Motivated by our own biblical convictions and spurred on by these findings, our church began a new journey in 2005 by capturing a new term for our congregation – “emerging generations.” The first step for us in addressing this issue was to reorganize our discipleship-focused ministries into two teams instead of one. The Emerging Generations team was formed around the concept of synchronizing and aligning all of our age-graded ministries, cradle through college.

This team had two key goals: first, to develop a comprehensive vision for the spiritual formation of our young people that was biblical, intentional and consistent. It is not enough to have great individual preschool, children, student and college ministries. Those ministries should agree on key philosophies of ministry, and serve side-by-side on a weekly basis. The second major goal was to re-engage parents in the disciple-making process of their own children.

During the past three years, our team has been immersed in this experiment. As we have prayed, planned, learned, listened and worked together, we have identified three major areas of focus for that have the greatest potential for lasting influence on the spiritual development of our children and students.

Content – What we teach and why.

The last 30 years have seen an explosion in curriculum and Bible study options available to discipleship ministries. Instead of assuming that a particular publisher or line of resources “knows best,” our team has worked strategically to design a “scope and sequence” of key biblical principles that builds from one age-group to the next. We then find or create the resources that best match that approach.

In the preschool years, our goal is a foundational understanding of central biblical concepts, such as “God is love.” In the children’s ministry, we teach transformational principles that help children understand how the gospel message and key biblical values apply to their own personal life. The preteen and middle school years are marked by the quest for identity, so our content is designed to teach our students who they are in Christ and how that sense of self applies to everyday decisions.

High school students are seeking to grasp their purpose in life as they develop the need to personalize their faith. And our college students need to be challenged with a deep understanding of the personal mission that God has called them to fill both in the church and in society. We also are developing ways to connect key messages preached by our senior pastor to our scope and sequence during critical periods throughout the church year, aligning our teaching for maximum impact in both the church and the home settings.[3]