My recent article for The Banner looks at a topic I’ve struggled with in my job as Director of Family ministries: the need for, and lack of, diverse visual representation in children’s ministry, particularly as it pertains to Jesus.
For a while, I thought I was doing enough. I thought, “We have racial diversity in our congregation. The children are building relationships with people who are different from themselves. We have stick figures dressed in clothes from around the world painted in our Sunday school hallways. We are talking about love and acceptance and how we are all, in all our unique ways, made in God’s image.”
But then I observed some things that troubled me. I noticed how all the children, regardless of their own ethnicity, chose peach crayons to color their Bible characters.
Read the whole article here.
For other resources, check out this list of Multicultural Christian children’s books from Here We Read. As well, the article “Why We Must Start Talking About Race in Our Children’s Ministries” by Henry Zonio is an important read.
Melissa Kuipers 