Because Children Really Do Matter!
The Nigerian pastor was wrapping up his visit at a church member’s home when he noted one of his host’s young sons hovering nearby. He broke off conversation with the adults to greet him. “Hello, I’m your pastor.”
But as he introduced himself, the boy only looked confused. “I don’t have a pastor. Maybe you are my father’s pastor. But you can’t be mine. You don’t even know my name.”
The truth in that candid statement stung. Did the children of his church really feel they had no pastor of their own? The boy’s words were still burning in the pastor’s mind when he attended a half-day seminar for church leaders on January 18, 2011, taught by BCM missionary Stephen King on the urgency of reaching the 4-14 Window, that span between ages four to fourteen when more than 80% of all Christ-followers make their decision to accept God’s gift of salvation. As the seminar came to a close, he stood up to share his experience with the boy.
“I am a leader of a district of fifty churches. But I see now how mistaken I’ve been in neglecting children’s ministry.” The district leader finished with a commitment to hire two full-time children’s pastors for his district.
With almost 160 million people, Nigeria is Africa’s most densely inhabited country, containing 20% of the continent’s total population. It is also a very youthful country with over 40% of its population under fifteen years old. Though one of the world’s principal oil exporters, the country has been historically wracked by poverty, corruption, oppressive governance, and strife between a Muslim dominated north and a Christian majority south.
Still, the body of Christ is alive and growing in Nigeria. The ECWA (Evangelical Church Winning All) alone, established 115 years ago through the Sudan Interior Mission, today SIM International, has almost 7000 churches divided into 74 District Church Councils. With over six million members, ECWA is one of Nigeria’s largest Christian denominations.
But though children make up a sizeable percentage of Nigerian church attendance, children’s ministry has typically taken a back seat to the adults where it exists at all. Perhaps consequence of a high infant mortality rate, children in Nigerian culture are not traditionally considered a worthwhile investment until old enough to contribute to society. In contrast, music plays a high priority. So it is not uncommon for a Nigerian church to have hundreds enrolled in choirs and worship teams while a handful of Sunday school teachers struggle to control hundreds of children. Still, within ECWA leadership many are beginning to recognize the urgency of reaching their own 4-14 Window.
“We are losing our next generation,” one ECWA church leader admitted.
It was 2008 when ECWA leadership first invited BCM to address their need of well-trained children’s ministry leaders. BCM Canada missionary Marion Jean Grant and BCM Ukraine missionary Olga Zaitseva held two three-day training conferences, using BCM’s core training curriculum In Step with the Master Teacher (ISMT).
SIM missionary Dee Grimes
A unique children’s ministry training program, ISMT covers 22 hours of culturally relevant instruction to help children come to know, love, and obey God. In its four-core teaching session, children’s ministry leaders learn how to make disciples like Jesus did by 1) modeling God’s truth, 2) building relationships, 3) teaching truth effectively, and 4) challenging for response. Through innovative use of visual aids, small group interaction and role play, teachers internalize new concepts and have opportunity to put new ideas into practice before the end of training.
By the end of those 2008 conferences, more than 900 Nigerian children’s ministry leaders had received certificates for completing the basic ISMT training. But for ECWA’s 7000 churches, this barely scratched the surface of need. Requesting that BCM return to help with the training, ECWA leadership initiated a five-year plan for the development of ministry to children throughout their churches across Nigeria.
BCM missionary Pat Black
The first phase from September to November, 2010, was carried out by Olga Zaitseva along with BCM USA missionaries Stephen and Jane King. Returning for the second phase from January to February, 2011, were Olga Zaitseva, and Stephen King along with BCM USA missionary Pat Black and BCM South Africa missionary Pat Govender. Coordinating the project on the ground was ECWA children’s ministry national coordinator Rev. Yaro.
Over a total period of three months the BCM team held ISMT training conferences in ECWA’s nine major ministry zones, each comprising of 3-11 separate District Church Councils. This task was not without challenges. A typical Nigerian church is a single concrete hall with glassless windows open to rain and dust, tin roof, and often a dirt floor. Electricity for running the team’s data projector or a sound system was sporadic. With hundreds in a session, carrying out practice activities was difficult. Lack of vehicles and poor public transport made starting sessions on time equally difficult.
But such difficulties have made the Nigerian people infinitely flexible, and the expatriate team learned quickly. Jane King remembers teaching one evening session when the lights suddenly went out. Immediately all over the crowded room, flashlights switched on. As those near the front focused their beams on Jane and her material, the session finished up without a hitch.
