As I mentioned in a previous post, last week I started reading
Show Them Jesus by Jack Klumpenhower. You can visit his website
here Below, I have included a section from Chapter 3 on growth for kids. It was so helpful to me and will impact how I teach in the future.
Church kids come in one of two types--unsaved and saved. Both types desperately need to see Jesus. . .We make a mistake if we think kids are saved by hearing the good news and trusting Jesus, but then grow as Christians some other way. . .We grow in the same way we became Christians--rooted in Jesus, with our hope in the good news.
As kids learn about God's goodness and holiness, they ought to increase in aw of him. That's growth. And as they examine themselves and see the ugliness inside, they ought to increase in conviction of sin. That's growth too. But the combination of these will drive them to despair--unless their understanding of the forgiveness and righteousness they have in Jesus also grows.
In short, the kid's Christian growth stalls. Learning more about God's greatness can't help him because he can't handle it. Telling him to sin less and obey more can't help either, because he fights back, tunes out or does both. For a church kid, this stall can happen very soon after becoming a Christian because he already knows so much about God and sin.
The solution is for the cross to grow along with everything else. The more a kid learns about himself and God, the more he must learn to trust and delight in the good news too. He must become ever more certain that he's totally accepted in Christ, forgiven and adopted by God. It's the only way he can keep growing.
There's always room to go wider and deeper with the love of Christ--to learn more of it and have it sink further into our souls.
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