by Hanka Rodgers

The more I thought about this article, the more I was convinced that God gives me the desire to serve – generally, but also specifically in Sparklers – to teach me and help me grow, rather than because people really need me to serve them.

I feel like sometimes we focus so much on the fact that we serve in our ministries that we fail to notice how much we can learn and grow in them. Honestly, if you go on a mission trip to the Czech Republic or Argentina and you come back talking only about how much you helped them, I am not sure you really understood what you were doing. The same is true for ministries at church – we do serve to serve (and ultimately to glorify God), but at the same time, God is so gracious that He helps us benefit from our ministries as well, and we would be foolish if we didn’t see it. Sometimes I am not sure if He puts me in a ministry because He wants me to serve the other person, or because He wants the ministry to serve me.

Serving the body of Christ and people who don’t know Jesus is a privilege. Philippians 2:13 says that He works in us, both to will and to work for His good pleasure – even the fact that we want to serve is only by God’s grace. Without His changing our hearts to grow the desire to serve, we would never want to serve Him or other people. Serving in Sparklers is a privilege, and that is what I would like to focus on here.

To be honest, as much as we sometimes love talking about “planting seeds” in children’s ministry, the reality is that we don’t always see much fruit. If you ask a random Sparkler what they learned the past Sunday in Sunday school, most of them will say, “I don’t know.” Or they will say they learned that Jesus had long hair. Or something equally important and spiritually enriching. It is ok. God doesn’t tell us to only do ministries that “bear much fruit”. He tells us, however, that if we stay in Him, we’ll bear much fruit (John 15:5) and that’s the kind of fruit we can see if we look at our ministries from a different perspective than the “I am serving them so much” perspective.

One of the privileges we have as staff on Sparklers is teaching. I am not planning on fighting for women’s rights to preach more at church (I did go through that stage in my early Christian life, but I promise it’s over), but I am very thankful that Sparklers are also taught by women. Not because I love preaching to people and telling them what they should do (even though I kinda like telling people what they should do), but because of the studying and the listening part. Don’t get me wrong, I am not that dumb. I know I could be studying the Bible for hours, even without teaching at Sparklers. But I am a sinner. And in my sinner’s life, really deep study of the Bible moves up the to-do list much faster when I have a lesson to teach, or a Bible study to prepare for. And you know what’s best? When you start studying for one lesson and the lesson gets changed the week before you teach. That is God’s grace. From certain perspective.

It is not just the studying though, but also the actual lesson. Every Sunday morning we all meet before the service to listen to the person who is teaching that day. Everybody always first teaches the lesson in front of all the staffers, so that we can criticize – excuse me, encourage – him or her and share some comments. Seriously though, it is one of the times I am very thankful for. There have been lessons that made me thankful for the truth of the gospel more than “adult” sermons. I myself just taught a lesson on Acts 5, where God sends an angel to let the apostles, who were thrown in jail for preaching the gospel, out of prison. I talked about God’s amazing power and the amazing power of the Holy Spirit who can do great things through us – not because we are so good, but because He is so powerful. It was the Holy Spirit who gave the apostles words, courage, and wisdom to teach God’s Word, and I have the same Holy Spirit as they did. That is quite encouraging to know when you mess up the “morning teaching training” in front of the adults, and you feel like those kids won’t learn anything from you that day.

Another great advantage of serving in Sparklers is that children are so honest. We should all do our best to show everybody around us how great God is, and be good examples. However, with adults we sometimes get away with things. Adults won’t ask their parents what was Mr. This-and-That doing with his phone (that had the word “Facebook” on the screen) while pastor Patrick was preaching. You also won’t see adults innocently copy some of your sinful behavior or calling you out on it when you do something wrong.

We don’t get to only listen to the kids tell us things, but we should also listen to us talking to the kids. In some way we are getting used to telling kids all the time they are sinners. Whenever they disobey, we try to show them that in disobeying us, they disobeyed God. And we try to help them understand that they disobey because they are selfish sinners. But do WE understand what great sinners we are? Do we try to find the “heart issue” behind our disobedience, or do we only care about “heart” when children are involved? When children get in conflict, we always tell them to talk to the other child first and if it doesn’t work, we help them resolve it. How do we resolve our conflicts though? Do we go to the person first, or do we talk to everybody else? If you are in children’s ministry dealing with quite honest sinners all the time, you can’t avoid examining yourself from time to time concerning some really important issues.

Last, but not least, if you serve in Sparklers, it takes about two weeks for you to discover R.C. Sproul’s book The Poison Cup. For some reason, some of the kids love the book and want us to read it all the time. I’ve read the first half of the book much more often than the second half, but I don’t mind. I can never be reminded too much of how evil we were before God saved us, and what a great price He had to pay to do it.

These are just a few lessons you learn if you serve on Sparklers staff. There are definitely more, but I think you got the idea. If you really want to learn and grow, come serve in Sparklers. Or any other ministry.