The year was 2002. Everyone was listening to a promising new artist named Alicia Keys. The Osbournes won an Emmy for best reality show. Scientists reported a new type of black hole. A little indie movie called My Big Fat Greek Wedding struck box office gold. Martha Stewart was accused of insider trading. And I was an idealistic young children's director, fresh out of college and ready to change the world.
According to some experts, I couldn't change the world until I'd written a mission statement (not to be confused with a vision statement, which I apparently also needed.) So I got right to work. I toiled over those mission and vision statements. I wanted them to encapsulate every single conviction about children's ministry that I'd come to embrace over four years of college. And I didn't want them to sound like everyone else's mission and vision statements. Mine had to be unique. Distinctive. Awe-inspiring. To put it bluntly: the best children's ministry mission and vision statements ever written.
So after much labor, I finally produced two dazzling statements. And then I forgot them a week later. To this day, I really don't know what our children's ministry mission and vision statements are. I think they might have something to do with discipleship, but I could be wrong.
Thus, I think Isaac Watts' amazing hymn, Let Children Hear The Mighty Deeds is going to become our new mission statement. It pretty much sums up my major convictions about children's ministry and it rhymes!
Let children hear the mighty deeds
Which God performed of old;
Which in our younger years we saw,
And which our fathers told.
He bids us make His glories known,
His works of power and grace;
And we’ll convey His wonders down
Through every rising race.
Our lips shall tell them to our sons,
And they again to theirs;
That generations yet unborn
May teach them to their heirs.
Thus shall they learn in God alone,
Their hope securely stands;
That they may ne’er forget His works,
But practice His commands.
