Understanding God’s Heart for Children: Engaging with Scripture
Introduction
We began with the process of “Understanding God’s Heart for Children” nine years ago, during the foundational days of Lifestream and it is a process that continues to guide, inspire, equip, and challenge us to this day. During the early days, we were a group of professionals who have a burden to work with the poor around our church on a more sustained basis, not only during church anniversary or outreach month, rather on a more regular basis. We began to search scripture and search what is the best way to minister and serve the poor in our area. The Lord led us to the needs of the children and this opened the opportunity for our church to partner with Compassion.
Being exposed to development work helped us at the beginning. We started methodically. We followed, what we thought were logical steps to planning, and ended up being challenged and renewed as we delved deeper. We lay it out as:
We have a burden and a calling: this is very clear to all of us at the outset and we affirm that the Lord commands the church to reach out to the poor and needy; we see reaching out to the poor as our way of expressing our faith and thanksgiving and a demonstration of our stewardship over our gifts and resources
We looked out and analyzed the situation and the realities of the children: we did household and community surveys, looked at statistics, talked to government and local officials, talked to informal leaders, etc and this gave us a picture, closer to reality than theory, of the children’s situation around our church.
We identified the gap between what God said it should be, what we thought it should be and the children’s realities: we discovered that the gap was so huge, it scared us—malnutrition, poor housing conditions, abuse, dysfunctional families and relationships, drugs, gambling, poor sanitation, no income, and the list goes on.
We mobilized resources within and outside our church: we did a skills inventory of all our church members and from this inventory, we got the first set of volunteers (and they remain with the program until now) and continue to draw from our in-house/in-church skills and the now already widened network of supporters and friends
After searching scripture and our hearts, we articulate our vision: which is to create, provide, and lead children to opportunities and the environment for them to grow and realize their full well being, gifts, and potentials according to God’s perfect plan. We set out this vision knowing fully well that we cannot possibly solve and respond to all the problems but hopefully make meaningful impact to those children we touch.
After going through these steps, we asked many questions: how best are we going to do it, how about the children and their families, what principles should guide us as we design programs for them, what should be our perspective regarding children, the questions never seem to stop, then and now. Thankfully, we found answers as we trust God and seek His word. The process of engaging with scripture started and it started with us adults.
Principles we draw from Scripture as we work with children
The child is created in the image and likeness of God
All creation, particularly human beings, bears the image and likeness of God. We did not need any other verse of scripture to guide us in our work and our perspective and understanding of children except this. As children are creations of God, the commands that go with it apply: respect, be productive, be fruitful, manage, subdue, worship, enjoy, appreciate, rest, and everything that goes perfectly with our creative nature. As adults working with children, they deserve all of these under the responsibility and stewardship of adults like us. We need to ensure that they have these or are prepared for it. At the very least, we should not stand in the way as children claim all of these for themselves.
Taking in God’s perspective, children have innate value and worth before Him. So if we say we worship, obey, and respect our God, we should manifest and demonstrate it with our views, actions, attitudes, and behaviors with children. We always believe about consistency of our witness. If there is an ingredient in our program that led children and their parents to a meaningful relationship with God, we believe this is it: consistency of witness, consistency of service even when it is difficult. We strive to live out what we say the Bible says.
Every child is fearfully and wonderfully made, unique, one and only. By virtue of the child’s creation, we cannot add or subtract but only put to good use, develop, harness, and direct towards a relationship with God and service. They are not any less than any other human being, rich or poor, adult or child….”when you were formed in your mother’s womb, I knew you”.
We believe that children are “small or little persons” in the process of growth, in the process of discovery, of finding out good and bad and making conclusions, dreaming and at times getting really frustrated, of mistakes and successes. They are also in the process of looking out for models they can imitate and which would tell them, indeed the Lord is good and has wonderful plans for them. And more often than not, they look at us adults as models. How many children were broken because we were careless and insensitive, how many lose their bearing because we failed to clear out and show the path for them. They are in the process of discovering their gifts, initiating and sustaining relationships with their families and others around them, and finding God’s will and direction in their lives. Therefore, we need to create an environment for the child to realize this, and we start with ourselves: how much have we contributed so far in this affirmation and discovery process? Was it good or bad? Was it the truth or was it hypocrisy?
