JACOB: This episode we have special guest, Emma Eelkema, one of the two Children’s Ministry Assistants at The Garden Fellowship. Today she’s going to be talking a bit about what living like a Great Commissioned Christian looks like in children’s ministry. So, Emma, why don’t you begin by talking a bit about your background?
EMMA: All right, so my background — I was basically born in church and was brought on as a volunteer just as a baby because my mom was a Children’s Ministry Director. As a high school student, I started helping out Tuesday mornings with this little Bible study group, and I’d watch over three-year-olds. It was super fun, super awesome — I loved it.
Later on, I ended up going to Bible college, and that is where I got a lot of knowledge about ministry and really had the call to ministry. I ended up coming back from Bible college for summer break — summer of 2022, I think — and was an intern for the Children’s Ministry at The Garden Fellowship. After that, I went back to Bible college. I graduate in 12 days with a bachelor’s degree in Biblical Studies with an emphasis in Christian Leadership.
And then, after that, I just continue to do what I’m doing at The Garden as a full-time vocational ministry worker in the Children’s Ministry.
JACOB: Awesome. So you interned for The Garden Fellowship in the Children’s Ministry as well, correct? Can you tell me a bit about that?
EMMA: So, I came on as an intern, and they had this super small internship program. It was basically kids who were raised in the church just continuing to do what the Lord had called them and was equipping them to do. We were all in different areas — mine specifically, I was with all the little kids and focused in the Elementary Department of the church.
So I would basically call the kids out of their classrooms for their big group time. I would do announcements with them, sing Happy Birthday to the birthday kids, introduce the new kids. I would help print their labels, clean classrooms, sharpen pencils, help volunteers know what to do and where they’re going, take care of disciplinary issues, step in to teach every once in a while.
So, interning isn’t super different than the work that I’m doing now, but when I was an intern, I was with elementary school students, and now I’m more with early childhood — babies.
JACOB: Awesome. What was it like to teach as an intern?
EMMA: Scary! The first time I taught, I did the Abraham and Isaac story. And being a Bible college kid, I’m like, “Yeah, so this guy brought his 30-year-old kid up to kill him as a sacrifice.” So it was really weird trying to transition from talking to 20-year-old Bible college students about the same topics to speaking to seven-year-olds about that.
It was very intimidating and I was very, very timid, but it was a super great experience. It just showed me that I love to teach kids and I love to present the gospel and the Lord to them so that they can grow in their faith and in their knowledge of Scripture.
JACOB: I imagine that dealing with disciplinary issues as an intern was pretty intimidating as well.
EMMA: It definitely was. Thankfully, there’s a super great team, so the more major disciplinary issues were not falling on me. I was mostly like, “Hey, you guys are being disrespectful to your teachers. Let’s quiet down. Let’s remember what listening is like.”
But there were times where I was like, “Okay, we don’t crawl under the bathroom stalls — that’s inappropriate behavior.” But with younger siblings and stuff, it wasn’t terrible because I was used to getting on their case anyways.
JACOB: You said that you also dealt with volunteers. Do you have a big volunteer group here?
EMMA: We do! Our church is really large. We have just over 300 kids on a Sunday, so our volunteers — we have about 100 coming in and out, which is super great.
JACOB: Yeah, definitely. What was it like as an intern to interact with those volunteers?
EMMA: It was super weird but super sweet because they were able to acknowledge my position and respect me for it. But it was definitely strange being a very young woman directing older men and women. The men were a lot more receptive because they were like, “Okay, this is your area.”
But the women were like, “No, we’ve got to do it this way.” And I was like, “Okay, no.” So that was a very common thing for me — to get my boss and be like, “Okay, we’ve got to help this person out again.”
JACOB: Yeah, definitely. Have you worked with kids before?
EMMA: I have. So, before I got hired on at The Garden, I was obviously an intern for them. I was in Children’s Ministry a ton — I would babysit on the weekends. But then when I first came back home from Bible college, I was a nanny, which was super, super sweet — I loved it.
