Why Minister to Kids After Losing Your Own

In this episode of the DoorWays® Ministry Network podcast, host Ric Shields interviews Leonard and Theresa Mares, who have been serving in the children's ministry at Thrive Church in Colorado for 27 years. The couple discusses their journey into children's ministry, the challenges they faced, and the importance of nurturing children's spiritual lives. They also share their personal story of losing their two adult sons and how they continued in children's ministry despite their grief. Leonard emphasizes the importance of reaching children to save families and encourages listeners to love and pour into the lives of children.

Transcript

Why Minister to Kids After Losing Your Own
Season 3, Episode 9

Announcer (00:00):

Welcome to the DoorWays® Ministry Network podcast.

Ric Shields (00:13):

Thank you for joining us on this podcast. I'm Ric Shields, your host, and the director of the DoorWays® Ministry Network. I'm happy this week to have family members joining me on this episode. Leonard and Teresa Mares have been serving in the children's ministry at Thrive Church in Federal Heights, Colorado for the past 27 years where Leonard is a member of the pastoral staff. Teresa is my cousin on my mom's side and Leonard, well, he's the guy that was smart enough to marry Teresa.

(00:42):

They were married on Valentine's Day 42 years ago when the pastor suggested it would make a fabulous sermon illustration. Now, is it correct that the church helped to cover the expenses of the wedding so that the entire congregation could be invited?

Leonard Mares (00:58):

That's correct.

Ric Shields (00:59):

So, what did they cover?

Leonard Mares (01:01):

Well, they paid.

Teresa Mares (01:01):

Mostly the reception.

Leonard Mares (01:03):

Yeah, they paid whole reception.

Ric Shields (01:04):

Which is a big deal. How many people were at the church?

Teresa Mares (01:08):

1,300 at our wedding. Wow. <laugh>

Ric Shields (01:12):

1,300. That's huge.

Teresa Mares (01:14):

Just a few.

Ric Shields (01:16):

So, okay. You guys have been on church staff now for 27 years. You've been involved in children's ministry since you've been married. So that means 42 years of working with kids at the same church in various capacities. Is that right?

Leonard Mares (01:33):

Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>

Ric Shields (01:34):

Good years and bad years.

Teresa Mares (01:35):

Yes.

Ric Shields (01:37):

Tell me about one of the bad years.

Leonard Mares (01:39):

Transition is always hard. When we first started as children's pastors, we were a mobile church. So, setting up and tearing down every Sunday, that's not fun.

Ric Shields (01:48):

Leonard, you told me recently that God began preparing you for children's ministry even before you were the children's pastor. So, in what ways do you feel like God was preparing you?

Leonard Mares (02:00):

The Bible is very clear that God prepares everybody for something. Unfortunately, I was not listening to him early in my life and unbeknown to me my entire life, I've worked with kids. When I was in high school, I taught kids how to swim. I taught kids how to play soccer. Then when we got married, we did Sunday school. Then as Teresa and I had kids, I taught kids how to play baseball. And it wasn't until years later when I actually listened to God when he said that he needed me as a children's pastor.

Ric Shields (02:28):

Teresa, were you involved in work with kids, too?

Teresa Mares (02:31):

After we were married, yes. I co-taught in the Sunday school class and then we decided to start having a Christmas party every year. And that wasn't just our Sunday school class that included all the kids and kids from children's church and it kind of became an annual thing and we just made big messes in the community room <laugh>.

Ric Shields (02:50):

So, let's, let's go another step here, Leonard. You talked about some of the things you were doing before God was preparing you, but then something happened in the process of this being a mobile church where you felt like God actually called you to ministry with children.

Leonard Mares (03:07):

In January of 1998. I believe it was by 97, sorry. I had become a board member at the church and had noticed that we didn't really have any programs for the kids. They were all sitting in the sanctuary. So, I went to the senior pastor, and I told him we needed to provide something for the kids. He goes, “Well, what do you want to do?” I said, “I don't know. Why don't we after song service dismiss the kids and there and I will take him out in the lobby, and we'll do a little bible story for them.”

(03:36):

So, we did that for several months. In the meantime, I had been talking to everybody that I knew that had worked with kids, whether it be a schoolteacher or previous Sunday school teacher or children's leader. Anybody that worked with kids. And all the answers were “no.”

(03:51):

Well, in May of 97, we were at a prayer meeting on a Sunday night, and I was just crying out to God. “God, you got to send somebody.” And Ric, just like I'm talking to you right now, I heard God's voice and He said, “I found somebody.” I said, “That's cool, God. Who is it?” And He said, “Me.” I said, “God, you don't understand. What about Teresa?” Because she was very heavily involved in singing there at the church. So that was going to be a big change for us.

