Have you ever stopped to answer the question: What is Children’s Ministry? If you work in “children’s ministry”, you’ve probably got a pretty good idea of what it is, but have you noticed that those who don’t work on staff in children’s ministry have wildly different ideas of what it actually is? Even parents and volunteers sometimes actually don’t understand exactly what we’re trying to do.

 

 

Here at Little Elk .we partner with parents to lead children toward the heart of God through Jesus Christ.

 

Partnering with parents Parents are designed to be and usually are the primary influence in a child’s spiritual formation. Therefore… If the church is  not intentionally partnering with parents, then most of what the church does is fairly irrelevant in the spiritual life of the child. It doesn’t matter what model you gravitate toward  we believe children’s ministry is family ministry; family ministry is children’s ministry. And we can forge effective partnerships in any of the many changing models of ministry. .

 

 

 

In the end, both parents and those of us in the church are guides. Of course, we need to do all we can to influence children in their faith – and what we do (or don’t do) most definitely influences them – but all of us have a free will to choose, and one day all of us do. We at Little Elk believe in training up a child in the best way to go in life.

 

 

 

Ultimately, spiritual formation is about the heart. This is why It is mentioned hundreds of times  and in many different contexts throughout scripture.  We are told: “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.’ Proverbs 4:23 The “heart” (in scripture) generally encompasses our thinking, our will and our emotions. We want the hearts of our children to lean toward God in all areas of their life so that everything they do is influenced “toward God”.