A lot of churches give their Sunday kids group leaders and helpers a break over the summer and run with all age gatherings. So, if you are one such leader, I hope you are enjoying a bit of a break and will feel energised for September. I also hope that you are feeling encouraged as you look back on the last term. However, I appreciate too that it can feel at times like a slog. There will be plenty of Sundays when it feels like you barely get past crowd management and sometimes it will seem like you’ve waded through treacle. You’ve put in the effort to create a stimulating, fun, engaging session but the kids have seemed pretty disinterested and unresponsive. Sometimes, you will have felt like you’d had to rush preparation as well, trying to find time in a busy week. If those feelings are true of you as a kids worker, they are true for those who serve by teaching the adults too. That, however, might not be the encouragement you were looking for.
I think the bigger encouragement is that for all of us involved in any kind of bible teaching, we can trust God to be at work. He is sovereign over the time you spend with the children’s group. He is sovereign over their minds and hearts in the days and weeks that follow.
As well as the challenge of response on the day, we also may experience frustration, sanddness and uncertainty in the longer term. God might move you away to work somewhere else or the young people may move away as they get older, to study or find work. Sometimes, often perhaps, we don’t get to see how their lives turn out. Or indeed, we do see them seem to wander away from the Gospel. It’s good to remember again that the Lord is sovereign. You have simply served faithfully as he asks.
However, in my experience, there have been encouragements too and indeed surprises. It’s a wonderful joy, later on to discover that someone you taught in the kids group is going on with the Lord and using their gifts to serve him, wherever they are now. Sometimes, we are allowed a glimpse of the next part of the story. The point is that we don’t know what the Lord might be doing in a heart, now or later. We don’t always realise that an impression is being formed and that words of truth are being stored up in their heart to be drawn upon later.
So, enjoy the break, be encouraged and be ready to come back and keep serving in the Autumn.
Faithroots 