(04:16):

But nonetheless, I got up from where I was praying, went over to the senior pastor, told him what had happened, and God had confirmed in his heart as well that I was to be the children's pastor. And from that moment forward, I became the official children's pastor at her church.

Ric Shields (04:31):

Teresa, what did you think when Leonard said he'd been called to the children’s ministry? Did you, did you feel like you were called to it, too?

Teresa Mares (04:38):

Not at first. I was quite shocked actually. It was going to turn my world upside down because I've always been a singer. My family grew up singing. I was on the praise team with the main church services and that was, it was going to be a different world.

Ric Shields (04:55):

But you said, “Not at first.” But do you feel called to it now?

Teresa Mares (04:59):

I have grown to love the kids. There are those days where you deal with kids that are very rebellious and disrespectful and those days are hard. But yet when you have kids that come up to you and look at you with their big brown eyes and say, “I wish you were my mom,” it melts your heart. And it's like, “You know what, God, you have us here for a reason.” There's a purpose in all of this. It may not be what I had dreamed of that our life would be, but God orchestrated it. And so, I'm going to walk in it.

Ric Shields (05:32):

We probably should mention that you both were working full-time jobs, secular jobs, not church-related jobs. And so, for you to begin this whole process, that was a big shift also?

Teresa Mares (05:44):

Yes.

Ric Shields (05:44):

Yes. What was that like?

Leonard Mares (05:46):

It was not easy. You know, working and taking care of the family, making sure there's income, trying to balance your life between work, family, and church was not easy. For many years we were out of balance because we thought that if the church needed us, we would stop what we were doing, run up to the church and take care of it. And of course, it came at a cost with our kids because our oldest son actually regretted it for many years because He always thought that the church was more important than he was. And of course, you know, put stress on there. It got a little bit better with our second son, but it wasn't until he was already up in years as well. But that balancing act is pretty hard.

(06:25):

Here's what people don't realize, Ric, is that when you work a full-time, secular job, it's a minimum of 40 hours. That's typically Monday through Friday. So that gives you either the evenings to get your church work done or you go in on a Saturday. And then of course you're working on a Sunday, so you don't get vacations like everybody else because you're busy preparing for the next service that's going to take place.

(06:49):

And at that time, we were not only a mobile church, but we also had a midweek service, which we were mobile. We had two services that we had to prepare for. So, vacations were always hard and of course that came at the expense of the kids. And of course, naturally they weren't very happy.

Ric Shields (07:04):

Not only vacations, even just a weekend. You know, many people like to have a camper, or they've got a cabin somewhere and they get away just for the weekend. But that doesn't exist for people who are on a church staff.

Leonard Mares (07:18):

We always tried to manage to get one camping trip in. Living in Colorado, you just got to get up in the mountains.

Ric Shields (07:25):

You, so you jumped in to start doing this children's ministry. How many kids were attending the church at the time when you started doing this?

Leonard Mares (07:32):

So, before we started it, we didn't have any idea how many kids were there. We really didn't track the kids. Somebody would do a count of people that came in, but we really didn't know if it was kids or adults or what that number represented. Our first service that we did, I believe we had 20 kids.

Ric Shields (07:49):

Did that surprise you that you had that many kids?

Leonard Mares (07:52):

Yes.

Ric Shields (07:53):

How did that change? Was there an increase in attendance when you started doing this ministry for kids?

Leonard Mares (07:59):

I don't know because we didn't really track the record far as who was coming as a mobile church. You know, sometimes it's hard to keep track of the information. I do know this though, that our first service that we did required Teresa to do puppets and we knew nothing about puppets. We had to teach yourself about puppets. We had to teach yourself about children's ministries because we didn't really know anything. Well, we both grew up in the church running the children's ministries, not the same thing.

Ric Shields (08:25):

So, you had no training really as children's pastors.

Leonard Mares (08:28):

No training it. We learned, we learned on our own.

Ric Shields (08:31):

Let me take a moment to remind our listeners that we appreciate your feedback. Let us know if we're providing the kind of content that's helpful to you by dropping me an email at info@DoorWays dot cc. And if you have an idea for a guest or for a topic, let me know and we'll work in incorporating that topic or that guest into our podcast schedule.

(08:51):

You're listening to the DoorWays® Ministry Network podcast. My name is Ric Shields and I'm joined on this episode with Leonard and Teresa Mares, who serve as children's pastors at Thrive Church in Federal Heights, Colorado. They've been active in this ministry for their entire married life, 42 years, and have been on the church staff for the past 27 years.