One disappointment church leaders expressed was that the BCM team had not brought with them the brightly-colored, Western-produced visual aid materials foreign ministry groups had so often donated in the past. Olga Zaitseva explained that this was not the way BCM worked. “We don’t want to train your people so that they have to depend on outside provision to teach your children. We want them to be able to depend on their own resources.”
In the ISMT training, BCM personnel taught the Nigerian children’s teachers how to look around their own homes for visual aids to illustrate a Bible story. The baskets in every Nigerian kitchen could illustrate the story of baby Moses, Jesus feeding the five thousand, the apostle Paul being lowered in a basket down the wall of Damascus. A shawl could be a biblical costume or a litter for the four friends who carried their paralyzed friend to Jesus.
Within a few sessions, the ECWA leaders were no longer asking for visual aids, but introducing the BCM personnel proudly. “These people are like us. They teach our doctrine. But they also use our materials that we have around us to teach God’s Word.”
Travel wasn’t easy either, and not just because of dirt roads and long distances. Nigeria was gearing up for hotly-contested elections while the team was there, tensions running high between Christian and Muslim political parties. Roadblocks were a constant. Pat Black shares how the team’s travel vehicle was pulled over at one police checkpoint, their driver arrested on the pretext of an expired tag. When they did not have the demanded bribe available, the officer finally agreed to take payment in the form of Bible teaching curriculum they had in the vehicle.
“It is your responsibility to teach God’s Word to your children,” the driver, a Nigerian church leader, told the policeman sternly. The officer agreed to do so before releasing the vehicle.
Muslim extremist attacks, always a problem, had reached new heights with the approaching elections with hundreds of Christians massacred across Nigeria in the month of January alone. A large percentage of ECWA churches are in Muslim-majority areas. On Friday evening, January 29, 2011, the team was giving an ISMT conference in the central Nigerian city of Jos. The late session ran late, so the team could not get away to eat their evening meal at a restaurant selected by their ECWA hosts. Instead they decided to pick up some food on the way to their hostel. Later they discovered that just at the time the team was scheduled to eat there, the restaurant had come under gunfire from a Muslim mob. Several Christians were killed, more than thirty wounded.
“We were so hungry, I wasn’t happy about not getting to supper,” Olga shares. “But I’m glad now we didn’t. God was protecting us.”
In another town, the team had taught a seminar to around 100 pastors not long before returning to the USA. Shortly after the presidential elections in early April, a Muslim attack massacred more than 300 Christians in the same community where they’d taught.
But both the BCM team and their students would agree that the investment of time and effort was eminently worthwhile. In all, more than 1500 Nigerian children’s ministry leaders completed the three-day ISMT training.
“This has completely changed our views about what children mean to God and the value God has placed on them,” expressed one ISMT graduate.
“I now understand why my children can’t sit still for two hours,” shared another. A third had begged for help with lack of discipline in her Sunday school class. Investigation uncovered that this teacher was handling more than 100 preschool children! A high percentage of the ISMT participants were teaching classes of 50-100+ children spanning wide age ranges. Visual aids, smaller groups by age, interactive teaching, drama, and games were all exciting innovations.
But the original 2008 ISMT training had made clear to both ECWA leadership and BCM that challenging pastors to see the importance of reaching children was as urgent as the training itself.
“The pastors have to realize they are pastors to the children as well as to the adults,” shares Stephen King. “To achieve this, a three-prong mindset must be taught. We need to address children’s ministries in the seminaries and Bible colleges. The mindset of pastors needs to be changed. And techniques of teachers and children’s workers need to improve.”
To this end, the team taught numerous seminars for pastors focusing on the 4-14 Window and developing a biblical attitude about children’s ministry. In all, more than 1000 church leaders attended these seminars.
“We are looking forward to returning to teach regional Train the Trainer conferences,” sum up Stephen and Jane King. “But meanwhile we feel encouraged the Nigerians we’ve trained will continue the work of training children’s ministry workers. During our last week we had to cancel a pastors seminar because of security issues. One of the leaders who’d been translating that seminar went instead, and we were told he did a great job teaching the very material he’d translated to over 60 pastors. Already a number of our trainees have been teaching the material they received in their own districts.”
And for BCM’s ISMT trainers, that is the measure of success.