The children see models of the Christian life other than their parents in all walks of life with varying pasts that educate them for the future. Kathy Keller’s article on raising children in the city speaks of how others in the community can share their experiences to testify to the goodness of God in avoiding the temptations our children will face.

Small groups are gospel-centered communities on mission. The scriptures beautifully describe a small group of believers committed to seeing the gospel of Jesus Christ flourish in one another, then extending the gospel to all their neighbors. The idea sounds simple, yet living it becomes complex and challenging.

Many small groups struggle with how to handle children in the community. Maybe you can relate to one of our communities that had 14 adults and 16 children under the age of 8. In their mind they fit the ideal size of 12 t0 15 for a community group, and they were seeking to be innovative in their scheduling and structure. They rotated their meetings with men meeting one week, women the following, couples going out on date night, and then enjoying a family outing on the weekend. Theoretically this schedule allowed them to see each other weekly, but they never formed into a community that encouraged one another and extended the gospel to their neighbors.

Where Do We Go Wrong?

Many of our small groups apparently believe children get in the way of adults seeking to be in community and on mission. To be fair, no small group model communicates so explicitly, but when children aren’t included in the number for the community group, it unintentionally conveys their lack of importance. We know Jesus welcomes children as valuable to God. The Book of Acts speaks of entire households participating in this new gospel faith in Christ and describes church life happening in believers’ homes. The scriptures never explicitly speak of children in these communities, but we can still deduce that God views children as a blessing and the primary mission field for parents. So a gospel-centered community on mission embraces the view that children should be included and seen as members of the community in need of becoming disciple-making disciples.

We must re-imagine the church community, moving beyond life-stage idolatry to see the church as a family. Repeatedly the Bible refers to the church as the household of God, and familial language is used in describing our relationships with one another. We become spiritual brothers and sisters and make disciples of spiritual children with God our Father because of the work of Christ in making us fellow heirs by the power of the Spirit in the gospel. Community groups that gather around the gospel, then, will includes singles, married couples, and families who seek to fulfill the many “one anothers” of Scripture, discipling one another, and participating in each other’s mission fields. Since the parents’ mission field starts with their children, the rest of the community seeks to own this mission with them.

For families to share their community’s mission, parents will need to see singles and married couples without kids as valuable to them beyond babysitting. When the gospel of Jesus Christ becomes our primary identity, life stage becomes a way to serve God and his mission rather than our main focus. If parents do not invite singles and married couples in their own church to be a part of their family, how will they ever extend the gospel to their neighbor in the same situation?

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