The Child Discipleship Podcast

Summary

Matt Markins and Mike Handler open with a 2014 Awana research finding that keeps Matt awake: asked how carefully they evaluate and track the impact of their children’s ministry, leaders averaged 2.99 on a five-point scale. A collective shrug. Mike’s analogy is the car with no fuel gauge and no temperature reading, driving toward a failure point it cannot see coming. The hosts frame the problem using 4DX language of lead and lag measures, or drivers and outcomes. Lasting faith at 37, 47, 80 years old is the lag measure. Nobody in ministry gets to read that gauge. So the question becomes which drivers plausibly shape it, given that worldview largely settles by age 13.

Their answer is the belong, believe, become framework. Belong is relational: is every child named, noticed, known, greeted by a specific adult with multiple touchpoints? Believe is scriptural: is Scripture read weekly, sung, memorized, spoken creedally, held as a physical book rather than a screen? Become is experiential: is there silence and stillness in a high-energy room, practiced prayer, service, drama, parents equipped for bullying and cultural pressure? Each church identifies its own top three to five markers per sphere, tracks them week to week, and notices when one quietly drops out. Mike closes with Carl Trueman’s medieval cathedral builders, men who broke ground knowing they would never see the roof. The blueprint, Matt adds, is the point. Faithfulness without visible fruit is still faithfulness with a plan.

Show Notes

Most children’s ministries cannot tell you if what they’re doing is working. Awana’s research puts the self-assessment at 2.99 out of 5. Matt Markins and Mike Handler take on the hardest problem in child discipleship: the outcome we care about most, lasting faith in adulthood, is one most of us will never live to measure.

In this episode

The 2014 data point that still keeps Matt up at night

Lead vs. lag measures, borrowed from Chris McChesney’s The Four Disciplines of Execution

Why age 13, not 18, is the real deadline

Belong: named, noticed, known, and what that looks like operationally

Believe: the irreducible minimum of weekly Scripture engagement

Become: creating stillness inside a high-energy room

“Every system is perfectly designed to produce the results it gets”

Carl Trueman on medieval cathedral builders, and why blueprints matter more than timelines

Referenced in this episode

The Faith of Our Children

The Four Disciplines of Execution, Chris McChesney

Appleton Alliance Church

Child Discipleship Forum

childdiscipleship.com

The post Effective Child Discipleship: Looking at Outcomes Rather Than Just Activities appeared first on Child Discipleship.

Episode Summary

In this episode, Matt Markins and Mike Handler take on a frustration nearly every children’s ministry leader knows: parents aren’t using the resources the church hands them. Their diagnosis is that this isn’t a resource problem or even an implementation problem. It’s a culture problem. Most American homes, including church-attending homes, are shaped by cultures of achievement, sports, screens, or convenience, and discipleship gets rejected like a cartridge that doesn’t fit the system. Handing parents another plan won’t fix that. As Mike’s childhood story of receiving train set accessories without the train set illustrates, resources without vision are just spare parts nobody knows what to do with.

The conversation then walks through the first two of four spheres from the Forming Faith pathway that help parents cultivate a culture of discipleship at home. Vision asks parents to picture their child at 40 and name the values and convictions they hope that adult holds, because a family without a clear vision will absorb one from the surrounding culture. Time and place is about deliberateness: owning the calendar before it owns you, establishing intentional rhythms like shared meals, and using organic ones like car rides, seasons, and even a child’s disappointment after a failed audition as moments to talk about God. The episode also touches on language (dialogue over monologue, drawn from Deuteronomy 6) and community (every child needs a team of five caring adults), and lands on the line Matt calls his most important of the season: the shortest pathway to Jesus for a child is always through the parent.

