Today was the first day of my second grad. school course. It's called "Ministry to Children", and taught by Dr. Samjung Kang-Hamilton, Dr. Mark Hamilton's wife. One of our assignments before class was to read John Westerhoff’s Will Our Children Have Faith? WOW! This is a must-read for anyone in ministry. He wrote this book originally in 1976, but it was revised in 2000. The only changes he made for the revision were updates at the end of each chapter. Though his updates were helpful, I found the majority of his thoughts and challenges to be timeless. This is a book that I will read over and over again throughout my ministry. Here’s some good stuff from Westerhoff:

“We can teach about equality in our church schools, but if our language in worship excludes women, if positions of influence and importance are held only by men or those from upper socioeconomic classes, or if particular races are either implicitly or explicitly excluded from membership, a different lesson is learned.”

“Because God is in relationship with all persons, we cannot be in full community with God unless we also identify with and seek the good of all persons… The Gospel is a social Gospel, a worldly Gospel, or no Gospel at all.”

“True conversion – authentic Christian life – is personal and social life lived on behalf of God’s will in the political, social, and economic world. The converted life is a revolutionary existence over against the status quo, a life committed to a vision of God’s coming community of liberation, justice, peace, whole community, and the well-being of all people.”

“To transmit faith to the next generation is to include them as participants in all the community’s rituals… [Rituals] make possible harmonious communal life and help people to make meaningful transitions in their lives.”

“There is no way we can say for sure if our children will or will not have faith, but of one thing we can be sure, they will never have faith unless there is a community of faith for them to live in and be influenced by.”

Challenging, eh? And these are just a few of the topics. While Westerhoff is exploring the faith of our children, these ideas are applicable to any ministry. In fact it is a call to bring all of our individual ministries together. “What? No touchy my ministry!” Sometimes I feel like this is how leaders feel about their ministries. Give it up! We are called to live in community and to not only serve others, but to also serve one another. What would it look like if individual ministries sacrificed their personal goals in order to serve the faith community? What if children’s ministry gave up Wednesday night curriculum for a month in order to assist the outreach ministry in serving meals? What if the adult ministry encouraged Bible-class attendees to give up their class for a semester to teach children’s classes? What if the worship ministry gave up loosened the reins and allowed the youth ministry to plan and lead a Sunday morning service? I could definitely be wrong about all of this, but these are just some thoughts from my ever-challenged mind and heart.