I think there are moments in life when good is no longer good enough. It is a moment when the status quo, no matter how good, is no longer acceptable. I recently had one of those moments when I had to decide the future of our children’s moment in worship.
The children’s moment is when all the kids in the church come up and hear about the scripture of the day while simultaneously serving as a parade of cuteness in front of the entire congregation. We have been doing the children’s moment in church for as long most of the members can remember.
There is nothing bad about the children’s moment. And there is nothing inherently wrong with the children’s moment. But the children’s moment doesn’t represent anything great. As a church, we decided that we were going to care more about discipleship than anything else. Caring about discipleship means that in some circumstances we would have to stop being good so that we could be great. From March 20th we will be offering a full hour of discipleship during the worship time and we will no longer be doing a children’s moment during worship.
The struggle with the children’s moment is that it doesn’t give us the full amount of time we need to share the Gospel with the children of the community. It creates a space that doesn’t give us the fullness to have our kids’ community experience discipleship during worship.
While everyone loves traditional Sunday School outside of worship, what we found was that the majority of kids were coming to church and then leaving. Or simply put, we weren’t using our most attended time to share the Gospel.
There were also some logistical issues for our growing children’s ministry to take all those kids from worship to the kids’ community space, so this move also benefits a simpler Sunday morning experience logistically.
The truth is, the kids will be fine with this change. Kids are flexible and adaptable in just about every situation. The rest of us will be the ones who struggle. We will struggle because the children’s moment represents tradition and things we remember. We will struggle because our kids had those moments and those are the types of memories we want to hold onto forever. And we want everyone to share the joy that we had during that season in our lives!
Most of the time, sacrificing good for great is about letting go of our fear. It is the fear of change that makes us hold on to good instead of reaching for great. So, in this season of change, we will mourn together. We will mourn the loss of a good tradition. At the same time we will also celebrate that we are reaching for great and that as a community we will no longer settle. It won’t be easy, it won’t always be happy, but at the end of the day we can be sure it will be great.
Where in your own life do you need to put down good so you can have great?
Matthew 28:19
19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”