The Power of Little People

Love is a Verb

A familiar phrase.  In fact, when I hear it I think of DC Talk’s hit song from 1992.  Love is an action that must be expressed.  Not just verbally… but through physical demonstration.

Serving is the best form of expressing the love of Christ.  In fact, we experience more of Christ when we serve others.  I would argue that the more sacrificially we serve, the more of Christ we’ll encounter.  The more of Christ we experience, the more we fall in love with Him.

So how much do we want our kids to fall in love with Christ?

That’s the best question to ask when considering how teens, tweens and kids will serve within the body of Christ.

Leverage Influence is the 5th component of the Orange Philosophy.  Click here for Orange Leaders definition.  All week long several Orange Leaders have blogged about the 5 components.  We’ve defined them, shared our experiences with them and dreamed a little of what more could be done.

Leverage Influence is definitely the most immediately actionable component of them all.  Why?

Because service can be worked into nearly everything a church does.  Kids walking out of their Sunday morning experience… Teens exiting Wednesday night Youth… should have actionable steps on the brain.  Some way they can take what they’ve just learned and put it to action through service.  That may be at church, at home, at school, at a friends house… doesn’t matter.  The point is to catalyze the Christ-follower to action.

Because there is no minimum age requirement to follow Christ, there should be no minimum age requirement to serve.

I’m not suggesting we throw the handbook out the window.  Certainly there are parameters to how a 6 year old might serve in the church.  There are areas best suited for 14, 15, 16 year old teens.  Ability and maturity levels may be required for certain functions.  But age should not prohibit them.

Many of the posts written regarding Leverage Influence I highlighted here.  They talk much about how kids and teens can serve within the church.  And they’re right.  But let’s also talk about how kids can serve outside the church.

Local mission events are great opportunities for kids and youth to get their hands dirty and serve those less fortunate than them.  This is another way to create shared experiences for your families as I discuss here.  I’m not talking about creating a “kids” element to every local mission event that includes inflatables, games and music.  Though you can do that, you will find that most kids just want to do what they see everyone else doing.

• Distributing food
• Painting walls
• Planting flowers

All this requires is providing tools to fit their hands.  It’s amazing how much parents love guiding and coaching their kids as they serve together planting a flowerbed.

Not only do you Leverage Influence, but you even Reactivate Family by equipping parents with the opportunity.  C’mon… kill two birds with one stone.  All it hurts is the bird. 

In the end, our role is to help kids, teens and adults understand that what they learn at your church service every week isn’t meant to terminate on themselves.  It is meant to result in action through service thereby increasing the passion, faith and love for our Savior Jesus Christ.

For those of you that still have the DC Talk song stuck in your noggins… this is for you.  Enjoy

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