Chris Hubbard

I am in teacher in our church’s nursery. As with many church ministries, there is a struggle to fill the open slots in the schedule. Part of the problem is that the church membership does not view that working in the nursery (or in other areas) as discipleship. We are coming along side these little ones and leading them to God. Instead they see it as just a place to drop off their children so that they can attend the main service and be fed, essentially a baby sitting service.  It is a ministry to parents and children.  Parents do need to be able to attend the worship service, but the children should also begin to worship God during these early years. 

I think part of this misconception is that we have not instilled a culture of discipleship within our community. I am coming to believe that this needs to start among the youngest of our church members, those believers in our children’s ministry.

John MacArthur, speaking at Together for the Gospel 2006, gave a session on Forty Years of Gospel Ministry. At the end of this talk, he gives a description of what I consider a culture of discipleship and the importance of reaching the children in the church.

Every Sunday at your church, there is a collection of non-believers that show up. Ok? Disproportionate to any other group in your church, there is a pile of unregenerate people that show up each Sunday. They are identifiable. They all hang out together. They end up in the same rooms every week. And they are the children in your church. You don’t need to go try and find people around the town who are unbelievers to bring them in and re-invent the church for their sake. You’ve got a phenominal evangelistic field in your children. What are you doing with that? Take your best people, your most gifted communicators, your most finely tuned material, and start there. Start there right on through the youth ministry. And I’ll tell you right now, my children are the product of a passionate, zealous, clear exposure to gospel truth from the start. We even do in our church a ministry, I am always so thrilled my grandchildren get in it. We take 3rd, 4th, 5th grade kids, put then in 1st, 2nd, 3rd grade kids’ classes alongside the teacher so that they can help the teacher and learn how to disciple, teach, and evangelize. We take junior high kids and put them over the juniors. We take high school kids and put them over the junior high. We take college kids and put them in high school or junior high ministry. We have this process going all the time…There is nothing more important. As a father, that is the evangelistic field that I start with in my own home, the salvation of my own children. And as a pastor, that is the most obvious place to do evangelism in the church.