Ministering to Generation Alpha

Bill Hendricks: 

Hello, my name is Bill Hendricks. I am the Executive Director for Christian Leadership at the Hendricks Center at Dallas Theological Seminary, and it's my privilege to welcome you to The Table podcast, where we discuss issues of God and culture. If you're a parent or a grandparent of anyone who is 15 years of age or younger, or you work with that demographic, perhaps you're a teacher, a Sunday school teacher, a youth worker, and you're working with adolescents, young teens, and below, children, this podcast is for you because today we want to talk about Generation Alpha, as it's called. 

When we talk about Generation Alpha, of course, we're talking about children. So we all tend to think back to our own childhood, which is fine because these are children. They're going to experience the normal things that children experience, except they're also going to experience a world that, for many of us, if best, it may be lived in science fiction when we were growing up and in cartoons, but now it's reality. They're growing up into a world that will be filled with virtual reality, nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence. There's talk of humans returning to the moon, perhaps even Mars and beyond. Frankly, the increasing intermingling of humans with machines boggles the mind to think about. 

That raises a very interesting point for Christ followers, and particularly for the church trying to work with families. How do we minister to this Generation Alpha? And to help us really go deep in thinking about that? I am so honored to welcome Janine McNally today, who is the founder and director of Grace4Kidz. Grace4Kidz exists to produce resources for children's ministries that offer clear presentations and applications of the gospel for Generation Alpha. Janine, welcome to The Table podcast. 

Janine McNally: 

Thank you so much. I'm very pleased to be here. 

Bill Hendricks: 

I'm pleased to have you here. I came across a resource that you had put together recently that was sent to me, and as soon as I saw it, I said, "Wow, this lady's really onto something important." Because I think we have to really think differently now as we raise this next generation. I'm an aging baby boomer. We used to worry, "Oh, here's Gen X coming along." And then, "Oh yeah, but there's the millennials." And about the time we started to come to grip with maybe how to minister to them, it's like, "Yeah, but don't forget Gen Z." And now here we are already at the age of what for many boomers or grandkids, Gen Alpha. 

Janine McNally: 

Yep. 

Bill Hendricks: 

I need to just point out to our folks what qualifies you to speak into this. Janine is a DTS grad, by the way. Got her THM here at Dallas Seminary, where she also met her husband, Gary, and she's taught high school and worked with youth in Australia, which is where she hails from. She and her husband planted a church in New Jersey, then also pastored a church with her husband in Pennsylvania, and was a director of children's ministry in Colorado at a church there that she and her husband had planted. So she's got this whole background in church planting, but particularly with an emphasis on youth. They now live in Florida. Janine, tell us a little bit about your background. I mentioned you're from Australia, but that's a long way away from here in Dallas, Texas, where I live. Tell me a little bit about your background growing up, how you entered the ministry, and ultimately decided to found Grace4Kidz. 

Janine McNally: 

Sure. Like I said, I was a high school teacher in Australia. From the time I was four years old, I wanted to be a teacher. I used to line my teddy bears up and teach them if I couldn't find any kids younger than me. At the age of 16, I felt called to ministry. I wasn't sure what that would look like, and in Australia, ministry for females at that point was pretty limited. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Right. 

Janine McNally: 

I wasn't deterred. I left my teaching position and attended a small school in Adelaide, Australia, for three years, and that was where I was exposed to a couple of DTS grads and they taught. I had three years of Greek and loved it, but wanted to learn Hebrew. I know I'm weird, and no schools at the time taught Hebrew over there, and they suggested I try DTS and Dallas Seminary. At that point, in my imagination, was like, "Wow, I'm never going to cope. I won't ever see the letter A on a paper again." It just was way up there in the echelon of theological education in my head. Anyway, I came over, did my THM, met my husband, like you said, and we went from there. We had three kids. Teaching children, never in my repertoire. 

