Who'd be a children's evangelist?

Kay and Steve Morgan-Gurr are full-time Children's Evangelists and General Directors of Children Worldwide. They are based in Leicester at Knighton Evangelical Free Church, but have a national ministry. They have been the custodians of Whizz Kids at Spring Harvest for the last six years, and love working with children, training adults to do the same and providing resources for both children and adults.

Here they tell us the lessons they have learned from their work.

Whenever we have to answer the official question 'What is your job?' we anticipate the pause and confusion that follows our answer 'Self-employed children's evangelists'. Officialdom has no pigeonhole in which we fit.

Sharing the gospel with children is both an amazing privilege and responsibility. Our work is full of variety and our time is filled with a mixture of preparing, recovering from or doing any of the following: school assemblies, holiday clubs, camps, church weekends, all-age services, training days, road shows, seminars or writing and recording children's songs.

Changed children

Children are so different these days. The attention span of any group seems to get less each year. At home they are probably at least two generations away from a church-going culture, and stand an increasing chance of coming from something other than a stable marriage background. They have amazing technology at their disposal. Television is showing them things that would have been censored even at the cinema a few years ago. At school they have drug information and sex education, but Christianity is side-lined as just another religion. The name of Jesus no longer appears in songs used in school assemblies, having been replaced by general concepts of God, and being nice to others.

Changed country

We are now told that we live in a multi-faith country, and the politically-correct insist that all religions are regarded as equal. On top of this there is the spectre of the Children Act that many regard as putting paid to their traditional ways of dealing with children in a church situation.

And what about family services? Many older folk stay away from these because of unfortunate experiences in the past or because they don't get anything out of them. It is true that, at their worst, family services can end up being very superficial and calculated to excite already poorly disciplined children, while ignoring the fact that there are adults there feeling very marginalised.

They run the risk of being made to do embarrassing actions or struck by a low-flying misdirected sweet intended as a reward for a child near the back who has just correctly answered 'Jesus' to a patronisingly easy question. Done properly, family services should be genuinely 'all-age' and will probably take more thought and planning than any other service, but everyone should go away having learned, worshipped together and even having contributed something.

Children's work is certainly not for the faint-hearted, but unfortunately is still regarded by some as a training ground for beginners to 'cut their teeth' before they move on to more important things later.

How to evangelise kids?

In general terms, we have short-changed our children both in the church and in the country for too long, but here are some ways we can set about reversing the current worrying situation.

1) Know your theology. Before you can work with children you need to have some issues very clear. If you don't believe that children need saving, or think that they are too young to make a proper commitment, then your time would probably be better spent elsewhere. We believe that we should be very careful before adopting a starting point different from that used by the likes of John the Baptist, Jesus and the early church ù the call to repentance. This may not be fashionable and, yes, of course we emphasise God's love, but repentance is the response to that love. 'Jesus loves me, this I know for the Bible tells me so' is the core of our work. There is little point in advocating Jesus as a solution unless you identify the problem clearly - the adult word for that problem is 'sin'.

Can young children become Christians? Most certainly, yes. The youngest we know of was three years old when, some Christmases ago, she wanted to give Jesus the best present she could - herself! What a lot we adults have to learn and re-learn from our children.

2) Be sensitive and honest. Children need to be aware that being a Christian won't be easy. Our society accepts with great tolerance just about everything except Christianity, so teasing, bullying and 'being left out' can be expected. We should be aware that not all children respond to the 'in your face' approach that many adults insist on foisting on children (just watch children's TV on a Saturday morning. It's what we call 'shout television' and in much of it you can see an embryonic yobbishness). Allowance also has to be made for the quiet thinkers, nervous children and those of a more gentle disposition. We have to be sensitive to parents, and careful not to appear to the unchurched as a secret society, a cult or a covert operation. For example, we should be completely open with the fact that the main purpose of holiday clubs is to explain the gospel clearly, even if some choose to attend because of the fun, games and drama. Parents must, wherever possible, be informed of a child's interest in becoming a Christian to help them understand that it is the child's own informed and unpressured decision.

Having said that, we have to remember that the gospel is divisive. It never sets out to be politically correct. If Jesus is THE WAY, it does mean that there are no other ways.

3) Be safe. Many view the Children Act with some suspicion, or regard it as an inconvenient imposition. It has to be said that some self-imposed policies that arise from the legislation seem to be more for the protection of the children's worker than for the direct benefit of the children. However, as Christians we are subject to the laws of the country, and we should do our utmost to exceed the world's safety standards.

4) Be accountable. If you work for just one church or organisation on a regular basis, you will already be under their accountability structure. It is vital that freelance/itinerant children's workers like us are also accountable.

We recommend that you have a group of people who can keep an eye on your work and your welfare. We have much support from our home church where we are regarded as home-based missionaries, but, like all members of Children Worldwide, we also have an independent 'council of reference' to advise.

5) Move with the times. Children learn more when they enjoy the experience, and are given the chance to put into practise what they learn. They will not listen if they do not understand. By all means use storytelling, music, puppetry, audio-visuals, quizzes, memory verses, drama, craft, etc. Enlist help from others if you can't do these yourself - we aren't all creative - but always remember that they are a means to an end and should be used to help reinforce, explain and point to the main theme.

6) Some things don't change. The Bible is not a book to be re-interpreted, but rather to be explained and obeyed. We must beware of skirting around the key issues in God's Word or watering them down. Diluting the gospel can have the effect of inoculating children against the real thing when they come across it later.

7) Know your audience. Review from time to time who you are aiming at and what you want to achieve, especially with events like Holiday Bible Clubs - are they being run for churched or unchurched children or a mixture of the two? The distance from head to heart is sometimes a very long way for churched kids. We always try to avoid simply telling the story without anchoring it into the children's experience, lives and issues. Failure to do this means that an important biblical truth or principle will be regarded as just another story. If the account of David and Goliath only inspires children to go and buy a catapult, they've missed the point.

8) Don't underestimate the children. It is up to us to be child-like but not childish. Involve the children. Give them time and listen to them to find out how much they have understood or misunderstood.

9) Give the opportunity to respond. We always used to regard ourselves as 'sowers', but have learned that we are not being fair to the children if we do not leave the way open for a response. This is not coercion, in fact we often ask enquiring children to go away and think about it until they are certain it is what they want to do. We have reason to know personally that none of us knows how long we have on this earth, and children are not exempt. Not to put too fine a point on it, your talk may be the last time a child hears the gospel. That is a huge responsibility, and you may ask (as many do) 'what about those who die before hearing or responding?' We happily leave that with a loving and all-knowing God.

Anything else?

A little word of warning. In many cases, children's work is not regarded very highly. How can you measure how importantly children's work is regarded? Well, what would the reaction be if at 'half time' in your church, the adults were moved out into a back room while the children stayed in the main church for their programme?

Steve first came into children's work because he questioned why the standard of Christian musicianship reduced generally as you moved down the age groups, and Kay asked him to come and do something about it!

Is it worth it?

The minister of our church commented that we have to do as much study as for an 'adult' sermon, then work on distilling it to the point that children can understand, then add relevant application, illustration and creative reinforcement. It is a lot of work, planning and time. The challenge is to be both Biblical and Bang-up-to-Date. It has to be both.

We like running a little test in any group of Christians by asking how many became Christians when they were children. Something like 75% of Christians say that they first made a commitment between the ages of four and 14. Proper nurturing of this group is the key to reducing the teenage exodus that many churches experience.

We can't afford not to resource children's work properly.

Changed children

Changed country

How to evangelise kids?

Anything else?

Is it worth it?

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