Let's Give Kids the Pulpit!

I've been around church my entire life. I've been in traditional churches, modern churches, seeker-friendly churches, emergent churches, home churches, churches that meet in store windows, nice churches with coffee shops, churches with stained glass windows, churches with choirs, churches without choirs, churches that do baptisism in kiddie pools, churches with orange shag carpet, churches from Florida to Oregon. I've been in many denominations as well. Just about every one, almost. We don't just attend church, church is our livelihood, its how we pay our bills. We've been in church ministry for almost 8 years as a married couple. Before I was ever married, my father was a pastor and then a full time missionary. Church bought my first bike, my clarinet for band, my shoes, my hairspray, and churches even paid for my wedding. It's been apart of who I am from the moment I was born.

There are so many words to describe churches, some of which I used above. I bet Webster could publish a dictionary specifically for churches and the churchisms that we likes to use. This morning I was laying in bed, unable to sleep because of Noel doing yoga in my belly, praying about life, church, kids, and just ministry in general. A scripture came to my mind while I was praying about such things,

Matthew 19:14 (New International Version)

¹⁴Jesus said, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these."

I kept thinking of this verse and thinking of all of scriptures where Jesus talks about children. You know the scripture about having the faith of a child. What does that mean, I asked myself? And what would that mean to the church? I wonder what church would look like if we approached our Sunday morning rituals as a child? A lot of different things come to my mind but one word kept coming back to me, "simplify".

We have cable with all the bells and whistles. We have Playhouse Disney with all the latest and greatest shows. We have 3 different channels of Nick Jr. with preschool shows showing 24-7. We have channels for kids that I've never even heard of! You know what my kids prefer to watch? Cinderella. Snow White. Dr. Seuss's Green Eggs & Ham. Calliou. All the movies and shows with animation that I watched when I was a kid. The drawn pictures that have been colored in. They don't even care about the shows with the modern technology of animations with every color imaginable. They prefer the simplified shows. The shows with meaning. The movies that have a deep underlying moral value, even if they don't know it yet.

What if we stopped approaching this "new" way of church to copy cat Starbucks or IKEA and approached church as a child? What if we keep the word, "simplify" in our minds? What if we were real? What if we gave people what they really want? A real God, with a real love, on a real journey? It's not about the latte', or the donuts in the foyer. It's not even about the latest and greatest video on the screen. It's about the message. The real, unwatered down message of Jesus Christ! THAT makes my spirit leap.

What if we asked our children about Christ? What if we gave kids the pulpit for a Sunday?