Training for Children's Workers

It was September 1992 when I started helping in the 4-year-old Sunday school class. I was 11 years old. My mom was the teacher, and her long-time helper had just moved away. She needed a replacement. Until May 2002 (with the exception of the 6 months I spent in Romania), I helped or taught preschool/kindergarten children every Sunday and frequently helped with first and second grade on Wednesday nights. Before starting college, I never received any formal training for working with children. Instead, I learned from working alongside experienced teachers. I could also draw on my experience of growing up in the church and rely on the ideas and helpful hints in the Sunday school curriculum materials.

Imagine, on the other hand, what it is like for a children’s worker who doesn’t have access to curriculum materials so she has to create a new lesson from scratch every week. This children’s worker became a Christian as an adult and has no experience of what it is like to be a child in the church. The only learning experiences this person has is in the strict school system, where teachers care more about covering content and testing students than on building relationships with students. This children’s worker has no one to serve as a teaching mentor because almost everyone else in the church is a new Christian as well. And, of course, this children’s worker has received no formal (and next to no informal) training to work with children.

This is the situation of many of our children’s workers in the Church of the Nazarene in Romania. It is abundantly clear to me that God has used my 10+ years of experience of working with children to prepare me to train children’s workers in Romania. Little by little, step by step, over the next several months (and years), I will be working to help these dedicated people learn more about the Bible, learn more about children, and learn how to best help each child to grow in his or her relationship with God. During the month of May, I’ve taught a series of introductory training workshops for children’s workers. We will restart these workshops in the fall, hopefully on a monthly basis.

Each of our children’s ministries in Romania is vastly different from the others.

• The Bucharest church has a small children’s ministry, spanning many ages. All of the children’s parents attend the church.
• The Sighișoara church has a large children’s ministry, grouped into 3 age-divided classes. Most of these children’s parents do not attend the church.
• Veritas has several age-divided weekday programs for children and teenagers. Some attend churches in Sighișoara, while others do not.
• In Țigmandru, there is a large children’s ministry divided into two groups. Some of the children’s parents attend church.
• There is no Church of the Nazarene in Zagăr, but a children’s program developed in the fall with students in the Romanian Studies Program leading.
• In Viscri (also where there is no Church of the Nazarene), a Nazarene family is leading a children’s ministry in their home.
• In Mugeni, a village where most of the people speak Hungarian, a Nazarene family is using WordAction Sunday school materials which have been translated into Hungarian.
  

Please partner with us in Romania by praying for these children’s ministries, for the children’s workers, for me and others who provide necessary teacher training, and most importantly, for the children as they grow in knowledge of the saving way of life God offers each of them.

Photo: children’s Sunday school in Sighișoara:Romanian Studies Program students with children in Zagăr:

This article has been reprinted in Engage Magazine. Click here to see it there.