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This is the first year that our church has a Coordinator for Children Ministry and I was the lucky one chosen. I would like to the end the debate. I have searched in all of the websites and I see is children. Can someone help me define what that age group is. Everyone has a different concept on that. For instancee how far up in the ages do I have to coordinate?
Thanks, I really appreciate you help.
Hello,
I can understand your confusion. I have finally found the answer!! The general agreement seems to be birth to age 12 or 0 to 6th grade. Depending on how many children you have you can include up to age 14 or the 8th grade. Hope this helps.
Some churches will put all of the Sabbath School birth to Earliteen under the Children's Ministry Coordinator and even Adventurers and its sister programs. the previous post is correct 0-12 including Sabbath School, VBS, and other activities. More importantly in the early stage of your church making a transition is not to debate the issue. I am happy your church has chosen you; it is better though for others to have a clear plan ahead of time. That is the church should define exactly what they expect from their Children's Ministry Coordinator before appointing one. This can evolve overtime and should be planned ahead as well.
Children's Ministries and Youth Ministries are not so far segregatted that you should fight over control or groups. Sit down with the YM Coordinator and your support teams and make a plan that will place you on a path to helping children grow in faith, service, and church leadership skills. The "hand-off" from children's to youth should be seemless, flawless, unnoticed to the child. It should feel and look like a natural progression and the goals should be one in the same. This applies not only from children's to youth but from Sabbath School to Adventurers to Pathfinders to VBS... The one broad mission is to develop faith, condfidence, a knowledge of God and church heritage, and service and leadership skills. The task of it is using a plan that builds on it self without tearing a child from one direction to another causing a sense of being overwhelmed.
God Bless,
Chris Fishell ACMA
The idea of a smooth hand-off that Chris mentioned is an important one. If you have a church large enough to have a separate youth ministries coordinator I would suggest that you and the YM coordinator work a plan of "he must increase and I must decrease." That is, at age 12 slowly have the youth leader have more and more of an active role in the kid's life while you release those portions that he (or she) is taking on. By the time the kid is in high school you'd just be "the old friend from early days" (which is still a very important role!) while the YM coordinator is his/her main minister.
If, as I suspect from your original post, your church is small and doesn't have an established YM coordinator then you can start helping the 12 your olds (ages approximate only) to take on responsibility in the church. Find out what his/her interests and gifts are and find ways for them to use them in the regular function of the church (don't be afraid to trust them, even if they're young). As they get more involved in leadership and feel that the church values them as an active and necessary leader; they will transition themselves away from being a "child" in the church to an "adult". The other important thing to remember while doing this process is that he/she will likely meet resistance from well meaning church members who aren't able to accept that the kid is no longer "little Johnny" or are afraid to trust him/her ("what if Little Johnny doesn't do it right and messes things up?" or "Who will watch Johnny to make him do it right?"). That's where you need to be his/her ferocious defender--This could be the difference between his/her feeling like he/she has a place in the church or not; which is, all too often, connected with whether he/she's saved or lost. I had such a defender and it did me a world of good as I transitioned.
God Bless your new work!
--Pastor Steve Severance
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