In This Episode

Why the American home, even the Christian one, defaults to achievement, sports, screen, or convenience culture, and why discipleship gets rejected by those systems

Culture eats strategy for breakfast: why you can’t out-plan a bad home culture

The four spheres of the Forming Faith pathway: vision, time and place, language, and community, and how they map onto Belong, Believe, Become

Vision: five questions to ask parents about who their child will be at 40

Mike’s train set story, and why resources without vision are just spare parts

Time and place: intentional rhythms vs. organic rhythms, and owning your calendar before it owns you

Redeeming the car ride, the waiting room, and the disappointment of not getting the part

Language: dialogue over monologue, and the story of Katie discipling a newborn with a leaf

Community: the 5-to-1 principle from Kara Powell’s Sticky Faith, and the ministry leader’s role as a connector of adults around each child

The research: only 12% of parents use church-provided resources most of the time

The line of the season: “The shortest pathway to Jesus for a child is always through the parent”

Resources Mentioned

Forming Faith (the Formational Home chapter)

Sticky Faith by Kara Powell

The post Creating a Culture of Discipleship in the Home appeared first on Child Discipleship.

Episode Summary

In this episode, Mike Handler sits down with Sam Luce to challenge a default assumption in children’s ministry: that a kids or youth pastor’s primary job is to disciple the kids in the room. Sam argues the more faithful and sustainable calling is to disciple the people who disciple kids, namely volunteer leaders and parents. Drawing on his years at Redeemer Church, where his kids ministry tripled in size with no added staff budget, he explains how he treated volunteers as staff, wrote job descriptions that gave them a clear picture of what winning looked like, and used the short windows before and after service to train and encourage leaders instead of scheduling separate meetings nobody would attend.

The conversation then turns to parents, where Sam pushes past the familiar “parents are primary” line to unpack the second half of Deuteronomy 6, the stones of remembrance set up outside the home as a communal witness to God’s rescue. He argues discipleship was never meant to be a solo home responsibility handed off with a curriculum; it’s a partnership, and ministry leaders are called to actively disciple parents through small groups, prayer gatherings, or a simple text photo of their child worshiping. Sam and Mike close by urging listeners not to be paralyzed by the size of the task: one job description, one conversation, one parent connection at a time.

Show Notes

Sam’s reframe: your primary job as a children’s or youth ministry leader is not to disciple kids, it’s to disciple the people who disciple kids.

Two groups to disciple: the volunteer leaders on your team, and the parents in your congregation.

How Sam led through explosive growth at Redeemer with no staff budget by treating volunteers as staff and writing job descriptions for them.

Using the natural windows before, between, and after services to train and encourage leaders instead of adding a separate meeting.

Why job descriptions matter: clear expectations, a realistic picture of what to expect, and one sentence that defines what winning looks like.

The practice of praying for one person a week rather than trying to reach everyone at once.

A story about texting a mom a photo of her son worshiping, and why that small gesture is discipleship.

Giving up what you like (teaching the Bible story yourself) for what you love (multiplying disciple-makers).

Deuteronomy 6 revisited: the well-known “parents are primary” passage, and the often-skipped second half about the stones of remembrance and the role of the community.

Practical on-ramps for discipling parents: men’s groups, moms’ groups, prayer gatherings, coffee, or a simple play date.

Elizabeth Elliot’s line on doing the next thing God puts in front of you, and why starting small beats staying paralyzed.

The post Discipling the Disciplers: Why Your Job Isn’t Just the Kids appeared first on Child Discipleship.

Episode Summary

In this episode of the Child Discipleship Podcast, Matt Markins and Mike Handler tackle one of the most persistent tensions in children’s ministry: who is primarily responsible for discipling kids? Using two imagined gatherings, a late-night circle of kids pastors on the East Coast and a multi-generational family dinner in La Jolla, they surface a striking gap from Awana’s 2022 research with the Barna Group. Roughly 95% of kids pastors say the home is responsible, while parents and congregants split nearly 50/50. Matt and Mike call this the “church-home stalemate”: two agents of formation who genuinely value each other but remain stuck, with leaders declaring responsibility to parents who often feel unequipped and unsure how to actually do the work.

