Churches challenged to put children first in 2009
2009 is the year for the church to put children at the top of its agenda, says Alan Charter, head of evangelism at Scripture Union and director of Children Matter!.

Children Matter! has collaborated with the Consultative Group on Ministry among Children to launch a new DVD resource this week for churches to use throughout 2009, the 30th anniversary of the UN Year of the Child and the 20th anniversaries of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the UK Children Act.

The DVD has been released as part of the Will You Make A Difference? campaign that is inviting churches across the denominations to use the Year of the Child as an opportunity to re-examine their work with children, celebrate areas of progress, and renew their vision for children’s ministry.

The DVD features a message from the Bishop of Southampton, the Rt Rev Paul Butler, who challenges churches to deepen their engagement with children and nurture the foundations for a lifelong relationship with Jesus.

“I do have a deep concern that children grow as disciples of Jesus. Not simply that they make a decision or become converts, but that they can become lifelong followers of Jesus who will still be there following Him in their seventies and eighties,” he says. “That takes a lot of work and has to be taken very seriously,” he says.

Bishop Butler encourages Christians to think of new ways to help young people access the Bible and become more involved in the life of the church.

“Children are members of the church now. They belong to the people of God at the age they already are,” he said.

“There are an awful lot of children in this country who have no background in the Christian faith at all.

“They don’t really know the story of Jesus. How are we going to imaginatively engage with them and help them hear the story of Jesus and understand that it’s important for their lives and can change them from today onwards?

“That is a task we have to commit ourselves to very seriously indeed.”

Mr Charter said he wanted to see as many churches as possible using the DVD and sharing their experiences with each other.

“My hope is that there will be vision that grows from this and people will be inspired and challenged to recognise the real significance that children hold for the heart of the church,” he said.

He acknowledged that over the last few decades, churches in the UK had not done a good job of maintaining links with children but remained positive that many churches are beginning to recognise the vital importance of children’s ministry.

“As a church in the UK, we are in a very different place today from where we were before and are not in contact with the numbers of children that we once were,” he said.

“This campaign is about engaging in that missionary challenge, recognising that when we work, when we minister and embrace and accept children, it isn’t just that moment, but there are lives being shaped by those experiences and it becomes significant for decades to come.

“My hope and prayer is that we will see confidence grow in terms of what we do in welcoming a child and how that begins a transformation in the church that we haven’t seen before.”