Few children’s ministry books place emphasis on deep biblical and theological teaching. However, AWANA president Matt Markins’ latest book is just that sort of book. It’s a must-read for forging a practical ministry for the theologically-minded pastor who wants to see young people continue to confess the faith once delivered to the saints and not simply follow what the sociologist Christian Smith has called “moralistic therapeutic deism.”
Like other recent children’s ministry books, it emphasizes that waiting until the teenage years to start prioritizing children’s spiritual, worldview, and moral development is a mistake. Yet unlike many books in that genre, this book breaks new ground by moving away from attractional and quantitative models of ministry (which prioritize numbers of attendees) to a missional model that emphasizes Christian truth and formation.
Markins emphasizes we are now in a “secular age,” on a mission field where we must seek to foster countercultural witness shaped by authentic Christian community rooted in deeply biblical ways of thinking and being in the world.
After emphasizing the “goal,” the “desired outcome,” of the church’s work in the faith-formation of children being the “lifelong discipleship of our children” (7), Markins examines three findings from AWANA’s decade of research about the greatest needs of churches in children’s spiritual development. Part one explores “Formations.”
Relationships. “The single most catalytic factor to influence the formation of lasting faith in children is loving, caring, adult relationships,” Markins writes. Yet this research reveals that only 40% of children in churches (ages 5 to 14) have a “meaningful relationship” with an adult (21–22). Children with a meaningful relationship with an adult, however, are two to three times more likely than those without such a relationship to understand basic biblical and Christian worldview principles, practice spiritual disciplines, and be engaged in the life of the gathered community.
Bible Engagement. The second factor in lasting faith formation in children is what Markins calls “Bible engagement.” He believes this has been low on the priority list for many evangelicals. While the educational and entertainment establishments were becoming more and more secularized in the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s, Markins observes “the church in the U.S. was simultaneously moving toward a popular-level Bible-Lite Strategy” (32).
What does he mean by “Bible-Lite Strategy”? Essentially, to emphasize moralism without a deep understanding of the gospel and the Christian worldview seen in redemptive history, in the biblical understanding of Creation, Fall, redemption, and restoration (33).
“Our children are drowning in powerful secular cultural narratives that have formed a storytelling superstructure that’s all about hyper-individualism” (33–34). Yet the trend has been that churches reinforce this individualistic narrative rather than provide children with a biblical counter-narrative.
If we “want lasting faith in our children,” Markins stresses we must dig that foundation even deeper. “When we do, we fill it with not only a Scripture-rich environment where kids’ lives are saturated with the Bible, but we also give them the gospel worldview that’s far more satisfying than the empty promises of hyper-individualism” (36).
But a look at practice in churches indicates that while 91% of children in church “study the Bible” at least weekly, only half “learn about a biblical worldview” (41). The Bible-Lite Strategy might teach children morals, but they often “walk away without any sense of origin, understanding of sin, redemption, and salvation, personal relationship with Jesus, or practices of walking in faithfulness to Jesus” (41–42).
Culture. The third most important factor in children’s faith formation is the “context of increased secular cultural formation” in which they’re immersed (45). We must not simply “protect” our children from secular culture but must also “prepare” them to be a counter-cultural witness within the culture (46–47).
Markins argues we’ve been too focused on making children’s ministry “the greatest hour of a child’s week.” He admits this is a noble goal, yet we’ve been too worried about “production value, the skit we worked on so diligently, or the latest children’s ministry video.” However, these are not what leads children to deeper faith. It’s Bible engagement in the context of rich mentoring relationships with adults. Children’s ministry can be “the greatest hour in a child’s week” only when we emphasize “highly relationship, Scripture-rich environments” (49).
Again, this means dealing with Christian worldview issues, addressing areas such as how Christians should view social justice, sexuality, pornography, bullying, loneliness, social media, depression, racism, self-harm and suicide, school shootings, and sexual identity (52–53). Markins urges children’s workers in the church to read more broadly. His book recommendations are refreshing in our current evangelical subculture of fascination with pop culture, shallowness, and “dumbing down” of religion.
After discussing “Formation” in part one, Markins discusses “Systems” in part two. He laments the “systems” of children’s ministry over the past generation “have invested significantly in an attractional model of ministry that focuses on numerical growth but does significantly less to form deepening faith.” He further notes, “We spend massive amounts of time, money, energy, and human capacity on making our weekend experiences and special events more entertaining and fun, but we find ourselves wondering if it’s just more entertaining cultural noise” (61).