The child in context
We always say that children do not exist in isolation, they live in a web of sometimes very complex relationships and situations, react to both positive and negative stimulus from their family, community, and environment. They live in a fallen world just like us. So they demonstrate behaviors that are sometimes not consistent with their age and level—drug addiction, theft, prostitution, emotional and psychological problems, among others. They are exposed to sin, whether they like it or not.
And then, we look at God’s plan for them, what is God’s plan for them: life of meaningful relationships first to Him and others, life of worship and service, life of fullness and abundance, life of peace and joy. And we compare, and the gap is overwhelming. We see this as the basis for our work with children: that the Lord may use us to lead children to Him and be restored, to show kindness and love, to demonstrate goodness despite of all the “bad” things that are happening around them, to show God’s love.
As we aim to do this, we need to have a more understanding and patient nature with children. We need to understand their thought process, how they interpret things from their point of view, we need to empathize with them which is sometimes difficult for us adults. We need to appreciate where they are coming from, what they have and don’t have, why they draw on clean walls, why are they so angry, so indifferent. On the other hand, we also ask, why are they so carefree, funny, and easy to please? Why are they so trusting and believing. The Bible says…if only we have the faith of a small child.
Wholism and integration
Children are not broken down into clean well cut up parts. They are whole, not only spiritual, not only physical, emotional, social, or whatever. They are whole, complete, full. So we do not say, because we have limited resources, we “only” do feeding. Because when we minister health, we bring physical wellness, better disposition, better relationships. When we teach them how to read, we equip them for the future, when we give them the opportunity to discover their gifts, we give them freedom of expression. When we equip them with skills, we increase their competitive advantage. Too, when we lead them to know the Lord, we lead them to life. This is always our encouragement.
Rootedness sometimes transcending what is conceptual and theoretical
This is not about whether concepts and theories are useful or not. As implementers, we are guided by theories and concepts. They are good, but we need to translate them, we need to make them real at the level of the children. We need to make them “graspable”. These concepts need to take roots in the children’s lives and should give meaning. For example, the concept of child participation, what is this? How do we make this real? How do we ensure that our programs demonstrate this? It takes a lot of listening and creativity to do this…living in a child’s world.
The resource is the child
The resource is the child, no other, all the others are added or provision. I always remember this campaign slogan: it is the economy…bleep, bleep. In our program, we always say: it is the child! We can make the life of a child beautiful if we put our heart into it. We always remember the story about the feeding of the five thousand, and how the holder of the resource (two fish five loaves) is a child. If we think we are doing the child a favor, may be we should think again. We have a motto in our program that goes: each child is worth it, if we make a difference in the life of one child out of the 432, it is worth it. If we make a difference in the life of two or more, then it is added, a bonus, a provision.
How we translated these principles
– Biblical integration and bible search
– Continuously challenge our paradigm and understanding of children
– Continue to be creative and never get tired of finding out “what works in the child’s world?”—drawing, role play, evocative exercises, experiential learning, child’s play, movie analysis, book review, painting, etc.
– Review and adjust our systems and procedures, if it is involving children in planning, we adjust our schedule such that we have enough time to bring them to a process and still submit our plans on time
– Continuously train and increase awareness at all levels: staff and volunteers, church members, mothers and families, our children in the program
Reflect and assess, revisit our vision
Engage and involve children and their families in different aspects of our program
Prepare for the future: establish parent organizations, set-up parallel children’s governance bodies, leadership track that prepares child Christian leaders, among others
How do we measure impact
So far the results have been encouraging. For us adults, humility (it is quite a humbling experience for us to challenge our own paradigms and really intently listen to children); more sensitive and responsive; able to design programs that respond to the needs and level of preparedness of children; more creative; greater sense of responsibility and stewardship; and a most rewarding service.
For the children, I should talk about Shiela. She joined our program when she was about one and half years old, severely malnourished, slow in her motor skills, won’t talk, cannot even focus, will not or cannot look at you in the eyes, blank stare, battered in the home. After nine years (she graduated from a feeding baby to a student center girl), she is a picture of life. One time she approached me, and asked me, I haven’t seen you in a long while, where have you been, what have you been doing? I have to look again. Somehow, it worked!
In closing, we always asked ourselves, how close are we towards bringing these children to God and enjoying all the benefits that goes with a relationship with God? How far have we influenced the child’s context such that the child enjoys the fullness and abundance, not as the world defines, but as the Lord gives? Then the process begins again.
Source : www.viva.org
