Teaching for Children in the Cell Church

mario

by Mario Vega

As the number of cells in Elim grew, the number of children that attended both cell and celebration also grew. At church we followed the tradition of offering Bible School to children every Sunday, separating the children into age-related classes.
However, it was such a large number of children that it became very difficult to maintain pedagogical conditions for learning. In one occasion, we estimated how many classrooms we would need to attend comfortably all the children that attended the celebration services. It turned out that we needed 200 classrooms. And each year, we would need to continue building additional classrooms to take care of the children that were being added.

Of course we could not build a huge building with 200 classrooms and even less could we continue to develop it year after year. It seemed like we were at a dead end. So, it occurred to me that a solution could be the cell system. We didn’t need to build 200 classrooms, for we already had the numerous houses of our members in which we could care for our children.

Therefore we decided to invert things. Bring Bible School to the houses and then have a big celebration at church. This is how Children’s Church was born. In the church’s premises we built a new building where the children have a great celebration service in which they come together to worship God and develop a special program.

But in the houses they receive weekly Bible instruction from rom well-trained leaders. That is how our Children’s Cells were born. I’ll be sharing with you more about this in the coming future.

Comments?

Mario

Translation in Spanish:

Enseñanza para niños en una iglesia celular.

Al crecer el número de células en Elim también creció la cantidad de niños que asistan a esas células y luego a la celebración. En la iglesia seguamos la tradición de ofrecer una escuela bblica cada domingo para los niños; separados por grupos de edad.

No obstante, la cantidad de niños era tal que resultaba muy difcil poder tener condiciones pedagógicas para el aprendizaje. En una ocasión, hicimos cálculos de cuántas aulas necesitábamos para atender cómodamente a todos los niños que asistan a la celebración. Resultó que necesitábamos 200 aulas. Pero no solamente eso sino que, cada año, necesitaramos seguir construyen aulas adicionales para atender a los niños que se iban sumando.

Por supuesto que no podamos construir un edificio enorme de 200 aulas y menos seguir ampliándolo año con año. Pareca que estábamos en un callejón sin salida. Sin embargo, se me ocurrió que una solución poda ser el mismo carácter celular de nuestra iglesia. No necesitábamos construir 200 aulas, pues, ya disponamos de muchas más casas de nuestros miembros para atender a los niños.

Decidimos entonces invertir las cosas. Impartir la escuela bblica en las casas y luego tener en la iglesia una gran celebración. As nació la iglesia infantil. En el local de la iglesia construimos un edificio nuevo donde los niños tienen una gran celebración donde juntos alaban a Dios y tienen un programa especial para desarrollar. Pero en las casas reciben la enseñanza de lderes capacitados para impartirles su formación semanal. De esa manera nacieron nuestras células infantiles. De esto seguiré compartiendo en el futuro.

2 thoughts on “Teaching for Children in the Cell Church

  • pedagogical…I had to look that one up! You’re too sharp for me 🙂

    I pray our church finds itself in the same predicament Elim was in when it went to home based bible school for children. Wow. That would be an excellent challenge to have!

  • wow I love this idea!

    We have a celebration for our children Sunday’s but we wanted to develop children’s leaders to become children’s cell leaders also. I have a couple questions:

    1. Does anyone do a childrens School of leaders?
    2. Do children lead the cell groups? what ages?

    Any ideas would help thanks!

    eric

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