I remember the day our pastor came to our small group and said they were looking for children's director, and I felt the Lord tell me, "You could do this." And I said, "I don't want to do this." And I heard, "But you could do this." And I'm like, "I'm not looking for a job." And that night I couldn't sleep. The next morning I told Gary, and he's like, "Are you nuts?" And I'm like, "Yeah, I think so." Anyway, I applied, got the job, started, three years later, I have to say I loved it. I told them at my end, "If you don't expect, I'm going to get on the floor and teach these little rugrats. That's not who I am, but I can recruit, train, organize, and pull together the children's ministry." And in that three years, it grew from about 20 children to about 120. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Oh, my gosh. 

Janine McNally: 

20 volunteers. I think at the end we had about 80 committed people. It was really great. It was going really well. It's funny, when we were in church planting, my husband has a gift of evangelism, and during that time I got a real passion for evangelism. Like I said, my gifting is teaching. But during those three years, I got a real passion for children, realizing, which I already knew, that was the time of greatest receptivity was during those ages from four to 14. So I finished up there and thought, "I've got to do something in this field." Because the materials I was getting hold of, they were very unclear on the gospel all the time. Coming from a church planting background, we wanted a crystal clear gospel message, especially with kids. So I thought, "I'm just going to start creating resources for children that incorporate the gospel in everything." Because we have such little time available to us, and I wanted it clear. 

So that's where it started. Since then, it's beginning to morph into resources for the volunteers to teach the kids and resources for parents. Now that I'm doing my doctorate and working on my dissertation, it's definitely going in that direction. So Grace4Kidz is having a bit of an identity crisis. It's probably going to end up being grace for everybody. But yeah, so that's where it came from. That's where it started. 

Bill Hendricks: 

I'm very curious to ask if I go back all the way to the beginning, and you said those first three years, you went into it with a lot of doubt, but three years into it you said, "I love this." I'm curious to know, what was it about teaching children that you discovered was so satisfying for you? 

Janine McNally: 

I think because they're so receptive. I trusted Christ for the first time when I was around four years of age. When I do surveys in rooms where I'm speaking and I ask people to raise their hands, "How many became Christians before the age of 14?" Nearly everybody puts their hands up. Barna Group says 75%, 70% some say, 65% some say. But they also say that the majority gets saved in that 4-14 window. If that's the case, if I was Satan trying to stop God from working in the world, what better target to target than that age group and what better thing to target than the gospel message? So for me, that was all of my passion level went through the roof, and you may hear it as we talk today, it's just like, "Oh my gosh, we've got to get them then." We look at the teenagers and say, "Oh, look at them. They're so much trouble." I say that's because we didn't reach them when they were younger. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Yeah. 

Janine McNally: 

Instead, we're putting all our money and resources towards adults who primarily have already made up their minds instead of prioritizing this window of opportunity that we have. When I was on staff, I found out, the week I resigned, by mistake, I came across a paycheck from another staff member, and I realized how little they were paying me. My budget was minuscule compared to the rest of the departments in the church. What other ministries have to ask for donations of candy at fall festival time or candy to fill the Easter eggs at the Easter fest? Men don't raise money by buying eggs for their breakfast. Why is it, the children's ministry are begging all the time for funds? I think it's because they're not prioritized, and I think that's backwards. I think we should be working first with the kids because that's such a precious, receptive time that we can get them then, and then they've got their entire life to live for the Lord, hopefully. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Yeah, I guess to put it in a business context, it's as if a business was spending 80% of its marketing on the 20% that might buy their product or service, and meanwhile, the 80% that they can't get enough of it, they never hear about it. 

Janine McNally: 

Exactly, exactly. 

Bill Hendricks: 

I know you've done massive amounts of research by now on this generation and just this whole dynamic. I'm just curious, have you been able to identify what the factor or factors are that seem to make children 15 and younger so receptive to the gospel? 

