If you want to teach kids, you should understand more than how to reach their culture now. You should understand how your presentation will affect their culture in the future.

This applies to teaching any demographic and any culture, but it is particularly important for younger ages since it is assumed their brains have more plasticity.

How you choose to teach someone will influence their future at least in a very, very small way. Research repeatedly shows how easily molded our minds and behavior are to our environment and experiences.

Think of each interaction as a small drop in a bucket. A few interactions may not make a noticeable or measurable difference in someone’s future. But if you have the opportunity to teach someone week after week, those small drops will add up into gallons of influence.

For example…

In my early years of children’s ministry, I had the opportunity to be a part of an incredibly creative and highly talented team of staff and volunteers. We knew how to make a lesson stick.

From ages 2 and up, the curriculum had us teach the importance of giving offerings and tithes. In hindsight, we needed more balance to our approach. All too often, the lesson would revolve around the sowing and reaping angle (limitless object lessons), and we needed to focus more on giving just because we love God and because we want to help people. In hindsight, we needed to focus more on selfless giving just to counterbalance the negative effects of consumerism in our culture.

Here’s what happened…

For 7 years, I taught five-year-olds. And for 5 years, I taught middle school students. I taught some of my 5th, 6th, and 7th graders when they were five-years-old, so I got to see how they had grown spiritually through their elementary school years. I was proud to see how well they knew the Bible, but I was saddened to see how many of them had become superficial and consumeristic. It was not uncommon to get prayer requests for a PlayStation3 or a PSP.

So what’s to blame?

Unquestionably, tween culture is growing increasingly consumeristic. I was amazed at the cultural evolution that I watched happen during my five years of teaching middle school students. But now at a different church, I still teach 5th graders, and I do not get any prayer requests for video game systems or shopping sprees. Perhaps, socioeconomic differences are a factor.

But I blame myself. I could have had more balance in my teaching. I did not foresee how my weekly teaching could shape my five-year-olds’ future culture. Sure, they had other teachers, and I was not the only cause. But I do think I was a factor.

CONCLUSION

A good teaching can become a bad thing if not balanced. Be self-aware of the big picture message that your ministry is communicating. And ask yourself, “Do I need balance? Is there anything missing from my big picture message?”