Then I started working at a different church in the evenings to help out with their childcare program. It was basically like, as the parents were getting fed, the kids were just watched over and kept safe. It was super sweet to be able to pour into them.
JACOB: For sure. So, why don’t you tell me a bit about your current situation. You’re no longer an intern at The Garden Fellowship — you are now…?
EMMA: I’m full-time staff!
JACOB: Awesome. So, you are one of the two assistants in the Children’s Ministry?
EMMA: That’s correct, yep. So, with two assistants, we have one that covers Elementary and one that covers Early Childhood. We have like 13 classrooms, I think, and with 300 kids, it’s just so much for one person to take on. It’s really helpful with two different assistants who are able to cover completely different things.
Because being with a fifth grader — so like a 10- or 11-year-old — is very different than being with a two-year-old. There are different life problems, different boundaries. So it’s super nice to have two people to kind of tag-team it.
Where I’m at right now, I help the little kiddos — anyone who’s fresh out of the womb to about six years old, not in first grade yet. I help their volunteers know what to do, take kids to the bathroom, change diapers — that’s not the most exciting thing ever, but it needs to be done.
I do all their printing, I help teach them sometimes, do worship with them. I do a lot more disciplinary stuff — it’s definitely interesting with three-year-olds. They’re super great though, so it’s super fun just watching over kiddos.
JACOB: And you currently attend Bible college, correct?
EMMA: I do. I should be done within the next 12 days.
JACOB: What has it been like balancing working full-time at the church and also doing Bible college?
EMMA: It’s been a lot, not going to lie. It’s also been difficult for me — I’ve had to seek the Lord in this to be able to keep going. Because I’m like, “Okay, God, You have provided my dream ministry job, You’ve provided what You’ve called me to — why do I need to finish this degree?”
So remembering that He’s called me to Bible college very specifically, and knowing that I should be faithful to that call — to just practice discipline, honestly — has been very important and something I’ve had to pray through a lot.
It’s tested me, as you have to make so much time and you really have to know your work schedule, which is constantly changing because you’re in ministry. But that school schedule too — it’s so much. This is the largest amount of credits I’ve ever taken, which I would never want to do again. I’m taking 30 credits — so 11 classes — and it was honestly super hard to balance out.
I cannot wait for it to be done, but it’s also been super rewarding. I’ve been able to immediately apply things from class to work.
A big thing that I’ve learned is, as soon as I clock out, I have that half-hour drive home to kind of debrief and pray. Then I come home and eat a snack or something — it’s been a long day — and then “work brain” kind of turns off.
I don’t let myself focus and meditate on the things throughout the day unless it’s strictly to just pray and give something to God. I let that be that, and then I come home and I’m like, “Okay, I’m a student now,” and I’m ready to put on my academic cap and just focus on Early Childhood Development or whatever I’m working on that afternoon.
JACOB: Yeah, so attending Calvary Chapel Bible College — have there been any classes that have stuck out, that have been especially helpful for your current context?
EMMA: There have been. I took an Introduction to Youth Ministry class, which was super helpful. It was with Andrew Paulson — definitely one of my favorite professors that I’ve had. He was super great.
Youth Ministry is super different than Children’s Ministry, but a lot of the discipleship methods are the same — you just have to cater them to whatever age group you’re working with. That one was super great.
My Homiletics class — which I didn’t originally like, because the professor was kind of stubborn — I ended up immediately implementing, as I was a Tuesday night teacher. It was really helpful to have different teaching methods and to know like, “Okay, this is what the Spirit is, this is what this specific book means,” because I brought the kids through the gospel.
So having that gospel message kind of mastered throughout Bible College and throughout the different classes I’ve taken was also super helpful.
JACOB: Definitely. So did you end up having any sort of practical, hands-on classes at the Bible College that were helpful for this job?
EMMA: Not that I can think of right off the top of my head. I was part of a Servanthood class where you went to different seminars, and so you got to learn kind of how the church works and what effective ministry looks like. Constantly throughout Bible College, you’re learning how to be a servant and how to serve others.
