Missional Children's Ministry | A Brief Definition

(picture originally uploaded to Flickr by Victor Bezrukov)

If you’ve followed my blog, you know that I’ve been trying to articulate what missional children’s ministry is and what it looks like. A few weeks ago, I had a couple of posts about entitlement in relation to mission and the importance of remembering Jesus needs to be the main character of our life stories and promised to outline my thoughts on what children’s ministry with a missional mindset looks like. This post is missional children’s ministry in a nutshell as I see it. Over the next seven posts, I will expand on each of the points in this overview. (If you want a brief preview to my thoughts, check out my contribution to the Kidmin 360 Future of Children’s Ministry project.) I invite you to contribute your thoughts and join in on the conversation. There are many of us trying to figure all of this out, and it is my hope that this will evolve into something that helps bring a bit of clarity, direction and substance to those of us trying to discover what missional children’s ministry looks like.

Missional children’s ministries exist to help families and children know God’s Story as revealed by his Word and actively become a part of that Story.

In order for this to happen, missional children’s ministries want families and children to:

• Discover who God is,
• Experience his love for them,
• Live the way God wants them to, and
• Bring God’s Kingdom to their world.

What are your thoughts about these initial ideas? How would you begin to define each of the points?

This post is part of a larger series outlining what children’s ministry looks like from a missional mindset. Check out the other posts in this series:
Missional Children’s Ministry | A Brief Definition
Missional Children’s Ministry | Knowing God’s Story
Missional Children’s Ministry | Becoming a Part of God’s Story
Missional Children’s Ministry | Discover Who God Is
Missional Children’s Ministry | Experience God’s Love
Missional Children’s Ministry | Live God’s Way
Missional Children’s MInistry | Bring God’s Kingdom to This World
Missional Children’s Ministry | What Does This Look Like?