Children are the church of today
Photograph by Daryn Stylianopoulos
Rev. Daryn Stylianopoulos
“We’re All Ears!” was the message that welcomed me when I arrived early to Mt. Zion Baptist Church on that June Sunday morning.[i]
In the lobby I saw the giant lighted letters, A-T-Y. Mt. Zion’s children and youth ministries, affectionately known as All Things Youth (ATY), are capably led by minister Althea René Miller. ATY Team members frequently wear mouse ears so that folks not only know who the ATY team members are, but are also reminded that deep listening is central to any ministry with and for children and youth. Congregants, parents, youth, and children are encouraged to express their celebrations, affirmations, queries, and suggestions for Althea’s mouse-eared ATY team.
Mt. Zion, located in Madison, WI and pastored by Rev. Dr. Marcus Allen, is a church renowned for their love of neighbor and prophetic witness for justice in the community. In that spirit, Minister Althea fosters opportunities for Mt. Zion children to lead and serve in worship, as well as beyond the walls of their church building, as they creatively live out their faith and witness for Christ in the world. Each February, for example, children from Mt. Zion participate in the recitation of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech in the halls of the Wisconsin state capitol. Minister Althea remarks in a video she had created to mark the children’s participation in the statehouse event, “When our children speak these words, they are not only helping us remember history; they are living it. What you are seeing is the courage to stand in the halls of power and speak truth. You are witnessing tenacity, the boldness to learn, to practice, to prepare, and to proclaim. This is evidence – evidence that our children are educated, evidence that our children are not just holders of the future, they hold space today.”
Mt. Zion embraces the value and belovedness of even its youngest congregants, believing children are integral to the life of the church and its celebrations. On that Sunday morning, the children and youth of Mt. Zion led the worship service and celebrated transitions within the congregation. The celebrated transitions spanned generations – from potty training to middle and high school graduations, to the conferral of doctoral degrees, to professional promotions, and retirements. The children led in music, prayers, and Scripture reading.
The Scripture reading became a joyful and creative intergenerational exercise, using a fill-in-the-blank format proposed by one of Mt. Zion’s children. As Hebrews 11:7 was read, the congregation did their best to remember the words that were missing and insert them aloud in unison. “Noah had _________, so he built a _______ to save his _______. He built it because of his great respect for ________ …” What a brilliant, playful and provocative way of inviting the church into an intergenerational moment of Christian formation and reflection together!
Contrary to common assumptions, playfulness in worship is not disrespectful. Rather, it is aligned with the Spirit of a playful and imaginative Creator who is always doing new things if we are attentive and faithful enough to perceive them (Isaiah 43:19). As Jesus reminds us in the gospel of Matthew, “Unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (18:3). This young innovator sparked the congregation’s curiosity and attentiveness to Scripture in a new way.
A significant highlight of my visit to Mt. Zion Madison was witnessing Aria, a ten-year-old Nurturing Children Initiative cohort member, bring the word. Preaching on the theme of Noah’s faithfulness to God, she reminded the congregation of ways they, like Noah, could show faithfulness to God – by being obedient to God, by ignoring the doubtful voices, and by watching God work! She noted the Ark was not a boat, proclaiming: “They couldn’t steer it, they couldn’t turn it around when the storm came, but somehow it got where it needed to go!” She concluded with confidence: “God is the somehow! ... I’ll say it again, God is the somehow!” What a profound and reassuring message of hope and wonder, and what a beautiful example of this church’s faithfulness to God. They allow space for the spirit and possibilities of God to flourish in and through the children who proclaim good news.
Jesus says, “The kingdom of God belongs to such as these” (Luke 18:16 NASB). Indeed, the children of Mt. Zion are showing us what the kingdom can be like: one where all God’s children can be playful, curious, faithful, and encouraging of one another, trusting that the Holy Spirit will get us where we need to go, and surprising us with life-giving possibilities.
Around the same time as my site visit to Mt. Zion Madison, the Southern Baptist Convention was once again proclaiming and tightening a policy that bars women from preaching and pastoring within their denomination. It is their prerogative to do so. And yet, as I sat there listening to the wisdom Aria brought to the gathered assembly, as I witnessed the congregational response to the message, their shouts of affirmation, their repetition of key phrases that touched their lives, their ears, their hearts, I thought to myself: Thank God for this opportunity to hear something of God’s word from the heart of this child – this young girl whom God has called. Thank God for those who make space for God’s own creativity and playfulness, for God’s will and intention to use whomever God chooses for the sake of the kingdom. Thank God I am not missing out on this moment of God’s glory and all that God is doing in our churches.