Janine McNally: 

I let the little children come. Become like a little child if you want to enter the kingdom. There's something about children. I don't know whether it's their ability to trust. Maybe it's their understanding that they're not capable because they're so young. They're not capable of almost anything. They need help. As we get older, we think we know it all. We think we're capable. We can do things on our own. We don't need... We're not as dependent. I think that's probably part of it. There could be some psychological and professional better answers than that, but they just are. If you sit down and say, "Let me tell you a story." And they're all ears. They're ready to learn. They're ready to trust. They're very vulnerable, to the point of being naive, almost. Yet that's the time that is the best. Do a survey. How many people have... What age were you when you came to know the Lord? It's obvious. Statistics tell us that it's obvious. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Yeah, to answer that question for myself, I very, very clearly remember, I was four and a half when I heard the gospel message. To me, there's a lot more to the story, but I'll put it this way. I was a child that nobody ever had to convince was a sinner. 

I knew that if there was a bad thing to do, I'd find a way to do it. So I didn't need much convincing that, "You know you're a sinner, Bill." 

Janine McNally: 

Right. 

Bill Hendricks: 

What I was more in need of is, "What's the way out of this thing?" 

Janine McNally: 

Right. 

Bill Hendricks: 

When I heard that this man, Jesus, who, out of love, had taken my sin and paid for it through His death, that that was somehow... And I didn't understand the theology behind it. I just knew somehow whatever He did there on that cross put me into a right standing and a right relationship with God, and that my sins were forgiven, they were covered. I took it. I bought it. I said, "Man, if that's what it is, that makes sense to me, and I don't understand all the ins and the outs, but I'll go with it." And so it was a childlike faith, but man, it was a real faith. 

Janine McNally: 

Oh, sure. 

Kids don't have a lot of pride. I think that's what stops us. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Yeah. 

Janine McNally: 

You don't often see a proud child, and they will all readily admit that they do things wrong. So all three of our kids, four, four and a half, five years old, clearly understood the gospel. For me, I was around that age. It wasn't presented real clearly. So it was, "Ask Jesus into your heart." I hate that phrase. The Bible doesn't use it. Why do we? And so I was always wondering whether He might've left or whether He really didn't come in, even though the belief was there. It created confusion and sometimes a lack of assurance. That's why I get so passionate about making it crystal clear for little kids so that the assurance comes with it instead of them doubting because life ahead is going to be full of enough doubts. You don't need to doubt that one. 

But all three of our kids, they knew, and people will say they're too young to understand. I disagree. If a child understands he's done something wrong and that there's a way out, it's easy for him to think, "There's nothing I can do to get myself out of this. I'm only little, and if Jesus did it, I'm in." 

Bill Hendricks: 

We're now talking about grace, but I think of the enormous benefit you give a child to say there's someone, Jesus, who has done something to take care of that, as opposed to saying, "You're a naughty child. You need to get back in God's good graces, and to do that, you're going to have to start doing this and this and this and this, and you got to work your way out of it." Doing that, you now put that person in a lifetime of hurt. 

Janine McNally: 

Oh, yeah. 

Bill Hendricks: 

So obviously, by now, I'm sure you have any number of different, if I can use the term strategies or approaches, that you present the gospel to youngsters, but I'm just curious to hear what some of them are and some that you've found particularly helpful and effective. 

Janine McNally: 

Yeah. One of the things... So much of the curriculums out there really bridge off the Romans road, the verses that are all in Romans, and then get to Romans 10:9-10. They use the verse, "If you believe in your heart and confess with your mouth..." And that verse is, they don't use the other parts of the Romans road. They zero in on that one. When I was taking a class at my school, I decided to do a paper on Romans 10:9-10, and it's written to the nation of Israel, and it's talking about temporal judgment, a prophecy out of Joel 2. It's not a salvation verse. It's talking about being saved from judgment, not being saved from hell. Yet every curriculum uses it. One day I walked into one of my classrooms and one of the teachers that was in our very vulnerable preteen class, and he was saying, "How many of you raise your hands if you believe in your heart that Jesus died on the cross and was raised?" And they raised their hands. 

