Children's Cells

The greatest pitfall facing the Cell Church movement is our failure to form cells for children between the ages of 5 and 13. Our tendency is to develop home cells for young people and adults, relegating the children during cell meetings to baby sitters or viewing television.

George Barna states: "What you believe at age 13 is pretty much what you’re going to die believing." Research compiled by his Barna Group shows that children between the ages of 5 and 13 have a 32 percent probability of accepting Jesus Christ as their Savior. That likelihood drops to 4 percent for teenagers between the ages of 14 and 18, and ticks back up to 6 percent for adults older than 18.

I am an example. 79 years ago as a five-year old child, I accepted Jesus as my Lord sitting on my father’s lap. It has amazed me to meet Christian workers who think we do not need to focus on harvesting children.

A remnant when a traditional church transitions to a cell church is the retaining of children’s programs (Awana, for example). Programs are organizations, not an organism. An authentic ecclesia replaces programs with body life. It becomes the family of God, cherishing each child as a vital part of the community.

Children who become part of a cell with other children develop a bond that lasts for a lifetime. In our TOUCH FAMILY, formed in 2000, we blended children with parents in our home cells. When we gather for worship, these children treat each other as brothers and sisters. They have had years of sharing, praying, learning about their Bibles together and most of all they only know “church” in its cell/congregation format.

A cell church that does not blend its children into its home groups, ignoring them or causing them to be left out of the adult group, will produce unattached young adults who will not have cell life as a core value.

A memory I cherish from the 1990’s when Lorna Jenkins led our children’s cells attached to Faith Community Baptist Church is a cell group where a man in a wheel chair came for prayer. The adults prayed fervently for him, without any observable healing. The adults drifted into the kitchen for refreshments, leaving the man and an 8 year old girl behind. The child stared at the man and finally said, “Well, why don’t you get up and walk?” The Spirit of God fell on him at that moment and he rose up and walked into the kitchen. Astonished, the adults asked, “What happened?” “It was the little girl! She told me to walk.” When the adults queried the girl, she simply said, “Well, you all prayed for him. So I just told him to walk because he was healed.”

Childlike faith must be stimulated by mingling with all the aunties and uncles that compose a home group. Let’s include them, not isolate them!