The Child (and the question) That Changed How I Disciple Children

After more than twenty-five years in children's ministry, you would think I had seen just about everything. I've taught hundreds of children, written curriculum, trained volunteers, and watched countless young people grow in their faith. I thought I had a pretty good understanding of how children learn about God.

But early on, one child with one question changed everything.

He was such an intelligent child. He was one of those children whose mind you could almost see working. He was a cutie pie too. Tall for his age, kind to his younger brother, and obviously raised in a loving home.

When Will was in the room, I knew I had to be on top of my game. Not because of his behavior, questions, or comments, but because I knew he was remembering and learning. As a teacher of the gospel, I couldn't afford careless mistakes, misquoted Scripture, or letting my own limitations get in the way.

Fortunately, early in my ministry I learned to respect children enough to prepare carefully for every lesson. That conviction has stayed with me ever since. While I appreciate that busy volunteers need practical resources, I've always been uneasy with curriculum marketed primarily as "no prep" or "low prep."

Children deserve more than a lesson that fills the time. They deserve adults who have prayed, studied, planned, and considered how God's truth can take root in their hearts.

Preparing well isn't about creating elaborate crafts or expensive activities. It's about valuing children enough to give them our best. If we believe children's faith matters—and I certainly do—then investing our time and thought into their discipleship is one of the greatest gifts we can offer.

So I prepared. If Will understood, then so would the others. In theory, anyway.

Because it was a mixed-age group of early elementary children, I knew that the pace had to be quick, the energy high, and they needed a way to attach new information to old knowledge. We shared Bible stories, prayed together, and sang joyful songs of faith.

So there I was on that perfectly normal Sunday morning with about fifteen children sitting on the floor with me. I had put my guitar away and read our Bible verses out loud. I had chosen several excerpts from Genesis 6-9, which teach us about Noah, his family, the ark, the rain, the animals, the rainbow, and all of that flood stuff.

My big engagement piece that day was to help us all to understand the sheer size of the ark. To do this, I found a scaled drawing in an old textbook that showed a person standing next to the ark, transferred it to a transparency sheet, and displayed it on the wall using an overhead projector. (Yes, I am that old.) This was before the internet was as useful as it is today.

After looking at the image, I took the class to the large window in our room that had a sweeping view of the church grounds, parking lot, etc. I had previously stepped off the approximate distance for the length of the ark, so I started asking questions.

"See that tree right in the middle there? Do you think the ark would stretch that far?" The responses came in, and I kept increasing the distance until I could show them how much space on our property the ark would have occupied.

We talked about how the animals might have been arranged on the decks, how much poop might have occurred each day, and all the other things that children want to know.

Then Will raised his hand. He had a puzzled look on his face. I had never seen him look or sound so confused. I called on him, and he asked a question that caught me completely off guard. With incredulity obvious in his tone, he asked,

"Is this true?"

I stared at him for a full three seconds, while the other children looked at me.

It hit me that while most of these children had heard the story of Noah's Ark, they knew it only as a cute tale with cartoon illustrations. You know the ones: a giraffe and an elephant poking their heads out the windows while Noah and his wife cheerfully wave goodbye to a drowning world. Preposterous.

Those little storybooks had reduced one of Scripture's most significant events—a powerful picture of God's desire to save humanity from sin—to a nursery rhyme.

I had described the ark's enormous size, read from Genesis about the waters bursting from beneath the earth and pouring from the sky, and helped them picture the event. I told Noah's story the same way I would tell them about the Brooklyn Bridge: as truth, as history, as our heritage of faith.

Then Will stopped me.

"Is this true?"

We sat back down on the floor, and the question hung in the air. I put my Bible in my lap and looked at the children. "Yes. It is true." I answered simply.

"This is a real thing that happened to real people in a real place in a real time. These people were the first ones to see a rainbow." I wanted to make sure they understood. So I continued.

"Do you know why I know it is true? Because the Bible is God's Word and God cannot ever lie. There are many scientists who believe the earth shows evidence of a massive flood. But I don't need a scientist to tell me that God's word will always be true. So yes, Will, this is true."

They seemed satisfied, even Will, and then our time was up. I hoped that I had explained things in a way that they could understand. I still hope that. But I don't know.

From that day on, I made a promise to myself. Whenever I tell the stories of our faith, our Savior, and the God who created us, I will tell them as truth—not as fairy tales, not as nursery rhymes, but as the joyful, enduring heritage of God's people.

So the next time you teach children, teach them as though these things really happened—because they did. Let there be no doubt when they ask, "Is this true?"