A Heart-felt Conundrum

We have recently moved in to our new venue at a local primary school. (I'll blog about that later, hopefully with photos).

This is a great thing. It places us as a gathered community in a physical place that is acceptable and accessible by churching and non-churching alike. It is bearing fruit - already, on our first Sunday - we had neighbourhood kids asking what we were doing. This is a good grounding for good missional stuff.

But then comes the conundrum. These kids also asked (or looked like they wanted to ask) "Can we join in?"

Can they?

The evangelist and mission-heart in me says "Yes! Come on in! Hear about Jesus. Hang with your friends (they go to the same school as some of our church children). Be blessed!" Find a loving community, a place of peace, a safety, a source of life!

But the administrator and overseer in me knows that I can't. Who would have duty of care for these children? We could set up systems of permission slips and other things - but how can I tax our overly-taxed kids ministry volunteers even further by putting further responsibility on them? Do we want church to become a pseudo-babysitter? What about our philosophy of having a multi-generational gathering with Kids Learning Time (KLT) happening during the "teaching/sermon" part of the meeting? Who would be in charge of these children when we are gathered as a whole - or should we only invite them to the KLT bit?

At the moment our line is "Yes, we'd love to have you join in, go and get your parents or someone to look after you."

But that means we turn them away. And we'll become known as the ivory tower church that's available for the families-who-have-got-it-together. We'll be teaching them "Jesus is for those "other people" and not for me."

And that breaks my heart. What to do?