Self-Improvement vs. the Gospel

—Chase Russell

Chase Russell currently works as a director of children’s ministry with One by One Nicaragua, a team dedicated to bringing the gospel to the next generation of Nicaraguans. He is passionate about getting the gospel right with children. In this article series, he examines one of the biggest mistakes we can make in children’s ministry and suggests some helpful correctives.

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Lately, I’ve been on a journey to answer the following questions:

1. Exactly what is a saving relationship with God?
2. How is it different from simply a collection of knowledge about God mixed with good Christian behaviors?
3. How do you explain this to a child?

Why should you care? Even if you currently have no interaction with children, taking a close look at what you believe and why you do the things that you do is valuable for your faith, and it helps you to more clearly communicate the gospel to those who don’t yet believe. In this article, I want to talk in-depth about the problems that cause me to ask these questions, as well as outline my initial thoughts on them. I hope to flesh out my answers in more detail in a later article.

Children’s ministry is a powerful tool which can be used for either great spiritual growth or great spiritual damage. Knowing truth about God, memorizing His Word, and learning to cease from sin are all extremely valuable and each can help us to know God better, remind us to call on Him for our strength, and teach us to serve Him better.

However, these tools can also work to lay a foundation for a worldview where we think God accepts us because we’ve made ourselves good before Him. Legalism, arrogance, comparisons with others, and judgmental attitudes can grow into a religious system that masquerades as Christianity—a form of godliness without power (2 Timothy 3:5). It may succeed in producing some self-control and may even feign an appearance of holiness, but because it is devoid of a relationship with God, it does not produce real love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, or gentleness (see John 15:4 and Galatians 5:22-23).

If we never present kids with the message, “God is good, you want to know Him and be with Him, you can’t because of sin, and only Jesus can fix this,”—if instead we talk exclusively about biblical stories and concepts (e.g. how Naaman washed himself seven times to be healed of leprosy, how Noah built the ark, how Jesus fed 5000 people, how Joseph had a coat of many colors, how God loves us, and how we should obey our parents and be nice to other people), then we are shortchanging the children by never telling them the gospel itself.

In other words, we are making the mistake of treating children as if they are already in a relationship with God. Oftentimes, we do this in order to avoid making the mistake of forcing them into a decision about Christ—after all, children, who desperately want and need approval and who are naturally trusting of adults, can easily be convinced to “ask Jesus into their heart” without having any sense of what that confusing phrase represents.

For example, when I was 5 or 6, my older sister was getting baptized, so I wanted to be baptized as well. My pastor asked me what baptism was and I gave surprisingly accurate theological answers (so I’m told). But when he asked me why I wanted to be baptized, I told him that it “just looks fun.” Not a great answer, but I didn’t want to admit the truth: the perceived spiritual progress of getting baptized meant getting a lot of positive attention from my parents. Plus, I already believed that I was saved, as I frequently outperformed other kids at verse memorization and general conduct. I thought that my good behavior justified me before God. I needed the gospel.

We are right to avoid pressuring children (and adults!) into making a decision that won’t stick. However, that doesn’t mean we should fail to present the gospel accurately and urgently.

A relationship with God is something He works in the heart, bringing dead people to life. It is something we accept from God through faith, not something we create by our works. When our actions are not a result of communication with the Lord, we have become more concerned with our behavior (and therefore our image) than with knowing our Maker.

Usually, we Christians go back and forth between living in a relationship with Christ and living in a legalistic system, and so we end up doing good things with mixed motivations. Next time, I plan to address this issue, as well as offer my thoughts on guiding children into a relationship with a God—and not into a code of conduct.