When you hear that question what is the first thing that comes to your mind? For me the first thing that comes to my mind is the ministry of the church; the Pastor and his staff. I truly believe kids need to be active in ministry but they are not ready to be the Pastor. In order to incorporate kids into ministry I had to find out exactly what ministry means.  

I looked up the meaning of ministry and realized that in order to find the definition I had to look at the root word minister. Many of the definitions would fit into what we would typically consider ministry but one stuck out to me. It said “to give service, care, or aid”. Wow, let that sink in for a moment.

Jesus talks about the same thing in the book of Matthew. He was telling the parable about separating the sheep from the goats. He then welcomed into Heaven the people on the right and told them about the times they gave Him food, water, shelter, and clothing. The people were confused and asked when they had done these things. The King of Kings answered when you did this for least of these, or another version says, my brothers and sisters. (Matthew 25:31-40) James was writing to Jewish Christians to give them some practical advice about how to live a Christ centered life. One of the instructions he gave was to care for orphans and widows. (James 1:27)

It seems to me when I read these two parts of scripture that God also sees ministry as giving service, care, or aid. Think about the ministries you are involved in. Do they fit that description? If they don’t how can you change them to do that? Perhaps you thought you were not involved in ministry but now see that when you pray for someone or pick up a piece of trash that you are a part of ministry.

Because we are all different, including kids, how does ministry look where you are at? Kids need to be involved in ministry. If we can understand that ministry is service it then becomes very simple to incorporate kids into ministry. Many of your kids may already be involved in ministry and didn’t even know it.

I would like to give you a glimpse at one way kids are being incorporated into ministry at my local church. It is not something that anyone outside of the Sunday school department sees and honestly they may not even realize what they are seeing. We have recently started a bus ministry and many of our older kids now help in a Sunday school class. They are not teaching but they are simply showing love to kids who don’t get a lot of that during the week. They are chasing after the kids who run across the gym during worship time. They are tying shoes. They help organize and referee kickball games at the local park. They are ACTIVELY involved in ministry. The kids don’t care who knows about what they do because they just want to serve the kids and families in the neighborhood.

Ministry is service. Kids can do that. The question is how can you help to make that possible?