Spiritual Development and Children’s Ministry: Measuring Success Differently

When I was newly married, I had the privilege of being the children’s director at a church nestled in the shadow of Pike’s Peak in Colorado Springs. We were a small group of believers, desiring to impact our community with the love of Christ and, in turn, see our church grow in both numbers and influence. During my first year on staff, I did everything a children’s ministry leader is supposed to do. I hosted community events, equipped families with in-home discipleship, ran an Awana club for our midweek discipleship program and led a high energy, utterly exhausting sports camp that summer. 

As we shifted into my second year, I wanted to see the kids in our church grow in their love of Jesus. I began to ask the questions, “Is what we’re doing working? Are we discipling kids toward a lasting faith?” To answer those questions, I tracked attendance each week at each event, comparing the data to the year before. I quickly realized we had a decline; families weren’t engaging like they had been, volunteers were fewer and the faithful few who remained to serve were burnt out and exhausted. My third year yielded the same results. According to the map I was using to measure a “successful” children’s ministry, our church was failing. 

Yet, deep in my heart, I knew that wasn’t true. I saw children increase in Scripture engagement, knowledge and worship. They came to church on a regular basis and had someone at home leading them to the heart of Jesus. These kids began to serve as leaders alongside their parents, within our children’s ministry, and on welcome teams and worship teams. God was moving in the lives of the kids in our church; what I was seeing just wasn’t matching up to the metrics I had been using. This wasn’t a map I had created myself; it was one passed down to me by other children’s ministry leaders, both intentionally and by design, as a way to run a “successful” children’s ministry. 

What map are we measuring our children’s ministries by?

• Engaging social media
• Above-average weekly attendance
• Increasing attendance over a period of time
• Community events
• Flashy, record-breaking VBS
• Annual Easter outreach

Recently, through the help of Barna, Awana asked children’s ministry leaders from around the nation the question, “Do you feel like your ministry is making a long-term difference in children’s lives?” Almost 60% of leaders admitted to having varying levels of concern as to the long-term impact their church is having on the discipleship journey of the kids they serve. (These results were documented in the “Children’s Ministry in a New Reality”* report.)

Why are children’s ministry leaders questioning the influence they have on the spiritual development of the kids in their church? 

Maybe we’re measuring the wrong things.

In the same study from Barna and Awana, data overwhelmingly points us towards a key factor in the lifelong discipleship of a child. When a child is in a healthy mentor relationship with a loving, caring adult, they are more likely to have friends, gain a deeper understanding of Scripture, make a lifelong commitment to Jesus and contribute to the church–these just being a few in a long list of benefits that come from a thriving intergenerational relationship within the church. 

Although the numbers, levels of engagement and outreach events we measure our ministries by have their rightful place, they certainly aren’t what’s most important. This map we’ve been using is essential to measuring the success of our programs, but not the very subject of those programs: the spiritual development of the child within them. 

Instead, let’s start with the discipleship journey of an individual child. What positively influences the discipleship of a child? A loving, caring adult who walks through life with the child and helps them know they belong to the family of God; an adult who digs into that child’s difficult questions and points them to a vibrant identity in Christ, guiding them to believe and become more like Him. We need to measure the success of our churches on the spiritual development of each individual child, not our programs or events. When we focus on the child, we open ourselves up to a new map in children’s ministry, one that leads us to seeing kids follow Jesus for the rest of their lives. 

* “Children’s Ministry in a New Reality” is the largest children’s ministry research project released to date from Barna Group. Thanks to the strategic partnership between Barna and Awana, this extensive research report will be available for purchase in June 2022 and will be covered in-depth at the Child Discipleship Forum in September.