"Oh, yes. But how many of you confessed with your mouth?" And my jaw dropped, and I ran back to my office. I grabbed the leader's guide, and I thought, "Where did he get this from?" Sure enough, it was right there. He had basically read it verbatim, and I'm like, "Oh my gosh, I couldn't believe it." So from that point on, I started to look at the different materials. That was what propelled me into Grace4Kidz. I thought, "What am I going to do? I can't do anything about this because I can't write a whole curriculum. I'll create an addendum." So I created a training session, we did it with all the volunteers, and I said, "All right, from now on, in order to be consistent with the way we teach the gospel, we going to use this approach." I don't know if you've heard of Larry Moyer and EvanTell. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Oh, very much so. Yes. 

Janine McNally: 

Bad news and good news. Bad news, I'm a sinner, Romans 3:23, the wages of sin is death, Romans 6:23, Jesus died, John 5:8, and John 3:16, all I have to do is believe. There's four points, four verses, and I taught them the four illustrations. I made up posters which had those four points and the four verses, and I plastered them in all of the classrooms. I said, "From now on, anytime you see anything in any material that teaches the gospel, I want us to be consistent from nursery to preschool all the way through with the same four verses and the same four points to eliminate confusion rather than using phrases like, 'Ask Him into your heart. Make Him Lord of your life.' Things like that, that create issues." And even Romans 10, 9-10. Even if you disagree with me on the interpretation of that, the very fact that it's unclear and ambiguous makes it a bad verse for kids. Why not use John 3:16? No one has a problem with that. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Right. 

Janine McNally: 

So that's what we did. That's how I got around any confusing aspects of the gospel, which, for me, that was the heart. If we confuse that, what are we doing? It doesn't matter how great our programs are if our gospel message is unclear. So that's what we did. We just used bad news and good news. 

Bill Hendricks: 

So you then take sort of that template, if I could use that term, and you train volunteers and Sunday school teachers, whoever in that approach to the presentation. 

Janine McNally: 

Yeah, we practiced in pairs and got them to... I jokingly tested them on their outlines to see if they'd learned it or not. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Yeah. 

Janine McNally: 

That's the gospel outline through all my materials. So that, again, if a church decides to use one thing and then picks up another thing, it's the same message. Something which I hope and believe that any evangelical Christian wouldn't have a problem with. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Yeah. 

Janine McNally: 

Remove unclear, remove abstract, remove confusion. Just make it crystal clear and concrete for these little kids. 

Bill Hendricks: 

So obviously, the point here is, you're not trying to give a kid everything that there is in soteriology and hamartiology and all the finer points of things that theologians write dissertations on. 

Janine McNally: 

Oh, goodness. No. 

Bill Hendricks: 

You're trying to boil it all down to something a child can understand, but it's pure in the sense that you're not introducing ideas that may later on create problems that are unneeded. 

Janine McNally: 

Yeah. We all continue to learn. I don't have all of soteriology down. Jesus isn't Lord of my life every day and every moment. That's something we grow, and the sanctification comes and all that. I focus just on the essentials, salvation. 

Bill Hendricks: 

I'm reminded of the passage in Peter where he talks about the pure milk of the Word. What you're trying to do is just get that really pure initial milk for the child to take in. It also sounds to me, Janine, like an approach that is highly adaptable. So you may have a Sunday school class and curriculum. You may have an after-school Bible group, kids group that you're running. It may be a Vacation Bible School, it may be a couple of high school kids that are going to throw a little kids thing in the summer for kids in their neighborhood. It seems like it's endless where that could be applied. 

Janine McNally: 

Sure. I think most of the time, most of us haven't rehearsed that. We haven't prepared it well. So when we get into the situation when we're presenting the gospel, we're, "Um Um Um Um." And we tend to fall back on these phrases we may have heard. Instead of knowing where we're going and being clear, I think I created little business card sized outlines of the gospel, laminated them, told them, put in their wallet. Anytime that gospel came along, opportunity, pull it out. 