Markins contends we must move from these outmoded systems to more authentic systems rooted deeply in the Christian wisdom and practice taught and modeled in Scripture. “As painful as this reality may be, the data is showing us in the West that our systems may be incongruent with our goal of forming lasting faith in our children” (61). He discusses four areas where “systems” of faith formation in children must shift.
Time. Research shows “the way children’s ministry leaders spend our time does not match our desired objectives” (65). Parents and church leaders are too entertainment-driven in activities and life structure. Church workers who engage in children’s ministry are too busy. Even professional children’s workers spend too much time on busy work and administration, not enough on building relationships, mentoring, teaching biblical truth, and equipping parents to do these things.
Markins’ research shows definitively that parental involvement is most important in a child’s spiritual development. Yet only one-fourth of professional children’s ministry leaders spend six hours or more a week equipping parents to form the faith of their children and create an environment saturated in a biblical vision of the world. The greatest priority for churches is to equip parents, Markins stresses, and congregations must work to recalibrate their systems to this end.
Fun. Chapter 6, simply titled “Fun,” is perhaps the most countercultural (even controversial) chapter in the book. Markins quips that “when it comes to having fun,” evangelicals are “outperforming our own expectations” (81). It’s not that children shouldn’t have fun, he stresses. But he also asks, “Have we unknowingly given entertainment and relevance too much priority in our kids’ ministry?” (81).
His answer is yes. Again, while not against children having fun, he suggests — I think rightly — that we’ve made entertainment and cultural relevance the driving factors in ministering to youth and children. Yet we haven’t looked critically enough at the value-laden assumptions behind entertainment and cultural relevance.
Increasingly, studies reveal the attractional model is failing. Yet “it is what we do best.” So, it’s the ministry model we keep pushing (82). Markins argues this outmoded ministry model that many churches are still using, which prioritizes entertainment and cultural relevance, is the least relevant for ministry in our increasingly secularized and post-Christian culture. Dumbing down our religion simply does not equip children in our congregations to have deeply formed Christian faith to be countercultural witnesses for Christ in a post-Christian cultural setting.
Parents. A persistent theme in AWANA’s research shows parents are the “primary influence” on children’s spiritual development but are “less engaged in discipling them.” The answer to this, Markins argues, is for churches to partner with parents in a way that “equips them to disciple their kids based on their capacities and capabilities” (89).
He discusses four kinds of parents when it comes to the spiritual development of their children: “higher-capacity” ones, those who engage in “occasional” discipling, “less-engaged” ones, and “not-gonna-happen” parents (90).
Markins stresses the need for churches to move away from an emphasis on programming and events to an emphasis on discipleship for the church and family. This involves partnering with parents to move them to the next level of engagement in their children’s spiritual development. When a child “lives in a ’not-gonna-happen’ parental environment,’” congregations must engage in “maximizing every discipleship moment possible” (91).
Children’s ministry leaders sometimes blame the lack of parental involvement in church and children’s spiritual lives, while parents tend to blame the church and ministry leaders, citing the lack of a sense of belonging at the church by their children (92). Interestingly, 90% of children’s ministry leaders ranked parental involvement as crucial to a child’s faith formation (90), whereas only 68% of parents believed this (93).
Another difficulty is that most ministry leaders think “equipping parents” merely means providing resources to parents. Markins emphasizes the need for a shift to a “relational, discipling, mentoring, training, and equipping” mindset (97).
Metrics. Because of secularization, the church must learn to function more in a “Babylon” context than a “Jerusalem” context, Markins insists. Thus, church leaders and parents must embrace “a type of formation that runs counter to the ways of this world” (101).
The book argues that one of the most obvious results of AWANA research is that church leaders don’t know how to track and evaluate success. They simply don’t know whether their ministry has resulted in more children growing to become genuine disciples. So, they fall back on attendance as the measure of success.
Markins insists that both Scripture and research teach the metrics we must measure for success in children’s ministry are tied to the following outcomes:
Belong, which is about highly relational discipleship
and mentoring by adults.
Believe, which is about learning the Bible and its worldview.
Become, which is about teaching children to practice the spiritual disciplines, live Christian lives, and “navigate a changing culture” from the vantage point of deep biblical truth and authentic Christian community (110).
Prioritizing numerical, quantitative metrics rather than spiritual metrics results in unproductive practices. These methods do not equip children to become people who belong to the Christian community, believe the biblical worldview, and live holy lives that engage their culture counterculturally, helping others belong, believe, and become.
The Faith of Our Children is a wake-up call for church leaders. While based on the latest research, it’s rooted in biblical wisdom. If churches embrace the paradigm shift it prescribes, they will be better equipped to produce sustainable faith in children and be more biblically faithful in doing so.