With that Servanthood class, I was a part of the school’s AV team, and I’m able to do a lot of random AV stuff that we have now because our Children’s Ministry building is separate from our main worship center. So having someone with slight AV knowledge — or audiovisual knowledge — is super helpful and super practical, whether that be uploading slides, taking care of dead mics, being able to raise volume, turn the TVs on, working with the iPads, and stuff. It’s super practical to have that.
I was also a dorm student steward, and so what a dorm steward is — at the Bible College, instead of having an RA, we have dorm stewards in almost every room. The Bible College is super small — it’s like 80 to 100 students. Being a dorm steward is a super sweet, intimate experience where you get to just take care of and disciple and come alongside and encourage like eight people, and just pour into them throughout that semester.
So being able to learn how to disciple while also being discipled at Bible College was super helpful to what I’m doing now, as I’m discipling kids and volunteers and parents.
JACOB: Definitely. What do you think some of the similarities and differences are between living life and discipling individuals who are, you know, 18, 19, 20 years old — your age — and discipling people who are nine years old all the way down to two?
EMMA: Yeah, it’s not as different as I thought it would be, because I feel like the purpose of discipleship is really just to come alongside people and to meet them where they’re at, and to point them to the Lord. Discipleship is not about you in any way, shape, or form — it’s about the person and helping them draw closer to the Lord. You just get to be that vessel, whether that be showing them through Scripture, listening to them, praying with them, or helping them be distracted from what’s going on in life.
So, discipling my dorm girls — who were my age or older than me — I was able to come alongside them in their trials, which were similar to mine as we were both enduring classes, going through a blizzard, just doing life together. So it was a bit easier, as I could walk through it with them in the sense of, “Okay, I’m going through this with you as we’re living together.”
But obviously, I’m not living with all 300 students that we have, and I don’t know all their home life situations. So being able to just sit down and listen to a kid is the sweetest thing ever.
I had an experience with a girl at our church — she was a brand new kid, it was her first week, she was super nervous. I helped walk her to her classroom, introduced her to a couple girls. She came to me during their game time and said, “I can’t play the games.”
And I said, “No, you can’t — you’re wearing Crocs, and those are not sport shoes.” So she sat out, and I was just trying to get to know her a little bit. She started telling me about school and how she was switching schools, and just a ton of super heavy family stuff — things that a nine-year-old should not have to deal with.
I feel like so often people forget that kids endure the same trials adults do, but they have a lot less experience than adults. So they’re trying to figure everything out on their own — they’re scared, they can’t go to their parents because they know their parents are going through stuff, and they don’t know how to process anything.
Being able to just sit down and listen to a kid and hug them and hold them and allow them to cry, and then show them like, “Hey, I know that this is super hard, but I’m here and I love you, and there’s a super cool guy named Jesus and He loves you a ton.”
So being able to present the gospel to those kids in those times — discipleship is about loving people, loving people the way Christ would have. It translates to any age group.
JACOB: Yeah, and I think when a lot of people look at Children’s Ministry, they think that the kids are just going to be crazy little devils — they are — and I think a lot of people miss what you were saying: the opportunity to minister to a child.
Even though they are a child, they’re still someone who’s able to respond to the gospel. They’re still someone who goes through suffering, and like what you were saying, those two things go hand in hand. A child who’s going through suffering can just as easily — if not easier than an adult — be shown the gospel and be led to that.
Yeah, I definitely get what you’re talking about. And so, you were talking about teaching kids — so like you were saying, you were a dorm steward, you’ve taken Homiletics — what would you say are some of the major differences between teaching an adult and teaching a child?
EMMA: The attention span—I was our Tuesday night Bible study leader for the kids. And so I had maybe 35 kiddos come, and we divided them by age. Um, so we had our new, like, our babies all in one room, and then everyone from the ages of 2 to 6 in a room, and then all of our first through fifth graders in one room. And it was chaos—it was so bad, in all honesty, because the kids just could not listen.
And so me and one of my co-workers, we were just praying through it, and I look at her and I said, “I don’t mean to be sexist, but we need to divide these kids by their gender.” And she was like, “Okay, is that even a good idea?” I was like, “Let’s try it for one week, and let’s see what happens.”
