Wish you were here!
Wish you were here!
The time for a summer break from activities is almost upon us - a time for the taking of a holiday and the writing of postcards home with those immortal words 'wish you were here'! For many of you I expect it can't come a moment too soon and especially if you've been engaged week by week with the planning and delivering of the children's work at your church. Usually by this time of year, ideas are running out and inspiration is in short supply. But take heart, you're almost there. That much-needed rest will soon be yours!
The summer holiday period is traditionally a good time to catch up in so many ways: to stock up on new energy for your work, to find renewed enthusiasm for your calling, and even perhaps a chance to sort out the resources cupboard - a job you've been meaning to tackle since... last summer! So, as you throw away those 'dead' felt tips, decide whether those few sheets of unused card should be recycled or thrown, unpick those paste-encrusted brushes from the crumbling clay models that the children insisted you kept, discard empty paint pots, bin used glue sticks and linger over masterpieces of craft that had once been displayed so proudly, I wonder what your assessment of last year with your children's group amounts to?
Did your numbers grow, remain steady or has your group shrunk in size?
Was the attendance encouraging or disappointing?
Have volunteers come forward to help you or are you facing yet another staffing crisis in September?
Have your hopes for greater ownership of the work by the whole family of the church been realised or do you still feel frustrated?
In short, just what is there to show for your year of children's ministry? And what would you write on a postcard home about this last year spent with the children you have prayed for, taught regularly, learned from and nurtured in the faith?
Much of our work in church can seem painfully slow and hard going at times, and perhaps in no area more so than the area of work with children. This can be disheartening, especially within a Western culture that looks for the quick return, easily measurable success and big numbers! If something isn't working - by which is meant 'produce immediate results' - we feel under pressure to give up and try something different. This attitude can be prevalent within church circles too and with it comes the temptation to hype the numbers, 'big up' the miracles and exaggerate the impact of God's work. But surely this is one contemporary way we are breaking the commandment about 'taking the Lord's name in vain' and is to be strongly resisted?
The Bible story of 'success' is quite different. God chooses to work with a stubborn and insignificant tribal group, who continually get it wrong and end up in exile. Jesus chooses to work with a somewhat dull-witted and certainly very marginal group of disciples, who again and again just don't get it and end up running away. Even the early church, despite its miraculous beginnings, ends up scattered, often in hiding, torn apart by disputes and hardly noticed by the wider Roman world. And yet God is at work. God's character is revealed; God's love does triumph over death; and one by one lives are slowly but surely transformed to become the people they were always meant to be.
But this didn't happen overnight - nor over one year. God-work is slow but deep. You only have to look back honestly on your own spiritual journey to recognise that.
And so this past year is just a small part of a much bigger picture for your children, and anyway, I wonder what will have helped them most to grow in their faith? Would it have been that clever method of yours for teaching memory verses? Was it your inspired illustration to explain the Trinity? Or what about your dramatic storytelling of the life of Elijah? Wonderful as each of these may have been in their time and place, they are almost certainly not what your group will remember. Instead it will be the fact that you were there for them, that you bothered to prepare well for them, that you were interested in the ups and downs of their lives, that you prayed for them and that you remembered their names! This is what will have mattered at the end of this year's work and this is what will last.
Oh, and one thing more: the fact that you are motivated to want them to have a growing faith in Jesus, because you yourself have that sort of faith; the fact that you have in effect been saying to them all year 'Wish you were here'. 'Wish you were here'... in that place that knows the love of God at work in their hearts as it is in yours. If this is the prime motivation that lies behind all your programmes, ideas and planning, then your postcard home at the end of this year can sum it all up with a heartfelt 'wish you were here'!
In this context the apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 3:5 comments helpfully on his ministry in Corinth when he writes: '(We) are merely servants who helped you to have faith. It was the Lord who made it happen' (CEV). And after all, it was surely God's very own postcard 'wish you were here' from the heart of heaven that motivated him to send Jesus to die and rise again and which still motivates the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives - whether we are adults or children - and who keeps whispering in our heart 'wish you were here'.
