Come ye Children

One thing I really miss about teaching is the creativity I got to use to teach kids who were struggling to learn. The kids who had a really hard time because their educational foundation was a little shaky.

Now that I am not teaching, I am constantly feeling the need to fill this void in my life. I've always wondered what it would be like if I could have had access to those struggling kiddos before they got to school. If I could have had the chance to lay the foundation for their education. Would things have been different?

Paul and I started working in the nursery at Austin Stone Community Church when we found out we were pregnant with Julia. We started with the crawlers because I figured that would be easiest while pregnant. After Julia was born the couple that was coaching were getting close to having their sweet little boy and needed someone to sub for them. After praying about it we knew God was calling us to do this. They ended up deciding that they didn't want to come back to coaching so Paul and I have stayed in that position. Through lots of conversations with some friends and other leaders we realized there is a great need for a story time in the nursery. I know it seems overwhelming when we have kiddos who are beginning to HATE being away from their parents and are screaming, but kids LOVE structure so this is one opportunity to help have structure in those classrooms.

So since I'm a stay at home mom who has SOME extra time, and this is something I really want for Julia too...I volunteered to write the curriculum. I LOVE that the KidStuff team came up Six Basic Truths for the kiddos to really understand and let penetrate their hearts. So that's where I started. I took one story from the Bible for each truth to teach the little ones, and am coming up with activities for them to do (in the older classes...those kiddos that are walking). For the little ones (babies) we are just going to work on telling them the story and highlighting the Basic Truth for the month.

I know you might be thinking that they are so little, but we read "Come ye Children" by Charles Spurgeon and one of the points he makes is that we are doing an injustice to children when we think they are too young for God's truth. So we are starting with the babies at The Stone. We are going to tell them that God created EVERYTHING including them. We are going to tell them that they were born sinners in need of a Savior, and that Jesus is the Rescuer because even though they probably aren't going to look at us and say "I think I want to ask Jesus to be my Savior" at 8 weeks old...we are laying a foundation for them to know these truths about God as they grow up. And when they are old enough to admit they are a sinner and need Jesus to rescue them we will have followed Jesus' command to let the children come to Him by pointing them that way starting in the nursery.

So right now I'm writing. I'm writing about who God is in a way that little ones can understand, but as I do it penetrates my heart and God reminds me who He is.