There is a repetitive conversation happening at a leadership level in the church at the moment.
Everywhere you turn someone is fretting about the pipeline. Where are the gospel workers? Why are fewer people stepping into ministry? Why do the usual routes feel dried up? And as a result attention, resources and priorities are directed towards the twenties and thirties.
Meanwhile the eleven year olds are being diligently discipled and no one seems to notice.
Have you ever considered that we’re staring at the wrong end of the problem. We stand at the tap, panicking about the trickle while the real blockage sits somewhere upstream.
Attend to the Source
If you walk into any church building on a normal Sunday morning, you’ll see the real source. Not in the main body of the church building or the student bible study. You see it in the rooms where the young people are being discipled. A group of primary school children gathered around the Bible. A bunch of tweenagers wrestling with a passage they are battling to understand. Small groups scattered across the building, each discovering who God is and what it means to follow Him.
Make no mistake, this is where a desire for gospel work is nurtured first. In the quiet, faithful, week by week discipleship that shapes a heart long before adulthood arrives.
And it matters. More than we admit.
By the time someone celebrates their eighteenth birthday, many of their instincts have already formed. They have ideas about what the church is like. They already know whether ministry life looks joyful or heavy. They have already watched how adults treat their leaders. They have seen who gets thanked and who’s quietly left to burn out. They have already begun to decide whether the life of a servant is beautiful or bleak.
And yet, children’s and youth ministry is often treated like a side project, the poor relative of proper ministry. Charged with keeping the kids busy or quiet or entertained while the adults are discipled. How remiss of the church. The shaping of a life of service takes long, steady work and this is where habits are learned. This is when instincts take shape. The truths that sink so deep you forget you ever learned them are all formed here.
Consider for a moment what actually shapes a child’s imagination. It is not the glossy recruitment videos they will watch at eighteen. It is watching their Sunday school leader arrive early every single week, their Bible marked with tiny sticky notes. It is the youth leader who stays behind and stacks chairs, while praying for them. The one who takes annual leave to accompany them to camp.
These moments sink so deep. Far deeper than we know.
The Budget Tells the Story
The funding tells the story, doesn’t it. Look at any church budget. The children’s ministry scrapes by on whatever is left after the important things are paid for. Youth workers fundraise for their own resources. Sunday school teachers buy felt tips with their weekly shop. Yet there is always money for another conference about the pipeline crisis. Always funds for the next scheme to capture twenty somethings. Trusts and foundations pour millions into mending the pipeline. Good things, perhaps. But what about the eleven year old who is learning right now whether a life sacrificially serving Jesus looks like joy or drudgery.
You know resistance to ministry doesn’t suddenly appear at university. Like some theological virus. It has been growing for years. Fed by a thousand tiny observations. Children are keen watchers. They see the children’s worker quit. Again. No announcement, just gone. They hear their parents muttering about the minister’s salary over Sunday lunch. They watch how the church treats its youth pastor. Not as a shepherd, but as someone who’s charged with keeping the teenagers happy.
By sixteen they have already begun to decide……
The Pattern in Scripture
Interestingly, scripture doesn’t give us recruitment strategies for twenty five year olds. Instead we get Timothy, taught the scriptures from infancy. We get Samuel, just a boy, serving in the temple. Learning what it means to say, “Speak, Lord, your servant is listening.” We get Jesus himself. Twelve years old. Already about his Father’s business while the adults panic about where he has got to.
The pattern is right there. Clear as day. It is not complicated. It is simply long…….
These early years really matter because that is when we show them something different. When we can still shape what they see. A church that honours its ministry team, not just the senior pastor. Leaders who sacrificially serve. Adults who pray like God is actually in the room. Like he cares about their spelling test and their friendship dramas and their questions about predestination. This is when we can build a vision of abundant life in the service of their Lord. When we can disciple them through the trials of living in an individualistic, comfort concerned world. When we can show them the eternal family of God as the sort of community that makes a young heart think: maybe. Maybe this is worth everything.
The Simple Plea
The church needs to look for gospel loving men and women earlier than its current approach. The ministry that receives the least resources should receive a greater investment.
Because the future pastors and evangelists and elders are already there. Glue on their fingers. Pizza on their hoodies. Listening and watching.
So here is the simple plea. Stop trying to repair the pipeline while ignoring its source. Please honour the early years. Invest time, prayer, creativity, patience and funding into this vital ministry.
Yes, keep working with young adults. Yes, support theological education. But please strengthen the roots. Water the ground. Love the little ones.
Perhaps we need to trust the pipeline to work as God designed it rather than over investing in one part and neglecting the rest.
