A couple days ago I read a plea written in 2006 - encouraging churches to adopt a minimum age of 16-18 yrs for volunteers ministering to children. If they had said, minimum age of 16 yrs or 18 yrs for someone responsible for groups [insert a responsible # of] children . That would make sense to me but help me here I'm a little out of the loop.
Questioning the safety of allowing older children to work with and interact with younger children (assuming responsible older children and responsible adult supervision) - is this an issue for most church communities? Is it common policy to keep older children from interacting with or helping minister to younger children?
Off the top of my head, it seems that to create a policy like that we risk losing the valuable resource and the teaching and learning that occurs from older children giving to younger children and visa versa. We risk losing the valuable socialization of older learning to care for those who are younger like siblings and younger children learning to respect whoever they're learning from. It seems this would be especially important for children who don't have siblings. It seems that a policy like that would just reinforce society's compartmentalization of age groups and limited interaction between old and young.
I definately favor giving older children appropriate opportunities to work with younger children. I say this assuming that the responsible adults in charge have the authority to say, "my previous experience with [older child] says this isn't a good idea," or "this isn't working, maybe we can find some other way for [older child] to help," or "allowing these two older children to serve together isn't a good idea." I'm also assuming that 16-18 year olds (or adults for that matter) aren't left responsible for children that he/she can't manage safely.
Again, I'm out of the loop right now. Is it common practice for different age groups to be kept from ministering to one another? Or is it the exception?
I understand where the fears come from but is it our job to respond to fear and reinforce the fear or is it our job to respond to the fear and help people wrestle with what wisdom means and teach them how to overcome their fears and make wise choices?
And these questions don't even begin to address underlying social roots.
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It is one of my core values in ministry to encourage older children to minister to younger ones. Even in a setting of elementary students, I have encouraged older elementary students to lead as they are gifted by helping out the younger ones. I do believe and support equipping younger people for ministry by doing it with them.
ReplyDeleteThis also worked with older teens serving on the church board. Our church is set up to have a youth group "president" and that young person is entitled to represent the youth on the board. It was amazing to see the person in that position embrace their role as spokesperson not only for their age group but as a part of decision making within the whole church body. Not to mention having a younger person there tempered the personalities of some of our more opinionated adults. They had to think before they spoke in haste!!!
And in the end, having served in both large and small churches, the value of having intergenerational leadership is not only a necessity for getting things done (in other words, having people to do the work, as I find the younger teens more willing spirits) but having those able and willing to lead in the future.
It definitely is not the trend in the places where I am presently ministering.