The hosts argue that the way out is a shift from declaration to dialogue. Walking through Deuteronomy 6, they frame discipleship as ordinary, relational conversation woven into daily life rather than seminary-level instruction. The practical pivot, they contend, is how kids pastors spend their time: recalendaring away from weekend prep and administration toward relational investment in parents. Matt illustrates this with a candid personal story about “declaring” a cross-country move to his wife instead of walking with her through it, drawing a parallel to how leaders often tell parents they’re responsible without ever showing them how. They close with a scalable “wave pool” model of parent equipping, from simply learning parents’ names at pickup to a full four-week discipleship course, plus mid-range ideas like parent meetups, think-tank teams, iterative testing groups, and mentor families.

Show Notes

The two gatherings: A contrast between kids pastors who emphatically declare parents responsible and families who are still working the question out in conversation.

The research: From the 2022 “Children’s Ministry in a New Reality” project with Awana and Barna, ~95% of kids pastors point to the home, while parents and congregants land near 50/50.

The church-home stalemate: Two agents of formation who respect each other but stay stuck, waiting for the other to move.

Declaration vs. dialogue: Telling parents they’re responsible isn’t the same as equipping them relationally.

Deuteronomy 6: Discipleship as everyday, mundane conversation, when you sit, walk, lie down, and rise.

Time is the lever: Breaking the stalemate starts with recalendaring ministry time toward parents.

The wave-pool model: A spectrum of equipping options from learning names at pickup to a four-week parenting course.

Mid-range ideas: Annual parent meetings, quarterly meetups, family barbecues, think-tank teams, iterative testing groups, and mentor families.

Compassion over answers: Come alongside parents rather than arrive with a finger pointed and a checklist.

The post Defining the Discipleship Stalemate appeared first on Child Discipleship.

Summary

This episode of the Child Discipleship Podcast centers on a confession before it becomes a lesson: Matt Markins openly admits he spent years treating prayer as a management failure — something you turned to when leadership wasn’t enough. That honesty drives the whole conversation. Both hosts work through how children’s ministry workers (and ministry leaders at every level) default to strategy, logistics, and human effort, then bolt prayer on as an afterthought. The corrective they’re arguing for isn’t a new technique — it’s a posture shift: prayer as the first, central, and last thing, not a transitional element between the “real” work.

The second half gets practical without getting shallow. They discuss what it looks like to model prayer for kids rather than just perform it, the difference between contending prayer and rote request-taking, the “God spotting” practice for helping children notice divine activity in their lives, and a striking story from Appleton Alliance Church where praying over popsicle sticks with children’s first names on them preceded unchurched kids actually showing up. They also discuss the book Lead with Prayer and close with the honest admission that no leader — no matter how gifted — is going to strategize their way to lasting faith in today’s children.

Show Notes

Episode Title: Prayer First, Central, and Last — Making Prayer the Foundation of Your Children’s Ministry

Hosts: Matt Markins & Mike Handler

What We Cover:

Why ministry leaders default to strategy over prayer — and how to recognize that pattern in yourself

Matt’s honest confession about how he operated at Awana for years before repenting of a leadership-first posture

The difference between utilitarian prayer (Hail Mary, last resort) and contending prayer (appealing to God to do what only he can)

What it means to “waste time with God” — and why that phrase is actually an invitation to intimacy

Practical rhythms for weaving prayer into your personal morning, your team meetings, and your ministry week

How to pray through Scripture when you don’t know where to start

Inviting senior saints into your ministry through intercessory prayer

Book recommendation: Lead with Prayer

Practical Takeaways:

Replace prayer request time with “how did God show up this week?” conversations with your kids

Give your congregation something tangible to pray over — names, not abstraction.

Start your morning in surrender before your brain is already three problems ahead

Pray through a passage of Scripture when you don’t know how to begin

The post Making Prayer the Foundation of Your Children’s Ministry appeared first on Child Discipleship.