Passion for Childrens Ministry

 It was about 5 years ago I attended a local church with very few children, at that time I had a strong desire to see children worshiping the Lord our God. I spent several months paying close attention to the children programs, the children who attended, and their parents; hoping to see someone make an effort to invite more children. I saw no improvement so I decided to do the work myself. I had no children of my own, I had an empty car and plenty of time on my hands. I started by making a list of people I knew that had kids who did not already have a church to call home and I started inviting. Soon I had a hand full of kids sleeping over on the weekends and coming to church with me on Sunday morning. Doing this filled me with joy, it gave parents a break on the weekends, and best of all I new children were getting to know my Jesus. It went well for a short time until the children leader/pastor left the church (I think it was due to moving out of state). There was no one to teach the children anymore since the teacher who had left was a one man army. It became overwhelming trying to keep the children I was bringing with me quiet during the service and I understood adult service was just to boring for them. I slowly minimized the amount of kids I brought until there were none left. It was sad to see a church with no kids, so I came up with a new approach, instead of greeting people after service, I would quickly sneak down into the empty class rooms and began praying and interceding, I would ask our loving God to fill those empty class rooms with all kinds of children, I would go into each class room and pray over every chair to be filled. Soon after I began thinking that maybe I could do the job of teaching Sunday school, but I never mentioned it to our pastor or anyone. One Sunday they announced that they were assigning  one of the churches college students who was training to be a school teacher to be the new Sunday school teacher. I felt so hurt and upset because I wanted that position, I thought silently in my mind "That's my position she is taking!". I guess somehow I expected the pastor to automatically know that I wanted the job. And since the student had taken the position I watched her carefully expecting her to put much effort into bringing children in from the outside. I allowed this to bother me so much that I thought about starting my own christian camp for kids at home and began preparing, making plans, buying things to set up, and organizing a band schedule. There were plenty of families that signed up, however, everything fell apart. It was not how God wanted me to do things. For the next two years my life had become busy, lots of ups and downs including divorce. I then reached out to another church for support. The church was just starting out, the Pastor and members very warm welcoming. There i had the privilege to work as children leader for an entire year. It was quite the experience, even though I went through a lot of trial and error.
  Today I have remarried and have my own children, and still I teach there under another children ministry leader.

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