In this chapter, Spurgeon offers three admonitions of particular importance to those who work with kids.  These admonitions are based on the following verse which provides the title of the book:

“Come, Ye children, hearken unto me: I will teach you the fear of the LORD. [Psalms 34:11 KJV]”

Admonition #1 – Recollect Whom You Are Teaching

Even when working with kids, perhaps especially when we are working with kids, we need to remember to respect our audience.  By respect, Spurgeon does not mean that you give people special treatment because of their status or position.  Instead, he means that we must remember that we are working with people who have souls, and we should not waste their time filling their heads with things that are not worth hearing.

Spurgeon argues that those who teach kids are in a position of greater responsibility than even those who would teach adults.  Those who minister to adults minister to people who are, at least theoretically, capable of making their own judgments and their own decisions about what they are and are not going to do.  When you teach children, they have no other option. They cannot choose, on their own, to go find a different teacher or a different church.  Accordingly, we must be all the more careful about what we teach them.  As Spurgeon explains, Continue Reading…

In this chapter, Spurgeons offers 5 lessons for Children’s Ministry teachers on teaching kids about morality.  Spurgeon utilizes Psalm 34 as the basis for these lessons and begins the chapter with the following verse:

Keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking deceit. Turn away from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it. [Psalms 34:13-14 ESV]

In order for kids to understand the holiness of God, we must teach them about morality.  However, we must be clear in our teaching that leading a moral life is not the way to salvation.  Instead, Children must be made to understand that Christ and Christ alone is the means unto our salvation.  Once salvation through the blood of Christ is obtained, only then does God gives us a thirst for moral living.  In Spurgeon’s words:

“I have always found that the gospel produces the best morality in all the world.”

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This chapter contains a series of pieces of advice on raising spiritual champions.

Get them to come in

Spurgeon begins this chapter of instructions for teachers with the following simple instruction:

“First, get the children to come to your school.”

Spurgeon implores teachers to get kids to come to their churches “by all fair and right means.”  Indeed, Spurgeon advocates every persuasive means short of bribery to get kids to come to church.  Indeed, we should try all means to get kids into our Children’s Ministries.  Spurgeon puts the endeavor in the correct spiritual context:

“Go and catch the children. There is no law against it; all is fair in war against the devil. So my first instruction is, get the children, and get them anyhow that you can.”

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In the Old Testament days of Eli the priest, the word of the Lord was precious.  Eli failed to teach his own sons to hear and obey the Word of the Lord.  Eli was certainly capable of teaching children to hear the word of the Lord as he taught Samuel and trained him to listen to God.  In this chapter, Spurgeon offers a warning to parents who serve in Children’s Ministry.  Those of us who work diligently for the souls of others must also work diligently for the souls of our own kids.  Spurgeon summarizes:

“O that those who are diligent about the souls of others, would look well to their own households. Alas, poor Eli, like many in our day, they made thee keeper of the vineyards, but thine own vineyard thou hast not kept. As often as he looked upon the gracious child, Samuel, he must have felt the heartache. When he remembered his own neglected and unchastened sons, and how they had made themselves vile before all Israel, Samuel was the living witness of what grace can work where children are trained up in God’s fear, and Hophni and Phineas were sad specimens of what parental indulgence will produce in the children of the best of men.”

Eli’s kids were evidence of what happens when parents indulge their children.  Spurgeon contrasts Eli’s raising of his sons with Samuel parents.  Sameul had a gracious father and a holy mother.  Hannah was a woman of great poetic talent and a woman of prayer as indicated in the following verses: Continue Reading…