Developing Leaders, Impacting Kids

Developing Leaders, Impacting Kids is a training podcast for people who serve children in church. It is produced by International Children's Ministries of the Church of God of Prophecy. Its subject is the leader, not the child. Joy Hensley hosts, and Sean McKinley appears as co-host in a conversation about prayer. Each episode here is a conversation with a guest, and the tone is warm: one guest is introduced as a dear friend, and the sign-offs are openly affectionate. What a listener gets is practical advice built on theology. Take hard questions. Dr. Teresa Roberts describes making spaces where kids feel free to ask them, then admits a lesson she found hard to learn in ministry: a leader doesn't have to know the answer. A child asking a question, she says, sometimes wants conversation and wants to be heard. Hunter Williams comes at theology from a different direction. He argues that the familiar definition, 'the study of God', makes theology sound like it belongs to academics and turns God into one subject among many. That definition, in his view, has convinced people that theology is only for professionals. The Gen Alpha conversation is enthusiastic about its subject. A guest cites research suggesting most of that generation is unafraid to talk about faith, contrasts this with the activist bent of Gen Z, and makes the point that truth has a name, and it is Jesus. Missions gets the same practical treatment. A guest who has run missions projects with children for several years recommends picking one cause and turning it into an action plan rather than trying to take on everything. The closing advice is simple: don't be discouraged, because some of those children have moved up to youth and still ask about projects. The ministry says it has widened its mission to support parents and grandparents, which is where 'Christian Grandparenting' fits. In that conversation, a guest recalls children's pastors who were shocked at how rarely children attended church. Two groups stood out as more regular: children of church workers and children brought by grandparents. The conversation ends with a prayer for family members to come to faith. Bishop Brian Sutton, state bishop of the Church of God of Prophecy in Alabama, joins Joy Hensley and Sean McKinley to talk about prayer. That conversation belongs to a series on the spiritual disciplines of the children's minister, which also covered memorizing Scripture and, with Dr. Kathy Payne, fellowship and community. The host groups episodes under quarterly themes, including apologetics and Gen Alpha, and some guests point listeners to upcoming webinars. A good first episode is 'Encouraging Kids to Ask Hard Questions', where the advice is as much about listening as about answering.