(09:11):

I think it's fair to say that our listeners would like to know what some of the challenges are that you face in children's ministry. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe there are no challenges in children's ministry. Which is it?

Leonard Mares (09:21):

Oh, there's always challenges <laugh>. So, before Covid, there's been a lot of changes since Covid. Before Covid, the kids were eager to learn, they were eager to come. But when you take kids and you lock them in their house for, you know, a year, year and a half, and you take away their social life, coming out of Covid has been probably the largest challenge we've had to face. The kids are, when they first came back, they were basically like zombies. They would just sit there and not want to participate in, in anything and think they were there just because they were excited to get out of the house. Not necessarily because they wanted to participate, but even today, here we are, several years later, all they want to do is be on their phones during church. And it's like, come on guys. We're here for a purpose. God has a purpose for your life and I'm here to help you find that.

(10:09):

And so that's where the biggest struggle is, is that they've, their lives have shifted away from being God focused to being technology focused. And now we have the, the challenge of pulling them back into a God focused life.

Ric Shields (10:22):

Are there ways in children's ministry to leverage that technology with what you're doing in the service at the same time?

Leonard Mares (10:28):

Yes. During Covid we had stopped our in-progress services, so it forced me to learn a lot about the internet and I did some limited editing of sermons. You know, I'm not really an editor, but for about a little over a year, all of my services I put online for the kids, which was something that we hadn't done. And I understand a lot of churches hadn't done that. So, it really moved us from just being people in the church to now we've explored the internet environment and the YouTube environment, which is I think has been a good move.

Ric Shields (11:01):

Now you have the kids for like 90 minutes a week, is that right?

Leonard Mares (11:05):

I have them 90 minutes on Sunday and about 90 minutes on a Wednesday, twice a week.

Ric Shields (11:09):

Is that enough time to really impact kids' lives?

Leonard Mares (11:12):

It's not. I think part of the issue is the parents are not really engaged in their kids when it comes to their spiritual life. For 90 minutes, twice a week is not very much. When you're talking the schools sit there and pour into these kids in a negative way and they have them for seven hours a day for five days and I have them for less than three hours. And then mom and dad come home from work, they're tired. Technology has become the babysitter for the kids instead of mom and dad pouring into their lives and reinforcing what's happening in at church. They just kind of let them do their own thing. And that's been probably the, one of the biggest changes and struggles.

Ric Shields (11:49):

One of the things you told me that I thought was pretty fascinating, maybe I just hadn't thought about it as much as I should have or realized what was there. You said we actually run a church for children. You have praise and worship, you have communion, you have leadership development. It looks very much like big church. Why do you do it that way?

Leonard Mares (12:12):

I do that Ric, for many reasons. One, it doesn't take as many volunteers. I read online all the time where people struggle getting volunteers for like Sunday school or for certain age groups. We break our kids up into three age groups by giving them the church environment. It lets them see some of the older kids raise their hands and praise God. And they say if they can do that at that age, then I should be able to do it at my age. So, it kind of allows them to encourage each other. If they can do it, then I can do it. Listening to their stories, if they go through that, then I can go through what I'm going through.

(12:45):

 If you do a Sunday school, yes, you know, they, they get a bible lesson. But man, worship is so important when it comes to spending time with God.

Ric Shields (12:54):

Teresa, let me check in here specifically with you. There's a very personal story to all of this that involves the deaths of your two adult sons. Our family is also familiar with tragedy. We know how one's world is rocked, how time seems warped and the difficulty of putting one foot in front of the other. How did you continue in children's ministry when your two children were gone from your lives?

Teresa Mares (13:18):

It was a very difficult time for us. It was only by the grace of God that sustained us through all of that. It's not been an easy walk; it's not been an easy process. It's one day at a time. And that's what I tell other families who go through death of just a relative, you know, not necessarily a child, but I used to pray, “God, I don't care about next week, just help me through today. Help me push.”

(13:49):

There was a, we lost our youngest at the age of 20 in 2009 and we lost our oldest at the age of 33. In 2016. The oldest had been married and left behind five grandchildren. And those five grandchildren of ours then became our world. And we pushed ourselves through I think, partly, because of our grandchildren as well. But it's been difficult, good days, bad days.

Ric Shields (14:16):

You've also told me that times when you watch parents bring kids into children's church and the interaction there might not be as healthy as we'd like to see it. Again, Leonard, you've mentioned that to me specifically.

Leonard Mares (14:33):

Ric. One of the hardest things to do when you have the loss of, of your family, and it doesn't even matter if it's kids (in our case it happens to be two boys), is when you attend church and mom and dad are yelling at the kids or they get them up late and they bring them because didn't take time to feed them or in many cases even get their hair combed. You know, they still got their hair all messed up and they're yelling at their kids. “Get in there.”

