I love a shiny gospel kids club.

It’s where the colours are painted bold; the music feels good;

leaders dress sharp; ‘n’ all the kids are smiling in the neighbourhood.

One of the things I adore about presenting the gospel to kids is that there are limitless possibilities to how you might make it bright, fun and imaginative.  It’s also vital to be ‘all things to all people’, so we need to meet kids with the energy, silliness and fun that they adore if we are going to be good communicators of God’s truth to them. 

I have a two words of caution though:

Sometimes we can spend up on kid friendly activities but short change the kids on the things that really matter. We book jugglers, jumping castles, animal farms and buy fantastic craft kits but have gospel presentations that aren’t fun, aren’t engaging, are too simplistic or don’t really say anything meaningful. Let’s face it; kids can get the animal farm experience at the council carnival day. They can jump on a jumping castle at a rotary fair and they can always get great clowns at a circus. But they can only get the gospel at the church’s kid’s holiday club. So we need to make sure that above all else, the gospel is presented at their level, in ways that are tickling all the colour, fun and imagination boxes of primary school kids.

So how is your budget looking? Are you starting at the top with how much you are prepared to spend on presenting the gospel clearly and in a way kids will go for and then working down the list? Or have you already booked the clowns and jumping castles only to find that you have no money left for the really essential stuff?

Sometimes our presentations will be creative, vibrant and upbeat, but we can be so concerned not to offend anyone that we don’t actually present the gospel. All of us have to hear and accept God’s ‘no’ to our wrong, before we can understand His ‘yes’ to us in Jesus.

Sharing the good news is what we do. It’s of the essence of the church’s identity; by sharing the gospel we gather more people into Christ’s body. Other activities might attract people to Christ, they may help them listen, but they won’t bring people into Christ. We come into Christ by faith; hearing and believing that Jesus is Lord.

Ok, very occasionally, I reckon its fine to have kid’s clubs event that really are PR events. For example one that is run in the school hall of a predominantly Muslim area might not be too heavy on the gospel presentations. It might be more of a PR event, getting the local church connected with the community. If you know that’s what you’re goal is, then that’s cool. But we need to ask some hard questions if most of our activities are really only PR events.  

Let’s not undermine all our hard work running these holiday clubs by shrinking back from our responsibility to share the good news.  Let’s not hide our greatest joy and hope under the table.

I love a shiny gospel kids club.

But let’s make sure it’s the word of the gospel that shines the most.