Children's Ministry

Purpose – Our purpose statement answers the question, “Why do we exist?”
To aid parents in shepherding our children to be Christ centered and others oriented for the glory of God in all things.

Mission – Our mission answers the question, “What are we supposed to be doing?”
Raise our children with a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for their joy and the joy of all people.

Vision – Our vision answers the question, “Where are we supposed to be going?”
To see our children come to salvation and live God saturated lives that impact the world for Christ!

Philosophy & Distinctives

God Centeredness

We believe that the Bible is a book first and foremost about God. The other characters in the Bible merely point to God. So in our curriculum, classes, and activities we want to exalt God-to show Him as the great and almighty God. As a guiding principle for every class, Scripture is to be studied in the context of the question, “What does this say about God?”

Biblically-Based Lessons

We want to fill our children with solid biblical truth that will give them a foundation to stand on when they go through deep waters. For this reason, we want our classes and curriculum to direct children to the Word of God. We believe that the Bible must be taught in depth, yet in a child-friendly or age appropriate, interesting manner.

Incremental Education

Truth is presented on a simple level in the preschool years and is reinforced and expanded at primary levels, and so forth. For this reason, truths are reintroduced to the children as they grow older, each time digging deeper and widening the scope of their understanding.

Life Application

We believe that faith comes through hearing the Word of God (Romans 10:17). However, we also believe that teaching falls short if it simply feeds words through the minds of children. We want the truth to be clearly understood by the children. We emphasize God?s truth and explain it through illustration, connecting the known to the unknown. Because interaction with God’s truth is critical, children are encouraged to look up scripture passages, and then discover and respond to the truth they discover.

Theology

Nor’wood’s teaching emphasizes God’s sovereignty in directing everything to serve His good purpose. We want to help children understand that nothing is outside the control of the all-powerful and all-loving God of the universe.

Partnership with Parents

We believe that before God, parents, not churches have the primary responsibility for the spiritual nurture of their children. We will make every effort to structure our ministry in a way that allows the church to “walk alongside” parents, enabling and equipping them in this God-given role.