Bill Hendricks: 

So in the different experiences that you've had of presenting the gospel to children and some of the people you've trained presenting it, I'm just curious, what are some of the common questions that kids raise their hand and say, "But what about this?" Or, "I don't understand that"? What are some common questions that come up as kids, many for the first time encountering the gospel? 

Janine McNally: 

Like I mentioned before, I didn't get down on the floor and talk to these little fellas. It was mainly the adults. One mom came up to me and she goes, "Oh, Janine, I've been doing it wrong all these years. I've been telling my boys to ask Jesus into their heart." And I said, "You know what? God uses anything. If the Holy Spirit is drawing you, He can use mistakes, He can use unclear. The goal is to be as clear as possible. I think if you're clear, I don't think the kids are going to misunderstand. I just don't." And I told them, "If we present it the same all the way through, and they really grabbed onto that consistency thing, which is important with children," I said, "By the time they leave children's ministry in 5th grade, they should at least have the gospel memorized. They should have learned it. We can't push them into believing it, but at least they'll know it." And that was the goal. So yeah, that was my dream for Alpha. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Yeah. Again, I should just represent this as my opinion. So I'm not asking any of our listeners to necessarily buy this hook, line, and sinker, but I'm a big believer that God uses or that God respects is a respecter of people's response to whatever light they're given. 

Janine McNally: 

Right. 

Bill Hendricks: 

I have another podcast that I did with a gentleman. He was actually a Ku Klux Klan terrorist, and he ended up in a prison cell in solitary confinement for a felony that he had committed. That he was caught in the midst of attempting to commit, which was going to be an assassination. So there he is, and he's hook, line, and sinker committed to right-wing, nationalistic KKK terrorism. He's certain that's the truth, but there he is, in prison. I remember thinking when he told me that, it's like, "Wait a minute. Now you're a Christian and you're telling people that that was the wrong way." How did God possibly penetrate that? How did the gospel possibly get there? And for him, it was through good behavior, whatever that means in solitary confinement. 

I guess he was allowed to check out books, certain books, from the prison library. The big burning question in his mind was, "What is truth?" And God used that question. So he began to read. I think he actually started with Plato, and he worked his way through Plato and then Aristotle. Through an interesting story, he ends up wanting to read the Bible, and he reads the Bible, and he gets into John. He's like, "This is different. Who is this guy, Jesus?" That's a great example to me of whatever light there is there, just the simple question, what is truth? God takes that, and He woos a person forward. 

So I can imagine a child or the woman you mentioned said, "Oh, I've been doing this all wrong. I've been telling people, if you just raise your hand when I pray the prayer, you're in." That's terrible. From one point of view, no, that's probably not the best way to do it. Yet I've met people who said, "I raised my hand, and that's all I knew. Then I met somebody, and they told me more, and they told me more." So you're not shaming people, but what you're trying to get to, it sounds like, is but at some point, here's the essence of what particularly children need to start to come to grips with because it opens up a life-giving stream for them. 

Janine McNally: 

Again, if Satan was to try to mess up our kids, this is the place to do it. So, in my opinion, the best thing to do is to present well. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Yes. 

Janine McNally: 

God can use... The Holy Spirit can use our mistakes, but that's no excuse for not learning, preparing to present well. 

Bill Hendricks: 

I think in this conversation, and I'd love your input on this. Because what I hear driving you obviously not only just a compassion for people that've never heard about Jesus, and particularly children, and therefore, like a child, they have their whole life ahead of them. So if they head down the wrong road to begin with, that's a real problem. But the gospel is not like sitting in a vacuum. The gospel in this culture has many, many other truth claims. They may not represent themselves as truth claims, but many other representations of what reality is about that are whispering in children's ears through media, through stuff online, through things their parents tell them, particularly through things they hear from peers at school. Those are also vying for this child's belief and commitment. What you're trying to do, it sounds like, is somewhere in here. We've got to let them know there's this truth, which is true truth, which is the life-giving truth. So we can't just say, "I hope that happens someday." You're saying, "No, we need to be proactive about that." 

