taking a hard look at our current approach and asking if there might be a better way.
God designed parents to be the primary sources of a child’s spiritual formation.
From page 1, God has shaped individuals in the context of family. God told His people through Moses in Deuteronomy 6:6-7, “And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.” The expectation has always been that parents would pass the faith on to their children, not rely on others to do it for them. Unfortunately, many of today’s parents don’t know how to disciple their kids because they themselves were never discipled. They don’t walk closely with the Lord, and their marriages suffer because of it. And so do their kids.
The quality of the parents’ marriage often determines the strength of the children’s faith.
By every measure, divorce hurts children. We’ve long known that children of divorced parents are at higher risk of adverse outcomes like substance abuse, addiction, mental and physical health problems, and poor educational performance. Children whose parents are married but handle conflict poorly are subject to similar effects. And this damaging impact, unsurprisingly, carries over into the spiritual realm.
Each generation seems to be less religious than the one before, but the difference practically vanishes when you control for family states: millennials who grew up in continuously-married families, for example, attend church at virtually the same rate as baby boomers and Gen Xers. Millennials who come from continuously-married families are 78% more likely to attend church at least twice a month than those who do not. Simply put: when mom and dad stay married, kids tend to continue in their faith.
Nothing we do for kids can replace spiritually healthy parents.
Much as parents sometimes wish we could, we simply can’t do the enormous work of spiritual formation for them. Shepherding kids is an important responsibility, and it’s appropriate that we pour so much time, money, and effort into our children’s programs. But the primary influences in a child’s life are their parents or caregivers; church holds only a sliver of their time and attention. We can try to set parents up to disciple their children well by sending home discussion questions and activities that reinforce the weekly lesson. But parents aren’t likely to sit down at the table together for spiritual conversations if they don’t even like each other.
If what children see modeled at home is out of sync with what they hear in church, the church’s credibility suffers—no matter how excellent the lessons, skits, and activities may be. If marriages in your church are unhealthy, pouring more resources into family ministry is a bad investment. On a more hopeful note, however, the opposite is also true. You don’t need a huge budget, snazzy graphics, or all-star team to make a difference in kids’ lives. You only need to faithfully shepherd their parents. Parents are God’s first line of defense for children, who thrive spiritually when they see their parents model the relationship that God intended (Proverbs 14:26).
The best way to invest in kids is to invest in marriage ministries.
Kids’ ministry is most effective when it starts at home—when it is lived out faithfully in sacrificial love between a husband and wife that overflows into the lives of their children. If we’re serious about winning the next generation for Christ, we have to start by serving marriages.
Is there still an important place for organized kids’ ministry at the church level? Absolutely. But right now, churches are spending much more on children’s and student ministries than on marriage ministries. Knowing that every resource invested in marriage ministry also synergistically benefits kids, I’m convinced it’s time to make that amount more equal. If we’re concerned about Gen Z disengaging from the church, we need to get ahead of the problem.
There are many ways that can look. You can provide opportunities for married couples to deepen their connection with each other and improve their communication. You can go even farther upstream and invest in pre-married couples. Our church’s biggest success with married couples has been the Re|engage ministry, which is designed for both struggling marriages and those that are fine but could be better. The entire 4-6 month ministry is built around discipleship. A mentor couple is assigned to each small table of married couples (typically 4 or 5), and they walk alongside participants, sharing wisdom from God’s Word and modeling an imperfect but godly partnership. It’s also designed to be completely turnkey so it can be integrated into any church—you can find more information here. Even if it isn’t Re|engage, though, I strongly encourage you to prioritize discipling parents and intentionally strengthening marriages.
Marriage First, Impact Follows
Kids and teens are struggling, and they’re less likely than ever to look to the church for help. But the answer is not necessarily to throw more money into fog machines or retreats. We can regain lost ground if we recognize how foundational marriage ministry is to all other kinds of family ministry and prioritize it accordingly. By serving families from the top down, we steward the church’s resources well and take advantage of the way God designed families to grow.
I’m passionate about marriage ministry and have witnessed firsthand the “ripple effect” that can take place when parents begin to walk more closely with God and with each other. Please email us sometime if you’d like to hear some stories!
About The Author
Our desire is to bring glory to God by equipping and inspiring churches around the world to be and make disciples.