Simulations: Children’s Ministry

This was a fun one! When we’re on the field, we might get asked by a local church to run their children’s ministry for a day… with a 15 minute advance!!

Each team in our Squad (we have 5 teams total) had to share a Bible lesson, an interactive song, and ask the kids if they wanted to accept Christ… all through an interpreter (aka, Google Translate)!

But wait, there’s more! If our team wasn’t sharing a lesson, we had to act out a “sub-scenario”. We were the kids, and we were given a new way to behave every time a team went up to teach.

The first team to go was Jack Boon’s: Jackson, Mitch, Zach, and Marshall. They shared the story of Jesus welcoming the children, but only 3 of the kids were paying attention! The rest of us were bored, hot, and ready for church to be done. They tried to combat it by joining in the crowd and encouraging us to participate.

The second team was Libby’s: Esme, Abeni, Sophie, Maggie Claire, Emilee, Ashley, and Clara. They shared the story of Zaccheus, but before they could, they had to get us to pay attention! We were running around, playing, and just being kids with a lot of energy. They just kept calling for attention, until we listened. Then we were very engaged with the story and excited to participate!

The third team was Emily’s: Aaliyah, Jess, Hannah, Isabella, Rosella, and Ella. Half of the kids were very excited to see them and refused to leave their side! They tried to take their bracelets, necklaces, watches, anything they could get their hands on! I wasn’t a clingy child, and it was really hard for me to hear the story, because they were just covered in kids!

The fourth team was Kayli’s: Cimmie, Abby, Ashlyn, Caryse, Natalia, and Aubrey. I wasn’t paying attention at all to what they were teaching, because I was so focused on the “cool” kids and what they thought of the message. They thought it was boring, so I thought it was boring. This team didn’t really know why we weren’t paying attention (we tried to be subtle about it), so they couldn’t come up with a plan of action. They just tried their best!

And the last team was Kait’s: Meghan, Abi, Lily, Anna, Kennedy, Romy, and me! We were going to do the story of the paralytic man whose friends lowered him through the roof. But as we tried to do the story, I noticed 3 kids who kept being shoved to the back and bullied. Every time I tried to engage them, 1 of 3 bullies would push between us and start fighting for my attention. It was a juggling act, trying to protect the kids without being mean to the bullies, who were the most excited to see us. We ended up having me and Romy (and later Kennedy) go around and try to comfort the kids, while the rest were engaged by our original plan.

The crazy thing about these scenarios, was that we’re told to expect them all at once when we have to do children’s ministry! It makes me so glad that we were able to discuss the best way to keep the kids engaged for each scenario!

I’m not usually the best with kids, but I felt like God was nudging my heart to feel a genuine connection with them, and now I’m actually excited for it!! God is so good!!!