“But Lord, I’ve Never Taught Children Before!”

By Cynthia Hyle Bezek

Probably the most common frustration I hear from church prayer leaders goes like this: “Someone [fill in the blank: my pastor, home group leader, Sunday school teacher, the elders, the deacons, the women’s ministry director] ought to be mobilizing prayer, but they aren’t! How can I encourage them to get on board?”

There is no simple answer to this common complaint. If someone in leadership doesn’t have a vision, passion, or confidence for prayer, all the hints, invitations, requests, nagging, or even bribing in the world won’t change them. Your best resort is to pray for them and humbly set a good example.

I knew all that. Still, I found myself thinking along those lines last fall. The church prayer ministry I help lead invited our children to pray for our pastors one Sunday during Clergy Appreciation Month. The kids went forward, circled around the pastors—and were utterly silent. Were they just shy? Or did they actually not know how to pray? We were concerned. And, I confess, my first thought was to wonder how we could get our children’s ministry on board in prayer.

That’s when the Holy Spirit reminded some of us in our prayer ministry that He had called us to lead the way in prayer for our church.

But Lord! I have never taught children before! I am not gifted with children! In fact, I’m sort of afraid of them—at least groups of them! Send someone else.

It’s Up to Us

You probably can guess how that went. God wasn’t planning to send someone else. He wanted us to do it. As it so happened, I had already written a children’s prayer curriculum (oddly enough, I can write for children—I’m just inexperienced teaching them!) and our prayer ministry had several people who are gifted teachers. So we volunteered to teach eight weeks on prayer during the children’s church hour. The children’s ministry director was delighted to have prayer taught—and to give her volunteers a break. We had her full and enthusiastic support.

Our curriculum included lessons on basics (prayer equals relationship with God, the Lord’s Prayer, and intercession), as well as more advanced concepts like listening prayer, perseverance, and inner-healing prayer. One of our prayer ministry members (an experienced teacher) took the lead in planning the lesson each week. Men and women on our team took turns telling the story. And the remainder of the prayer ministry members supported them by interceding for the children and leading small groups of two or three children each week.

I was nervous my first week as a small-group leader. To my relief, however, I found the children to be engaged and responsive. They opened their hearts to the Lord and to us—and they seemed to catch on faster than adults often do. So after my first-week jitters, I actually looked forward to being with the kids.

I was amazed at some of their responses. Some tough-looking little boys shared some pretty big hurts. A child with learning difficulties volunteered to write his prayer on the poster board up front. After a lesson on listening prayer from John 10, every single child heard something encouraging from the Good Shepherd.

In the unit on persevering prayer, a little girl, we’ll call her Tanya, told me she had been praying for a long time about a friend who is mean to her. Tanya said that at first all she asked God to do was to “make her nicer.” But as Tanya persisted in prayer, she started to realize some things. She realized the other little girl might be nicer if she knew Jesus! So Tanya started praying that her friend would come to know Jesus. But then Tanya realized that her friend might not even have heard very much about Jesus, so Tanya started praying that the other girl would read the Bible so she could get to know Jesus.

Over time, as she persevered in prayer and let God reshape her prayers, her prayers became more mature and others-focused. She told me her prayers are not so “greedy” any more. I realized that this little girl understood more about listening to God, persevering in prayer, and Kingdom-praying than many adults I know!

I’m so glad our prayer ministry didn’t wait for somebody else to come along and teach our kids to pray. God gave us the ministry of prayer for our church. Why shouldn’t we be the ones He uses to help the kids learn to talk to Him?

CYNTHIA HYLE BEZEK served as managing editor and editor of Pray! magazine from 2002 until it ceased publication in 2009. She is the author of Prayer Begins with Relationship and Come Away with Me: Pray! Magazine’s Guide to Prayer Retreats, both published by NavPress. Her prayer blog, Let’s Talk, is available at prayerconnect.net/blogs/lets-talk.