Janine McNally: 

Absolutely. 

Bill Hendricks: 

So how do you find volunteers and people to train? 

Janine McNally: 

Oh, this is the area that I hadn't figured we were going into. I went around, and the first thing I did, because at the time I didn't know everyone in the church, I sat down with the pastor, said, "All right, who can I ask?" He gave me about 150 names. I emailed all of them, which is the wrong way to recruit. But I was desperate. I had about 80 or 90 that said, "Sure, I'll help." I think they were trying to be nice, "We've got to help Janine. She's new in the job. Let's help." I plugged them all in. Gradually over time, I spoke to the ones who were obviously passionate about kids, and I said, "Would you be..." They were all rotating. It was once-a-month rotation, which is horrible with children. I started asking, "Would you be willing to serve every week or at least every other week?" And gradually, as the people said yes to that, I was able to release the others that really didn't want to do it, but we're doing it because I needed help. 

So for every four volunteers, I was able to replace it with one committed person, and that's how it went. The best way to do it is to go and approach people. That's assuming you know them, that's assuming you have contact with them. I was immediately thrust into Sunday mornings in the children's department, so I didn't see any adults anymore. So I had no way to contact any of them without knowing them, and I didn't know them. So for me, that worked. From then, it was just build relationships with those people and start to appreciate what they were doing. I got great responses. Great volunteers. 

Bill Hendricks: 

That's great. I know that we have many people that listen to this podcast. Obviously, many people listen to this podcast. We have children in Sunday school in a church, and we also have many because they're alumni of DTS who are in church work. They're pastors, they're youth pastors, they're children's pastors, they're Sunday school teachers, et cetera. Many of them are doing a fantastic job in their children's ministry. But having grown up in the church and dealt with a whole lot of church programs and read Barna statistics like you have and so forth, I'm just all too aware that for far too many churches out there, the children's ministry, sad to say, I want to be polite about this, but for many of them, they're very lackluster. They really amount to not much more than a bit of a babysitting service while the adults have the church service. 

We may have a Bible story. We may color some pictures that have lambs, Jesus, and Bible themes in them. We may have some content that's Bible-based, we could say, and yet I've just met too many people who came up through a whole church Sunday school and youth program. They'd never heard the gospel ever. Then it's not until they get to college or later on. I very clearly remember one person who came to faith in her 20s. When I asked her about her background, she told me about several churches she'd been a part of, at least one of which was an extremely well-known megachurch that's celebrated as they're doing great work. I realized there's all kinds of factors, and she's got personal responsibility, et cetera. But what shocked me was, she basically said that she had never heard those simple truths that you have just articulated anywhere in any of the youth programs, college ministry programs, or so forth that she had been a part of. 

It seems to me that this simplification of... Not simplification, but the essentials, that's what you're putting to it, these essential truths that we got to at least start with. Churches need to come to grips with, "Are there places where we're routinely putting these before the children and the young people that we're working with?" 

Janine McNally: 

Is that a question? 

Bill Hendricks: 

Yeah. 

Janine McNally: 

There are so many things I could say to that, as you were talking, my mind was spinning. First thing I would say is that a lot of children's ministry people are not trained biblically or as ministry people. So they don't know what they're doing. They're committed volunteers. The church says, "Would you take over the kids' ministry?" 

"Sure, why not?" They have no idea what they're doing. Second thing I would say is, a lot of curricula out there are very wishy-washy. They're very theme-oriented, moralistic. They, like I said, do not present the gospel well, do not present it very often. Between that and families where the children are only coming sporadically, they may miss the one time it's presented. When I was starting, I'm teaching at my school now, children's ministry, and when I was prepping for it, I was looking at all the different curriculum out there, did a quick survey of them all, and I tried to contact every one of them, the big companies, and said, "Could you please show me one lesson where you present the gospel?" 

