Children's Church

Now there are other things that distract us during the week. One of them is the Children's Church commitment each Sunday at our Church the Mill Park Baptist Church. We consider ourselves privileged to be allowed this responsibility to help grow the spiritual lives of some of our young church members.

At the beginning of the Sunday church service, we all meet in the main hall for singing. After twenty minutes, the children and volunteer adults depart to the other rooms to have their children's time. The reasons for that are obvious and based on learning at different developmental levels. There is a creche, a beginners church, and then for the primary aged children there is the Children's Church which we are part of. Beyond that, there is even an older group that meets as "Seven Up" (years seven an above). The adult church continues in more singing followed by prayer and teaching, and the children begin their version of the same thing but to a level that suits them. Children's Church meets together for more songs (and is encouraged to even dance along), followed a Bible story and a game maybe, then go to small groups with their own age level. Our small group of about twelve grade sixes is a great bunch. They have their own wisdom and plenty of trust and cooperation. They are a dream to work with.

We are not without our challenges though. There is a shortage of leaders at present in Children's Church and mid year our team leader is leaving. We are going to send her off well with the praises she deserves, but we are in a difficult spot and have been throughout this year because there have really not been the hoped for number of volunteers from the adult church join us at the beginning of the year. We are new - volunteers from last year. There are four other volunteers and not all are available each Sunday, and none of them there longer than us. The "old guard" have all moved on for a break. People could be concerned about the amount of preparation work. It is true that there is a reasonable amount of preparation to do each week before each Sunday of about half a day. It can be relentless and best not left to Saturday night.

So without making a big deal of it, we are facing a couple of problems at once. We are short of small group leaders and will soon lose our team leader. We will be praying for help and guidance, and some time later we will have to report back how it all worked out.