Barna

Children's Ministry in a New Reality

Building Church Communities that Cultivate Lasting Faith

Discover a new vision for children’s ministry that invites and involves your whole church.

Kids’ ministry is such a powerful opportunity to form lasting faith in the lives of young people.

Yet a majority of children’s ministry leaders (56%) agree at least somewhat that children’s ministry is often forgotten by their church.
To shine a light upon and bring new insight to this important work, Barna partnered with Awana to study children, families and resilient faith in our rapidly changing world.

Children’s Ministry in a New Reality

Through our research, two important themes have emerged:
First, to truly prepare our children for faith-filled adulthood, we need to consider reframing “children’s ministry” as something closer to “child discipleship,” a model we unpack in detail throughout the report.

And second, the work of discipling children should not fall solely to kids’ ministry staff or to parents—it must become a point of focus and effort for entire church bodies.

If you’re passionate about doing everything you can to train up kids who will become future leaders inside and outside of the Church, we created this report for you.

Free Children’s Discipleship Assessment

As a part of this initiative, we want to give you a FREE tool to help you invite and involve your whole church in kids ministry. Check out Barna and Awana’s children’s discipleship assessment! It is designed to help you, ministry leaders, understand how well prepared your church is for building resilient childhood faith.

Prepare to deploy this assessment to your congregation today by creating a free account with our technology partner, Gloo. You will find the Fruitful Child Discipleship Assessment in Gloo’s assessment library.

Free Webinar

4 Trends Affecting the Future of Kids’ Discipleship

Featuring brand new research, this 60-minute Barna webinar, in partnership with Awana, reveals four trends affecting the future of children’s discipleship and offers practical ideas to help leaders reshape and reimagine how to minister to kids, parents, and volunteers in the future.

Produced in Partnership With