Contrary to common assumptions, playfulness in worship is not disrespectful. Rather, it is aligned with the Spirit of a playful and imaginative Creator who is always doing new things if we are attentive and faithful enough to perceive them.
On that Sunday morning, the contrast was stark. On one hand was a denomination so sure of its own understanding that it closed off the possibility that the Holy Spirit – that something of God – might call, anoint, proclaim truth, or make its way into the world through the prophetic calling and pastoral leadership of women. On the other hand, a young girl entrusted to bring a good word to her congregation that Sunday morning, did so powerfully to shouts not only affirming her gifts and the message but praising the God who had called her – the same God who declared through the prophet Joel, “I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions” (Joel 2:28). Joel is still proclaiming the good news of God’s kingdom through all flesh.
There is a children’s song that goes,
My God is so big, so strong and so mighty, there’s nothing my God cannot do. The rivers are his, the mountains are his, the stars are his handiwork too! My God is so big, so strong and so mighty, there’s nothing my God cannot do.
I am reminded of Peter, forced to reckon with the fact that God often declares things to be that are beyond our own comprehension or understanding, that at times go against our ideas of what is clean, or right, or the way things have always been. In Acts 11, Peter describes a recent vision to the believers in Jerusalem: he recounts how at first he refused to obey God’s command to kill and eat of things he had come to know as profane, only to hear a voice from heaven asserting, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” After this, the Spirit tells him to make no distinction between himself and the Gentiles, as the Spirit falls upon them too, as it had “in the beginning.” Peter remembers the word of the Lord, “John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit,” and asks: “If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?”
Indeed, who are we to hinder God? Once the spirit has revealed something to us of how God works in this world, to refuse to acknowledge it is at best, a misstep; at worst, hubris.
It seems everywhere I turn these days I hear of churches and regions, worried about pastoral shortages and lack of pastoral succession. This is certainly a concern for churches within and beyond my denomination, and the contributing factors are varied and complex. However, if we are so inclined to limit God and the possibility of who God can call for a particular moment, and if our young people cannot discern the possibility for themselves because we have closed off opportunities to them, then it is possible we are contributing to our own problem through a lack of faith in what God can do through even the youngest among us.
Perhaps we should take a page from Aria’s sermon, and lean not on our own understanding, but obedience to the will of the One who created all that is, who inspires us to the new and unknown, who continues to amaze us and bring us into witnessing life-giving possibility at every turn.
That Sunday morning, Aria said to her pastor, “I’m gonna take your job one day.” She declared these words, not in a usurping kind of way, but with the same kind of proclamation that one might say, “I’m gonna be a doctor someday,” or “I’m gonna be a teacher.” This young one will follow where God leads her, prepared and encouraged to use her God-given gifts to the glory of God in this world, strengthened and nurtured by a congregation of faithful who love her. She will know that the church is as much hers as it has ever been anyone else’s, that she is as much God’s beloved child as any other child of God, that she has gifts to share and light to shine, and that something of God’s Good News can be revealed in and through her.
The children of Mt. Zion led their congregation in singing a newer gospel rendition of the aforementioned children’s song with a gospel medley of “Big” and “If He did it before (same God).”
My God is so big, so strong, so mighty. My God’s plan for me goes beyond my wildest dreams
My God is so good, so good, so good to me.
If he did it before, he can do it again, same God right now, same God back then
There’s nothing my God cannot do.
My hope is that we will continue to listen not only to women, but that we will remember to pay close attention to the children among us; they are reminding us that God is the somehow.
With God, all things and new things are possible.
Rev. Daryn Stylianopoulos is program director of the Nurturing Children Initiative of the American Baptist Home Mission Societies.
The views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of American Baptist Home Mission Societies.
[i] Author’s Note: As the program director of the Nurturing Children Initiative of the American Baptist Home Mission Societies, it is a part of my role, and an added privilege, to visit and worship with the American Baptist churches of our NCI cohorts, and to bear witness to their inspiring ministries with and for children.
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