Seen on Radical Congruency: What About Kids In Organic Church? Part One: Integration Is Better Than Segregation — excerpt:
My children will all tell you that this is the kind of church they love being a part of.
A few years ago while I was doing ministry in Japan I had a dream that my oldest daughter Heather (who was almost 15 years old at the time) started a church with her friends in Huntington Beach, CA where she went to school. After I returned I told her about the dream as I was saying goodnight to her to let her know she was on my mind while I was traveling.
The next day, after school she came home and said to me, “Dad, my friends want to do it.” I asked, “Do what?” She replied, “Start a church.” She told me that they were tired of the old boring type of church where they try and entertain them for a couple hours and they wanted to be a part of starting a new church. Because she had seen organic churches start a few times I told her, “Well, you know what to do, go do it and I will be available to help if you need it.” The next day she came home from school and they had planned church to start that next Thursday in her friend’s living room (in Huntington Beach), they had invited many from High School and had arranged for a friend who was a musician to lead worship. That Thursday their new church was born.
Okay, I’m blown away. How many of you had started a church by the age of 15? What to do with kids in a house church remains something I’m grappling with, especially younger kids… but this makes me think.
Thanks for the link. I was thinking today that maybe we need to make it easier to start churches – if it’s really not that complicated, we shouldn’t treat it like a moon shot to get one going.
We stumbled onto the inclusion of kids back in the early 90’s, when we had no choice because no-one could afford babysitters but still wanted to be in a home group. Lo and behold — not only did it work, but the kids involved are (for the most part) extremely mature beyond their years now that they’re teenagers.
I’d highly recommend that you give “Reimagining Spiritual Formation” by Doug Pagitt a good read. It’s extremely well-written and develops the inclusion of children (among other things) in a way that will excite you big time.
So I was driving my 6 1/2 year old daughter to school this morning and took the opportunity to talk to her about church. (We have changes in the works that we haven’t fully discussed with her yet… so I wanted to get her thinking.) In response to some surprisingly not-very-leading questions, here is what she told me:
1) Church is not about the building, it’s about the people (we’ve sown that one into her for years, she would have told me that at age 3 or 4).
2) Church can meet anywhere – in a park or if it’s small enough, in a house or even a restaurant.
3) You don’t need 500 people to have a church; you don’t even need 100 or 50. Three families could be a church.
4) If three families started meeting as a church in one of their houses, one person could be the pastor and talk about Jesus – or they could even take turns being the pastor and talking about Jesus.
5) If three families were meeting as a small church, other people would get to become christians and want to join the church too, and that would be okay. After one year or two years there would probably be 20 families, and that would actually be a pretty good way to start new churches.
Now, we’re not specifically talking about starting a church with two other couples… but if we ever do, I’m starting to think I should maybe let my daughter run the place. Time to rend the veil, methinks.
Gratia Vobis et Pax