"I'm going to have to do some research on that." It wasn't then. Then they would send me a lesson, and it didn't even have the gospel. There was nothing about Jesus dying on the cross, nothing. They considered that the gospel message. So you've got curriculum that are not solid. Then some churches, unfortunately, do view it as childcare. That is like anathema in the children's ministry world. There's a big T-shirt at the big conference I was just at, "Children's ministry is not childcare." Unfortunately, if the leadership see it that way, if they don't fund it well, if the pay is low, the priority is low, it's not mentioned from upfront and celebrated upfront, then that's how it's viewed. Again, that's what I keep saying. It's like, "Oh my gosh, the first one there wins." We've got to reach them young. That's what the schools are trying to do. They're trying to indoctrinate them early. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Right. 

Janine McNally: 

Valerie Bell, she wrote a book, Resilient. She tells a story about two missionaries. One, a missionary in a Muslim country, and how the Muslims are offering free education to families. All they have to do is send their children to the mosque for education. They're smart. They know, get them early, get them young, and even if the family is trying to teach them otherwise, education is never neutral. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Right. 

Janine McNally: 

There's secular humanism, if not, Muslim faith. It's everywhere. We have to be proactive. We have to include the gospel regularly. I would say pretty much every time we meet for kids, it's important. So yeah, it doesn't surprise me that people can go through a church program and not hear it or not understand it, or maybe it was unclear and they got confused. 

Bill Hendricks: 

One, I guess, you'd call it a pushback that I've had, or at least a counter to what I've said about Sunday schools that I have heard from some churches, and it sounds extraordinarily noble and in fact is something I agree with, which is, "But Bill, the responsibility for discipleship, spiritual formation of children, ultimately that's the family's responsibility." 

Janine McNally: 

Yes. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Now the church has a role in assisting the family, helping the parents, and providing things at church. But we've got to have our families doing that, which sounds wonderful. I couldn't agree more. But then you come to the problem that I'd say, "If that's the case, then we need what Grace4Kidz is talking about and presenting and training." You need to get the parents trained in what Janine is teaching here. 

Janine McNally: 

Oh, gosh. Yes. 

Bill Hendricks: 

I think some of the parents don't know, and I'm sure you've had parents who their kids come home and tell them about. They're like, "This is amazing. I got to find out more." And they contact you or whoever's saying, "I've never heard this. Tell me more." 

Janine McNally: 

Like I told you earlier with my dissertation, it started out talking about Generation Alpha. As I've read and thought and studied more and looked at Deuteronomy 6, obviously it's the parents' responsibility. In fact, I started my first children's ministry class with, "Okay guys, what's the biblical foundation for children's ministry?" And I asked that question, and it was quiet. I said, "You're right. There is none." Never does the Bible tell us to take our kids to the temple? Never does it tell us that the church is going to teach them. It's the parents and the grandparents teaching sons and grandsons. The problem with that, unfortunately, most families have abdicated that responsibility to the church for a number of reasons. One, they feel unqualified. They don't know what to say. They don't know what to do. They have no resources. They feel overwhelmed themselves. They know it's their responsibility, but life has crowded them in to the point where their commitment, spiritual commitment is low, or they're just busy, or whatever their excuse is. So it doesn't get done. Now that's assuming you've got two believing, committed parents. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Yes. 

Janine McNally: 

In our world today, there is no nuclear family, hardly. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Correct. 

Janine McNally: 

It's completely dysfunctional. We've got single-parent homes. We've got parent homes where the father is physically or emotionally absent and the fathers are the sole responsibility. If you've looked at statistics, if the dad doesn't attend church, it's actually lower for the mother to attend on her own than it is if she doesn't go. I'm not quite sure of that reasoning behind those statistics, except that I believe that it was God that gave the fathers that primary responsibility to lead their families. That's not happening. So when you see that, yes, the church needs to train, equip, and encourage the parents, absolutely. But at the same time, we also need to realize that the world is a mess. So therefore, unfortunately, if the church had done a good job of discipling the parents, children's ministry would be an added extra. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Yes. 

