Welcome Children – Needs and All

I don’t know if there is anything born into this world that stays so needy and grows so slowly as a human being. I mean, think about it: there are plenty animals that are born able to walk from day one, able to gather food for themselves within their first month, or reach the status of “fully grown” within their first year. Humans, on the other hand, when they’re born, are unable to do just about anything – requiring not days, not weeks, but months to even be able to roll over, let alone crawl, and let alone walk. 

And as babies turn into toddlers, and toddlers turn into young children, their neediness, in large measure, remains. They’re still not tall enough to reach the kitchen sink on their own, not strong enough to open a heavy door on their own, they lack the dexterity to brush their own teeth, tie their own shoes, or comb their own hair. Even well into grade school, children remain, for the most part, very needy. 

And one question we might ask is, why? Why, when so much of God’s created world reaches independence and adulthood within such a short amount of time, do children stay needy for so long?

Is it because God means to show something of our spiritual neediness by way of their physical neediness?

Is it because God wants us to learn how to ask him for help, just as children so readily asks for our help? 

Is it because he wants us to recall the heights from which he condescended to meet our need as we leave our own little thrones to meet the needs of children?

Is it because, in God’s design, the needs of children - far from being a burden to us - are actually a means of grace to us? An opportunity through which we can have more of him?

After all, Jesus said:

“Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me.”

He says, “Look, here’s a child who, like all children, needs help, needs care, needs attention, and if you’re willing to welcome them, in my name, you get me. You get me.”

At Cities, we’ve sought to lean in to those words. We’ve aimed to take Jesus at his word by welcoming children, expectant that more of Jesus would be the result. And we’ve made it so, parent or not, you can get in on welcoming children, regularly, through serving regularly in our childcare ministry. Hence our six childcare volunteer rotations that draw from a large segment of our membership.

To be sure, one reason we ask so many members of our church to serve in childcare is because we have one Sunday service, and so we can’t have the same members serving in childcare every Sunday, otherwise they’d never be up here. We need a rotation of volunteers. 

But the bigger reason is because we want all of you to have more of Jesus. I mean having more of Jesus is why our church exists. We want to be a church filled with people who say, “Look, if there is any other ways for us to have more of Jesus, if there’s a way to have more of him that I’m not currently receiving then tell me what it is and leave me have at it.” To which Jesus says, well,

“Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me.”

So I want, this morning, to invite you to receive children regularly through our childcare ministry. If you’ve been away from this ministry for a time, I want to encourage you to lean back in. If you’re a member here and have not served in this ministry, I want to stir you up to get in. To begin, you can chat with me and I can give you more details, or you can email our children’s coordinator, grace@citieschurch.com, and she’ll help you from there. 

Children are needy. They are needy by God’s design. And as God’s people, we want to not despise them, not disregard them, not undervalue them, but receive them in Jesus’ name.

And this, of course, reminds us of our need to confess our sins.