(15:00):

And it's like, are you kidding me? If they only knew the preciousness that they have of their kids, I would do anything to be able to enjoy the time with my kids. And when they bring them to church, it's like they're trying to pawn them off on us because they're tired of dealing with them.

(15:15):

And it's like, are you serious? Our oldest son and myself, we didn't have the world's greatest relationship again because we had neglected him at times because of church ministry. But I would do anything to sit down and talk to him. Even if he were mad at me, I would do anything to be able to just hear his voice. And yet these parents, they walk in, and it breaks my heart because it's like, do you understand the importance of what you have there? If you lost it, what are the regrets you would have?

(15:40):

And I can honestly say Ric, I don't really have a lot of regrets with our kids because our oldest one, Nathaniel, we were able to reconcile a lot of our differences. Daniel and I were very close. Teresa and Nathaniel, our oldest one, were really close. She was really close with both of them.

(15:55):

But Nathaniel and I just had our issues. But when these kids walk in and their parents are, you know, basically shoving them in there saying, you know, “Get in there, get signed up” and stuff. That's like, love your kids. Take time to, to hold your kids and you can change the world through their kids if they just took time to not just be a parent, but to be that nurturing force that they need, that they're lacking. The internet and the games don't nurture. Parents nurture and God nurtures and they're missing that nurturing in their life. Now they're, the kids talk back to their parents. It's really the kids are raising the parents, and it shouldn't be that way. It should be the parents raising the kids because the kid wants this, and the parent doesn't want to have to deal with them or discipline them.

(16:41):

So, they just say, “Alright, just fine, just, just take your phone with you” or just do this or do that. And it's like, it breaks my heart. One, it's not God's design. And two, if they only knew the preciousness they had of their kids to just hold them and love them, wrap their arms around them, the things that Teresa and I can't do with our own kids. But can I tell you, hey, this is the graciousness of God, and it breaks my heart when I see that. But this is the graciousness of God. He's given us all these kids in children's church and trust me, we love on them like they were our own.

Ric Shields (17:11):

And they love you.

Leonard Mares (17:12):

Yep. Children are a blessing from God and if they're a blessing from God, grab hold of that blessing and just love them.

Ric Shields (17:20):

As we draw our time to close, I wonder if you have any special words of encouragement you'd like to share with our listeners as it relates to children's ministry; especially how they can be involved or what they should do on the backside of their kids being in children's ministry.

Leonard Mares (17:34):

I do. So, in our children's church, our motto is, “If you can reach a child, you can save a family.” So, for those people that are listening, understand this. If you take a child and you make a difference, a godly difference in one child, and he goes to school and he shares that experience, he goes home and he shares that experience, you've just done something incredible for the kingdom of God because you've taken one child that was lost, you introduced them to God and how many more people has he reached?

(18:03):

I remember a story that I heard and I don't know if it was true, but there was an evangelist that was traveling around. And after he had finished a service, he went home and he talked to his wife and his wife asked him, “Honey, how many who got saved?” And he goes, “Two and a half.” She goes, “Oh, you had two adults and one child,” He goes, “No, you don't understand. We had two children and one adult. The children haven't lived their life yet, so they have a greater charge of, of meeting people and introducing them to God. The adult has lived over half their life, and they don't have as much time.”

(18:35):

So, it's so important for us to reach those kids, introduce them to the gospel of Jesus Christ, be the example for them and love on them.

Teresa Mares (18:42):

I just agree with my husband, children are a blessing from God. We embrace every service time that we get to spend with these kids. And like he said, we love on them. Sometimes we have to discipline, be a little tough with them, but we have so many kids that have grown up through our ministry now we're getting the kids as kids. We've been there so long, there's a lot of adult kids that call us mom and dad and have for many years. And so, you know, we just consider it a blessing. It's just an honor that God put us in that position. We're thankful.

Ric Shields (19:15):

And you notice they call you “mom and dad.” They don't call the pastor “mom or dad.” They call you “mom and dad” because you've loved and pour into their lives.

Teresa Mares (19:23):

Yep.

Ric Shields (19:26):

Thanks again for listening. I hope you found this podcast to be helpful. Please feel free to share it with others you think may benefit from it.

(19:35):

Would you like someone to pray for you? I'll pray for you. And if you'd like, I'll share your note with others who will pray and believe for God to work on your behalf. Drop me a note at info@DoorWays dot cc.

(19:46):

Until next time, may you sense God's presence, the love of Jesus and the grace of the Holy Spirit in your heart, your home, and in your spheres of relationship in the days ahead. God bless you.