And so we divide the kids up. They’re pretty confused, so we were able to explain to them what discipleship was, what our hearts behind dividing them was. And I just told the kids, I said, “You know what?”—to my girls who were actually on the lesson—“I said the boys can handle a three-minute lesson, and you girls can handle a 30-minute lesson. All the boys do is play games, and those games teach them about Jesus and the things that we learned about. But you guys have this drive and passion to learn, and you both—both boys and girls—tend to learn differently. Every individual learns differently, but just for this situation, that’s how it worked out.”
And so being able to teach the girls like, we all need something different and this is how we can cater to those needs, was really awesome. So I would go into the boys’ room, and seriously, I would—let’s just take the seven days of creation—we did the creation lesson, and these guys, they sat there. Kind of one of them just hovered in his seat, the other kind of ran around, um, but most of the guys could sit and listen.
And some of them comprehended it, but they were able to get the lesson through seven corners, where we took each day of creation and turned it into a sign, and just had them choose a day to stand in. And someone would pick a day, and whoever’s day that was, they were out.
They were so chaotic. One of them looks at me and goes—I was telling them about the Fall—“Are your pants on backwards?” I was like, “That has nothing to do with this lesson! What are you talking about?”
And so just catering to the kids and meeting them where they’re at is so important. Um, so with the guys it was just like learning through experience, hands-on games. But with those girls, I was able to come to them and just explain things. I don’t want to say dumb it down, because kids aren’t dumb—they just don’t have the same amount of knowledge as adults do. And that totally makes sense.
Like, I’m not going to come to the Cheerio and be like, “Let’s talk about God’s omnipresence,” because like, they can understand the word “water,” and that’s pretty much it—they know Cheerios really well. But like, I can’t come to them and just say “omniscience,” because they just haven’t learned that yet.
And so being able to come to the girls and be like, “Okay, this is what special revelation is,” and to just be like, “That means that God wrote the Bible, like He inspired it,” um, and was able to reveal parts of Himself. So it’s like, when you’re revealing, you’re coming out of hiding—you’re making yourself known, you’re making yourself seen.
And so just catering to the needs of the kids that you’re around—like adults, you have to be able to kind of read your audience—but with kids, you have to get all these main points out super quick and super thoroughly, because they don’t have the attention span to just sit and hear the same thing going on and on and on. They just have to hear like, “Boom, this is what this is. Boom, this is what this is,” and you just kind of got to move fast.
JACOB: Absolutely. Um, I think when people look at teaching kids, they see it as something where, “Oh well, it’s just like, I’ll just go, I guess, since I’m starting to volunteer, I’ll just go teach these kids, it’s whatever.”
But there’s a real, genuine value for every person in the church to be able to teach a child, because even if they’re not teaching children, what you just described is—you’re not dumbing it down—they just don’t have the same spiritual vocabulary, and they don’t have the same attention span that someone who’s already in a church has.
That sounds exactly like evangelism—yeah—having to use words and translate the gospel message into a language that someone who’s not spiritual would understand, and doing it in a very, very short time frame.
Yeah, for sure. I mean, imagine trying to give a whole 40-minute sermon to someone while you’re evangelizing, and using spiritual language and everything. Yeah, that wouldn’t work out well.
Exactly. So I think you’re right on it. There’s a real value to this, and even if there wasn’t a value for evangelism, there are still kids who need Jesus.
EMMA: For sure. Um, but yeah, I mean every Christian should be able to learn those things, and that’s definitely something that’s difficult to learn.
And on that same note of something that every Christian should learn—how have you been able to deal with interpersonal conflict with volunteers, either volunteer-to-volunteer or volunteer-to-you?
Thankfully, I’m still pretty new to working at The Garden, and so if volunteers really have an issue, they go to our director or our coordinator. But now they’re coming more to me. It’s more like volunteer and child, or child and child.
So a lot of our volunteers are handled by our coordinator just because she has more experience—she’s older than I am. I’m only 20, and so there’s only so much I can do within that respect frame.
