Involving Children

Hey there, my question is, what do you do with kids at Missional Communities?

Children are a valuable and fantastic part of Missional Community life!  And MCs definitely, definitely works with kids!!

Rather than give you a rigid plan, I want to give you a range of options I’ve seen work with different groups.  Each MC will need to choose how they want to involve the children that the Lord has given them to disciple.  Obviously there will be some Missional Communities without kids – just because of their focus or the stage of life of the people who are in it, which of course is fine.  But for the MCs that have kids in them there are a range of options.

At one end of the spectrum, some will say let’s pay for someone to care for the kids, perhaps in a different house and maybe there’s a bit of instruction for them and they meet there.  At the other end of the scale are those who say, “Everything we do, children are with us.  Everything is all-age, we’re in it together.”

The middle ground approach might see the group eat together, worship and do Bible study with the kids in on it all, engage in missional activities together, but also have the wisdom to recognize that children have a shorter attention span than adults do.

A child’s attention span is their age in minutes, plus or minus two.  Thus a child who is 4 has an attention span of between 2 and 6 minutes.  (Incidentally, that continues to increase up to the age of 21, when it plateaus!).  That is why children find it hard to concentrate for a long time – their attention span is a lot less than yours or mine.  Now the adults may want to go a bit longer, but they let the kids go and play a bit of basketball or watch a movie or do something different.

Whatever option your MC takes, there’s lots of grace in there for groups to work out what works for you as a community.  But the big picture is please do involve the kids, because this is about discipleship, this is about how we shaping lives to follow Jesus.  How are our children going to learn to follow Him?  By learning from us.  You know the saying about how “It takes a village to raise a child”?  This gives you a chance to do that.  Those of you who don’t have kids, you have the fun of interacting with other peoples’ children and enjoying them.  Those of you who are parents, you have some support in seeing other people help disciple your children.  “Thank goodness”, you may think!!  But although you are the primary spiritual discipler of your child, in MC life you have a healthy and flexible structure to facilitate other people engaging with and helping shape your child as they learn to follow Jesus.  That is a really healthy and positive thing.