Janine McNally: 

Because the church failed to disciple those parents, now it's a necessity to come alongside to teach the kids what the parents should have been teaching. How do we stop that cycle from going? We need to head it off at the past and start training those parents, the ones that at least are there. The ones that aren't there, there's not much we can do about that except keep working with the kids. But as I've worked through all this material, I look at children's ministry almost as secondary now to what the trend is, family ministry or equipping parents to do what they should be doing in the first place. That's a whole different job. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Yes. 

Janine McNally: 

There's posts on Facebook. I'm part of a Facebook group for children's leaders that have over 30,000 leaders in the group, and they all talk about, "I've got to try and reach the parents. I've got to try and reach the parents." I'm thinking, "That's not your job. You're already busy enough reaching the kids." The church has to provide leadership for these parents, whether it's women's, men's ministries, a family ministry pastor, whatever it is. To think that the children's ministry people can do all that, it's just not possible. It's crazy. I had 120 kids. I had 80 volunteers. 120 kids. Maybe that's 40 or 50 families. So that could be anywhere from 90 to 100 adults plus the volunteers plus the kids, just me. That's the size of a church. To expect one person to lead that kind of a group is unrealistic. So the church has got to step in. It's got to wake up to what is going on and what the need is out there. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Just to further complicate that, you mentioned that several different kinds of families where there's single parents or single moms, homes without fathers, and so forth. We do have another table podcast in which we interviewed an expert on blended families. That's a very, very... For me, it was a chilling podcast because this gentleman, first of all, pointed out that if you look at all the different permutations of what we mean by blended families, there's something like 86 different forms of blended families. The most chilling statistic was that if we look at the, quote, "traditional family," which means intact mom, dad, and a couple kids, that now represents about 8% of what are considered family units in the United States. 

Janine McNally: 

Right. 

Bill Hendricks: 

So when we talk about family ministry, if that 8% is what you're thinking, "Oh, that's who I'm supposed to minister to." You're missing the people that are in your church. If you look at that through the lens of the children that you're talking about, it means that the boy or the girl that shows up to your ministry on a given Sunday, they may actually be a part of four different blended families. So they're there that Sunday, but the next Sunday they're with family B or family C, which has a whole different worldview, and a whole different makeup, and a whole different experience on the child. 

Janine McNally: 

There goes your continuity. 

Bill Hendricks: 

There goes your continuity. But if I think about that in light of your appeal, I guess if I only got that kid for one 50-minute period on a Sunday, whatever else I give them, A, I want them to know that there is a God, He's a person, He loves them, He's created them as a person, He wants a relationship with them, but that here's how you can have that relationship with Him. It's very clear, and that child gets that message again and again and again to be reinforced. 

Janine McNally: 

You're preaching my story there. Go for it. Yes. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Janine, our time's gone. But I can't tell you enough how appreciative I am of the work that you're doing. Again, with such a strategic age, you have a website. How can people reach you? 

Janine McNally: 

Grace4Kidz, it's the number 4 and kidz with a Z. The S was taken. It's Grace4Kidz. 

Bill Hendricks: 

.org. Is it .org? 

Janine McNally: 

Yeah. I think I managed to get com as well, but .org will work. If they're interested, that's the book I just released this year, When You See Fireflies, it's Equipping Leaders and Parents to Minister Effectively to Generation Alpha. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Gotcha. 

Janine McNally: 

I'm a research person, so it's not fluff by any imagination. There's a couple of hundred footnotes, so it's got a lot of information, but it's also very practical if they're interested. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Thank you very much. Thank you for being with us today. This has been so informative, so helpful. So I guess I'd say inspiring and on a critical need. Thank you. 

Janine McNally: 

Sure. Thank you. 

Bill Hendricks: 

I want to thank all of you for joining us today on The Table podcast, where we discuss issues of God and culture. I invite you to subscribe to The Table podcast on whatever service you happen to belong to, and hope always to see you next time on The Table. For The Table, I'm Bill Hendricks. Have a good day.