Building Experience

HAVE YOU EVER HEARD the phrase, “God doesn’t have any grandchildren?” It succinctly summarizes the sobering reality that children don’t have a relationship with God simply by virtue of their parents’ relationship with the Lord. Each and every person, regardless of age, must personally come to know the Lord in order to receive His gift of eternal life and to be able to experience His grace and mercy in their own lives.

This month, in our look at Bent Tree Bible Fellowship (BTBF) in Carrollton, Texas, we see that a huge component of expanding this church facility has been determining not only what the children’s ministry space will look like, but, more importantly, what the children’s ministry will look and feel like.

“In children’s ministry, we have to be cognizant of the fact that, even though we are dealing with the smallest of our members, we quite possibly have the potential for the largest impact,” explains Kids’ Pastor Monte Slaver. “These kids are the ones who will either embrace the Word and develop their own love-relationship with God, allowing Him to shape every aspect of their lives, or they will walk away from faith completely because they think it is academic at best, and irrelevant at worst. And these kids – all kids – are our future.”

Consider the family with two working parents, the kids’ sports filling up weekday evenings and Saturdays. Sunday is really their only opportunity to be together as a family with that sort of schedule. Yet, the church is set up so that when the family walks in the door, the 2nd-grader goes to one room, the 5th-grader to another and the parents do a group study, sometimes together and sometimes not. During the second hour, the kids endure another hour of the same curriculum, while mom and dad go to the worship service to hear the pastor’s message.

Of course, this is not true of every church model, and there are so many churches that handle this dilemma quite well. In fact, BTBF staffers and volunteers often visit area churches that already have stellar programming in place to make Sunday morning worship a rich time for each and every member of the family, both individually and otherwise.

“Our real goal is to partner with parents and to live out the instructions of Deuteronomy 6:7, making biblical truths an integral part of their family’s life the other six days of the week – not just Sunday,” Slaver says. “When people leave our church after Sunday services, our desire is that they will have heard and experienced something that draws them closer to God and underscores their relationship with Christ.”

As BTBF enters the home stretch of moving into its new sanctuary, current plans are to undergird and expand the impact of children’s ministry programming to take into consideration the various and disparate demographics of families who will be attending on any given Sunday. Known for being a church that reaches out to the “lost, the letdown and the looking,” curricula have to take into account that the church is ministering to long-time members, new Christians and those who are just testing the waters. To meet the needs of these diverse audiences, BTBF is ramping up toward what will become a family worship time that neither competes with nor replaces traditional corporate worship or small-group, interactive study time for the kids. And yet, each element is sturdy enough to stand on its own.

BTBF has been hosting four identical services on Sundays: 9 a.m., 10:45 a.m., 5 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. In the move toward opening the new facility, it transitioned to three services, eliminating the 6:30 p.m. service. Additionally, all the children’s ministry resources were shifted to the morning services. Once the new building opens, there will only be two morning services, cutting out the evening ones altogether. However, the big change for children’s ministry – and for adult worship – will be the addition of a family worship service.

The current sanctuary, which seats 1,200, will be retrofitted after the new sanctuary (seating more than 3,000) is opened in 1Q08. This renovation, expected to take about 90 days, will allow the church to introduce a family worship service to be held in between the two traditional morning services. Due to summer curriculum and volunteer scheduling, BTBF anticipates that this new service will be officially launched in 3Q08. While the program will be driven by drama, humor and fast-paced, interactive worship, at the root of every element of this one-hour program will be music, theology, doctrine and biblical truth. The unique family service will be comprised of a high-energy praise team leading families in a time of musical worship; a drama team, in tandem with an entire tech-team, performing sketches designed to illustrate the main idea for the week or month; and a creative summary message digging deep into God’s Word at an age-appropriate and engaging way. Kept in mind will be the idea that this may be the only church experience that many families ever have. And with adequate planning, preparation and presentation, it will be comprehensive enough to serve as a full-fledged, edifying and fulfilling worship experience.

Consider the people who are simply too intimidated to walk into a sanctuary full of 3,000-plus individuals they don’t know. Consider, too, the family mentioned earlier who views Sunday as their only time to be together. Now imagine being able to minister to those families in the way that meets their specific needs: a non-threatening, casual environment that welcomes all – young and old, visitor and member, believer and seeker, or even simply the family that would like to spend the morning together – without having to disperse once they walk through the church doors.

Yes, it is a huge undertaking. Yes, it will require a dedicated team of staff and volunteers. Yes, it will need to be a churchwide vision. And no, it won’t happen overnight. Just like it’s true that God doesn’t have grandchildren, He also doesn’t have stepparents. While it is typical to think that the church reaches children through their parents, BTBF also recognizes that, often, the church is able to reach the parents through the children.

Whitney Kelley is director of account services at A. Larry Ross Communications, a Dallas-based media relations firm specializing in crossover communications between faith and culture. She and her family are also members of BTBF (www.btbf.org).