If you don’t effectively and consistently preach the gospel in your kids ministry, you will be missing a critical part of ministry.

However, it’s just as important to make sure that your kids know why they can and should be sharing the gospel with others. Kids are bold. With their childlike faith, they can easily talk about spiritual things with their peers and even other adults. Even more than that, if they are Christians, they should understand that making disciples is part of the great commission given to all who believe (Matthew 28:19-20).

In the area of kids ministry where I serve, we made it one of our goals this year to equip our kids to be comfortable and confident with sharing the good news of Jesus Christ with others. We are still learning what exactly this looks like and how best to be effective with this. However, we are doing several things to help our kids (and ourselves) be better at sharing the gospel on a regular basis with others.

Ongoing Conversation

Talking about the gospel message happens on a weekly basis with our kids. It’s not a singular event where we gather them all around and present a beautifully worded message and give a convicting (and often uncomfortable) invitation in hopes that some of them will respond. Those times can be good and sometimes necessary perhaps. However, I believe it’s more effective if we have a natural ongoing conversation about the gospel. The gospel message should be so familiar to our kids (and to us for that matter) that we are able to easily talk about it and point back to it in everything we are doing and teaching. The familiarity of the gospel doesn’t weaken the power of the message, but rather it should serve as our plumb line as we make sure that everything we do is in line with it. If the gospel is not in the forefront of everything we do, we can easily default to obeying God in our own power and strength. We should be so saturated in the gospel that it naturally leaks out in everyday conversations. And we should be intentional about pointing back to it during every teaching time and every activity we do.

Scripture Memory

Having scripture hidden in our hearts and engraved in our minds helps as we share with others. We strategically chose six verses to memorize with our kids this year that help us walk through the gospel message. We have spent a month on each verse which gives us time to talk about the verse in relation to the gospel and plenty of time for the kids to memorize the verse. Having a song that goes along with each verse has helped us all memorize them better. We also decided to offer incentives for the ones who memorize the verses to make it a little more fun. It is kids ministry after all. If you are interested, these are the verses we chose to get our kids to memorize: Colossians 1:16-17, Romans 3:23, Romans 6:23, Ephesians 2:8-9, Romans 5:8 and 1 John 1:9. Memorizing these scriptures in this particular order helps us talk through the gospel message with our kids and with others.

Tools

There are also several hands on tools that can be used to share the gospel. The gospel bracelets and wordless books are great because they are small and portable. They can be worn or attached to something like a bookbag. The kids can have the tool with them at all times and pull them out to share or talk about it someone sees it and asks about it. It also helps to have a physical tool in our hands to help guide our thoughts and keep what we say focused and concise. Also, if eye contact seems awkward for people, these tools also give you something to look at. We based how we are leading our kids through the gospel from this resource. The Gospel: God’s Plan for Me starts with creation and the perfection of the world before sin enters. For older kids and teens, something like The Three Circles method of evangelism can be helpful. This method starts with the brokenness of the world and leads to how Jesus can make us new again.

Practice

This may seem completely elementary, but by practicing sharing the gospel with each other first, helps us feel so much more comfortable sharing it with nonbelievers. As we say the words out loud to someone else, the more ingrained it becomes in our own hearts and minds. We often talk through the gospel out loud as a large group with the kids. We also recently had a night where we invited all the kids parents to come see what we have been learning. A few of the kids got to stand up and share the gospel with their own parents. Instead of making one kid share the entire gospel message, we broke it up into sections. Each kid said one of the memory verses and shared that part of the gospel. Hearing the kids share what they had learned and practiced was my favorite part of the night. It also helped give the kids confidence that if they can share the gospel with each other and their parents, they can share with others too. We are also looking forward to a night when we invite the senior adults in our church to join us. The kids will be using one of the tools mentioned above to practice sharing the gospel with our seniors.

Our hope and prayer as leaders and parents is that our kids will be ready and feel equipped to share the gospel with others wherever they go.