More often than not, if you search on a church’s website for information about their children’s ministry, you will come across the word “fun.” The “fun” may include creative activities, high-energy singing, Bible memory games, and Bible stories told using drama. These all can have their proper place. I am not opposed to children enjoying their time in the classroom! But I think we need to be very careful in not making “fun” what characterizes our children’s ministry. It is not to be the end aim and goal. What happens in our classrooms should be a holy endeavor—set apart—whereby we are aiming to help children encounter something beyond fun. Carefully consider these words from Pastor John Piper:
Those who have seen and savored the holiness of God and justice and wrath and grace of God, can never again trivialize worship…I don’t like to use the word “fun” for what we do in worship—or in ministry for that matter. It is a sad commentary on the superficial condition of our times that one of the most common things said about good experience in ministry and worship is that “we are having fun.”
The point is not that Christians can’t be light-hearted. You are probably sick if you can’t be light hearted. The point is, there is time and season for everything under the sun. And something should happen in corporate worship, before the face of the infinitely holy God, that calls forth a different vocabulary than what you experience at the amusement park.
(From a sermon titled, “The Present Effects of Trembling at the Wrath of God,” ©2015 Desiring God Foundation, desiringGod.org)
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