But I’ve definitely had to deal with a lot of volunteer-child and child-and-child, and most of it is volunteers who are—they’re so amazing, and I don’t want to make it sound like I’m throwing anyone under the bus or not thankful for the volunteers, because they’re such incredible people.
But I understand—kids, they get on your nerves, they test your patience. It’s definitely difficult to work with them sometimes, and especially when you’re having a bad day.
And a lot of our volunteers are parents, and so for them to come on a Sunday morning, they have to get all their kids ready and out the door, which is a whole spiel in and of itself. Um, but it can be really sad to see how they can be super snappy with the kids sometimes.
And I mean, I understand, it’s super easy to do, and we all have that sin nature still where it’s easy to just not be kind all the time. But just reminding them, like, “Hey, you are here for a reason, and you’re here to love these kids, and God is seeing that, and He is just thankful that you’re working—we’re thankful that you’re working in this—but just remember, if you need to, you can step out. Like, wave me down, come out, take a deep breath, go get a snack, go get a cup of coffee, go get some water—let’s just refresh you before we can bring you back into that classroom area.”
A lot of it too is like, volunteers who don’t have experience with special needs kids, and so they don’t know how to accommodate to the kids and their different needs. And so it just stresses them out, and so they just aren’t necessarily kind and understanding.
And so being able to be like, “Okay, this is what this kid needs right now, I can be that,” I’ll just let the volunteer take a breath and go tend to the rest of the kids while I focus on this child who needs something different and may have just been hurt by a volunteer.
JACOB: For sure. I think it was Spurgeon, in his book Come Ye Children, where he wrote that a 10-year-old child in the faith and a 50-year-old child in the faith are both still children in the faith.
Yeah, um, and like what you’re saying about conflicts, where “I wish a volunteer was not mean to the child,” or “I wish the child was not mean to the child”—people don’t grow up unless they do. Yeah, people aren’t sanctified unless they are.
And so, like you learning to handle conflicts between children, when other people look at that—like with the teaching thing—they may see, “Oh well, you’re just learning to be a babysitter,” when really you’re learning to dispel conflict that is everywhere. Because a lot of people—you know, I don’t want to use the term “acting like children,” but a lot of people don’t learn to deal with those issues until they do.
EMMA: Exactly. And that, coming out of it, I’m like, “Oh, not to be offensive, but these adults are acting like 2-year-olds!” Like, I’m using the same methods that I use on my three-year-old kids as I am on these, like, 53-year-old adults who are amazing and lovely—but that’s what we do, is we treat them with love, and we just have to stop inappropriate behaviors no matter what the age is.
And you’re exactly right. And so with the sanctification of a child and an adult who’s a new Christian, or not really an acting Christian—
JACOB: Yeah, um, just learning to deal with interpersonal problems and, you know, someone not being perfect on this side of eternity—that’s very valuable for sure.
Yeah, definitely. So on that value, what are some lessons the Lord has taught you while working there, going through Bible college, doing an internship, being a dorm steward?
EMMA: Definitely patience. And in the patience, and in the waiting, being able to seek Him—because patience does not come for me, and I learned that incredibly quickly. I need to rely on Him fully for that patience.
That was something I learned taking on the Tuesday night task. Basically, with that, I was the person who would set everything up. I would write the curriculum, I would help out, get the crafts all set up, and then I would be the one locking up at the end of the night, which was super intimidating as a very new staff member.
But those kids—there’s, I don’t know, I see them on Sundays, I see them on Wednesdays, and they’re angels. I don’t know what they had Tuesday nights, but if they could stop doing what they were, that would be great. They were monsters.
So, having patience and just being able to be like, “Okay Lord, you love these kids, and because you love them, I love them. I don’t like them all the time—I tolerate them—but I love them the way that you do, which is this unconditional, forgiving love.”
And so being able to just remember, like, okay, they are not 20, they are not 40. I just have to wait kind of on their terms for them to be able to calm down and be able to listen, you know.
And that was definitely within reason—we still used good classroom management—but like, I just had to wait, you know, and that was something that the Lord was teaching me.
