Obviously, Gary Millar, Chairman of TGCA and principal of QTC is overpaid.
While I was being kindly hosted by Gary and Fiona on a recent trip to Brisbane I couldn’t help noticing that they had two kitchens in their home. Literally within metres of each other. Now, I know that we live in the Reno-vision age of butlers pantries, parents’ retreats and entertainment bunkers, but two kitchens seems a bit excessive—especially for the principal of a Presbyterian Theological College.
But wait. I’ve failed to give you one key piece of information. Their first kitchen has all the usual features; oven, cooktop, fridge, pantry, sink and running water plus all the usual brands, badges, bells and whistles. Their second kitchen, however, is made entirely of one material. Plastic. It bears one brand: Little Tikes. Plastic play pots on plastic hotplates with plastic shelves and implements. The Millars may have two kitchens but one is a play kitchen, a remnant from their girls’ younger days, a useful distraction for visiting toddlers.
Two Kitchens?
When it comes to teaching God’s Word, sometimes I wonder if churches have two kitchens. There’s the real kitchen—the pulpit—where the real cooking takes place. It’s a place with knives that cut, ovens that roast and real open flames. It’s a place where great training and care come together with carefully chosen ingredients to produce nutritious meals that fortify believers in heart and mind and action: a gospel feast.
But where are the kids? They went out right after we sang “10, 9,8…”
We’ve sent them to the plastic play kitchen. It has the shape of biblical ministry, but shrunk, made of different stuff. It’s good for a bit of mimicry and pretend cooking, but not really able to (or even aiming to) tempt taste buds, whet appetites or deliver spiritual nourishment. You can’t satisfy hunger or expect to learn how to cook in a plastic kitchen.
Serious Cooking for Kids
Yet kids have spiritual stomachs too—just like the adults back in the main dining room. Regardless of age, it takes care, skill, wisdom, thought and training to truly nourish the spiritually hungry. You need a real kitchen.
My little analogy is more a launchpad than a destination. But I hope it might stir up an appetite for a delicious kids ministry with real substance. A ministry served up by leaders, teachers and helpers, who are themselves thoughtful, pastorally minded and well-fed by the God who speaks through Scripture. A ministry prepared and presented with the expectation that God’s Word—bursting with all the biblical food groups—will be tasted, relished, chewed-over and digested by the loved little ones in our care. If you’re going to try and do that, you going to need more than a plastic kitchen.
Think of the praises of children in Jerusalem (Matthew 21:15-16); the spiritual heritage of Timothy (2 Timothy 1:5); the sober old-Testament call to “train up child” (Proverbs 22:6) and “teach these things” (Deuteronomy 11:19). You get the idea. To God, children’s ministry is no toy kitchen.
Photos: Darren W, Georgina Buckley (inset); flickr