A lot of it was just compassion, because you don’t know what these kids are walking in with. A lot of our Tuesday night kids—they’re just randomly brought to this place, like moms are coming in for the very first time, and a lot of their parents are just newly saved. And so the concept of the gospel and Jesus is so new to them that just having that compassion and being like, “Okay, I got to, again, be patient with you and love you.”
But it’s like, what has life been like before this? Because I was brought up in a Christian home, so I never got to experience something different—just like parents who didn’t know Jesus. And so I cannot imagine what a child has to endure with parents who don’t know Christ, or with only mom knowing who the Lord is, or whatever that family situation looks like.
And so just remembering, every person has a testimony, and every person has a background, and you just have to trust the Lord in that. You have to meet them where they’re at in that moment, and you have to just love them unconditionally, and just know, like, “Hey, you came in and I don’t know what happened before this—even in the car, on the walk from the sidewalk to inside—but just being willing to have that compassion that Jesus had, where He was willing to just wait on people and meet them where they’re at.”
I think those are the two biggest things. But I mean, there have always been super small—I mean, I’m sure they’re not small in the grand scheme of things—but they’re just waiting to resurface.
JACOB: Yeah, and that’s definitely a common theme through a lot of all ministries, is you never know where they’re coming from exactly. Yeah, so definitely being aware of that is a really good thing. Um, what are some of the successes that you’ve been able to benefit from?
EMMA: Definitely those Tuesday nights and just being able to talk to girls for like half an hour, 40 minutes, about who Jesus was and how we’re supposed to live as Christians, and what fruits of the Spirit we like want to grow in. Um, connecting with a child is always like, it’s the sweetest thing and most rewarding thing ever, and especially if that child is a difficult kid. And I’ll admit that the kids are, they are difficult sometimes, you know, and you definitely have that one kid in every classroom, you’re like, oh, you’re here, and I love you, but oh boy.
And so being able to, um, just be able to connect with them and kind of hear their background or just be able to love them well. Like one of my little 2-year-old guys, he would just hide in the house, and he would scream at everyone who came into this little playhouse, and it was, it was terrible. And so I would try and get him out, and he’d be hitting me and biting me and all the things that 2-year-olds do. But just, just realize like, oh, it’s actually your nap time, and like have him fall asleep just in my arms because he’s just tired of fighting being awake and fighting the people around him. Like, it’s so sweet.
And too, like one of the girls just like will run up to me like, “Miss, I love you, and I’m so thankful for you.” Like one of her little girls who deals with a lot of anxiety just came up and was like, “I love you, and I’m so thankful you’re here.” And just being able to hear like, you are making an impact on these kids, even though you just constantly feel like you’re like nagging them, like, “Okay, you gotta be quiet, we gotta listen, we gotta do our homework.” Like, like just kind of feel like you’re annoying and kind of burdensome to the kids at times, but it’s like they see that you care, and they know that you love them. And so being able to have that connection is like, it’s the sweetest thing ever for sure.
JACOB: What about failures? Have there been any failures in ministry where you’ve been able to grow a lot from those?
EMMA: I feel like I’m constantly failing in ministry, but it’s also, it’s still new to me, and so I’m just kind of working out like, oh, that’s not how you print the coloring sheets, and I just wasted a room of paper. That’s difficult and expensive. Um, but even just like learning how to and how not to respond to people, I feel like could be one of the biggest things, whether that be a 2-year-old where you just kind of are annoyed and you’re like, okay, I should have been a lot kinder.
Um, it’s just random things like that that you just kind of beat yourself up for, like, I didn’t effectively show Jesus to like this one person, you know, and it just, it kind of eats away at you because it’s like, my job is to Jesus to people and to point people to Him, and if I’m not doing that effectively, then like what’s the reason, what’s the purpose, you know? And so it’s like you just gotta go home, and you gotta check yourself and be in the Word, um, which is difficult and it’s humbling, but you have to be home with the work in ministry, and sometimes it just takes a moment like that to realize it.
JACOB: Definitely. What’s some advice that you’d give yourself, um, or someone else starting completely fresh, no Bible college, no internship, just going into this church? What’s some advice you’d give?
EMMA: Find someone to disciple you. Um, definitely make sure you have good Christian fellowship, because we, for one, we were not made to do things alone. We were made relationally, and that’s why we long to have a relationship with Christ and why He’s a relational God. Um, but we have to have Christian fellowship, and we have to be able to be discipled. Um, remain learnable and teachable, you never know everything. Um, so just learning more about childhood development or learning new curriculums or new teaching styles is super great.
Um, be patient and practice patience in every aspect of life, whether that be with your spouse, with your own kids, with the kids you come in contact with, with your friends, just be willing to be patient, and just pray without ceasing, just like Paul commands us to. We have to just constantly be in prayer. Pray for the kids, pray for the pastor, pray for the parents, pray for yourself, like everyone needs prayer.
JACOB: Yeah. Are there any resources that you have been able to use in ministry that you’d recommend to someone else?
EMMA: That’s difficult. Um, definitely, if in any way possible, if you can get a hold of Bible college lectures or some of the textbooks. Like, Bible college are pretty affordable, like the textbooks they make affordable for these broke college students. Um, Purpose Driven Youth was one that I really enjoyed. Um, the Bible in and of itself teaches you all the things you need to know about life and ministry. Um, appreciated the New Testament the most in this season.
Um, let’s see, what else. Pinterest is your best friend, because that’s where tons of crafts come from. Um, and for us at our church we use tons of Answers in Genesis, and that helps us with our curriculum. That’s where our curriculum comes from. Um, but then it’s also just a source that we’re able to go to in case we don’t know one of the irate questions that the kids ask.
JACOB: Definitely. Uh, are there any resources that you guys have available to students, like in the classrooms, or we have for elementary school students?
EMMA: We just have the Bible, um, but we make sure that our elementary school volunteers are knowledgeable and trustworthy, because the questions kids have are the greatest things ever. Um, just because like that childlike faith is just so amazing, because the Bible honestly does not make sense. Like, why was a snake talking in the garden? And everyone, like all my kids are like, what in the world, snakes do not talk, what does this even mean? Or like, okay, why was Jonah in the belly of a whale, how did the walls of Jericho fall?
And so knowing, like having volunteers that are knowledgeable in even just the basic Bible stories, so that way they can point the kids to like, oh, like let’s check out what the Book of Joshua has to say about that, or let’s actually read the story of Jonah. Um, just being able to have volunteers that we trust is a super great resource.
Um, for our little kids we have these super sweet storybooks, and it’s called the My Awesome God Storybook Bible or something like that, um, where it takes tons of passages in the Bible and makes them all kid-friendly. But it also takes, um, like how we, how should we study the Bible, how should we take care of our Bible, like is that even important, like how should we think about it. And so these are great, and they’ve kind of like opened my eyes to different things where it’s like, oh, that is an important thing that I like know because I’ve been studying this for the past three years, but it’s like, oh, I should bring this up to people because it’s something that needs to be taught.
JACOB: Definitely. So from everything that you’ve just told me, children’s ministry really seems like something that everyone in the church can benefit from, because you’re learning to contextualize the gospel to people who don’t know spiritual language, don’t know the Bible stories. Um, you’re learning to disciple people and care for people. You’re learning to be around people who are children in sanctification.
Um, yeah, so it really sounds like children’s ministry is something that everyone in the church can benefit from.
EMMA: It definitely is, and I would say if you can be around kids and not lose your ever-loving mind, try it out at least for one month. Like, you gotta give it a decent trial run, because the things the kids will teach you — but you know, it’s like the Lord using the kids to teach you — is the most amazing thing ever. And it grows you, and it humbles you incredibly quickly, but it is the most fruitful thing I have ever experienced.
JACOB: Definitely. Well, Emma, I don’t have any more questions. Do you have anything else you’d like to say?
EMMA: I don’t. Thanks for asking.
JACOB: All right, well thank you very much for doing this interview.EMMA: Of course, thank you.
