The Heart of the Family

by Steve Arnold

U.S. missionaries with U.S. Specialized Tim and Marcia Jones regularly get to see God changing the lives of hurting kids and often hurting family members. “This year, at church camp, we had a lady who responded to the altar time, and she wanted to surrender her life to Jesus,” Tim recalls. “Her husband had just gotten put in jail for murder. She has kids and didn’t know where to turn.” Although she didn’t know anyone at the church, she thought her kids might be able to have fun and she could afford it because it was offered for free. Now she and her kids are connected to a local church body. 

At another church camp for kids, a boy in attendance was staying with the host pastor and his family because of recent turmoil in his own family. The theme of the event was finding our identity in Christ and how God can free us from feelings of worthlessness and brokenness. After just one evening this boy said to his aunt, “I’m ready to surrender my life to Jesus! I don’t have to be broken anymore, and I don’t have to feel like I’m worthless.” He said, “I know I’m not the cause of anything that’s happened between my parents.” 

Appointed as a U.S. missionary in 2018 along with Marcia, Tim put his faith in Jesus after he began attending a church in Leeds, Alabama, at sixteen years old. The youth pastor’s wife encouraged him to get involved in ministry to help him become grounded in his new faith. Tim says he chose to volunteer with children’s ministry because he knew that Marcia worked with the kids and he wanted to get to know her. God used that simple beginning to start them on a lifetime of serving children and raising up children’s ministers together.

Tim and Marcia have seen a big shift in children’s ministry, also known as KidMin, whether in small towns or city centers, during their more than three decades working with kids. Marcia tells of her heartbreak at hearing the change in boys’ and girls’ prayer requests in recent years. “Now, so many children say ‘I want my mom. I want my dad. They’re in prison … I can’t live with my mom anymore … She’s not healthy … I don’t know who my dad is.’ It’s almost like an epidemic of drugs and any form of addiction. In the past, it would have been more prayer requests for themselves.” Marcia continues, “We’ve really got to get in while these kids are desperate and introduce them to God before they have no hope or don’t think anybody cares. God cares, and he sends people to help when their parents can’t help them.” 

The Joneses are addressing these changing dynamics and growing needs. “Our ministry, NXTGEN Ministries, partners with kids leaders in their churches and raises up the next generation of KidMin pastors, training them with hands-on training,” says Tim. He and Marcia regularly receive calls from churches looking for KidMin staff they can hire. Sadly, the list of churches is long, but there aren’t enough qualified children’s ministers available to meet the need.

NXTGEN meets this need for more trained children’s pastors and workers in two main ways. First, they lead groups of summer interns, ranging from 16 years old through college age, in real-world tours of kids camps and services. Within three months each summer they hold 80 meetings across several states primarily in the Southeast, including churches who invite them back year after year. Each intern pays a basic fee towards expenses which is supplemented by honorariums and Tim and Marcia's U.S. Missions budget. The team travels all summer using a Speed-the-Light truck, a minivan and a trailer. Over the last five years, NXTGEN has trained approximately 40 young people for KidMin through these internships.

Kevin Lewis of Jackson First Assembly of God in Jackson, Alabama, is one pastor who has hosted NXTGEN for four years. His own daughter, Hanna, participated in this year’s summer internship. “All she’s done since she’s been home is talk about how great it was,” says Pastor Lewis. She loved connecting and praying with the children at each event. The daily team devotions combined with regular opportunities to develop their ministry abilities and grow closer to God really impacted Hanna. Lewis says that maybe the biggest thing he appreciates about NXTGEN is how Tim and Marcia “put so much effort and time into creating and crafting something that is fresh and new every year.”

This year the NXTGEN School of Ministry hosted its first students. This newly established academic program runs the first ten months of every year. Each student receives quality Bible training through Global University’s Berean courses on top of a wide-ranging hands-on introduction to all aspects of kids ministries. They also apply what they learn studying the Assemblies of God Hydrate KidMin training program. The students work with Tim and Marcia to present the children’s ministry for many services, camps and network conferences. 

At one camp, Tim couldn’t lead due to a positive COVID test, so the students and Marcia stepped up and led the rest of the week’s services. Watching the students develop is a great blessing and motivator. Marcia reflects, “I’ve watched them grow on the inside. It’s really neat because it’s high pressure at moments, and yet they’ll see how you’ve got to seek God in the middle of it.” She continues, “If the Lord speaks to them to pray for someone, they’ll go right there to do it. That’s the growth of their confidence and being able to hear the Lord speak to them.”

NXTGEN School of Ministry students are asked to interview the KidMin staff or volunteer leaders at each location they visit. This gives them a broad understanding of the changing dynamics faced by our churches as they work to see kids and their families transformed by the love and gospel of Jesus Christ. Tim and Marcia envision opening a campus with housing and classrooms as a base for the school of ministry. Currently, students find their own housing and flexible part-time jobs for the ten-month program.

Tim emphasizes the vital role of parents and family: “For me, the one message the kids pastors need to communicate more than anything is that not only do we need to raise up kids, we need to raise up parents to disciple their children and partner with them and equip them to be the best parents they can be.” Marcia shares how they emphasize to leaders, both current and upcoming, that in KidMin “You’re not really just ministering to children; you’re ministering to the family. We hold the heart of the family when we have the children in our care.”

Parents can easily get used to dropping their kids off for different classes and lessons. “As the church, we have to teach the mom and dad that God gives you the ability to teach Scripture even when you don’t think you’re as knowledgeable. It’s just a matter of getting into the Word of God ten minutes a day that will change a child’s life, that will change a family’s home. That’s where they hear your heart and you hear the child’s heart, and then we’re able to hear God’s heart.”

Pastor Clint Capps of Southview Assembly of God in Opelika, Alabama, applies these lessons with families in their community. “We, as a church, try to take what Tim and Marcia teach and do, and try to say ‘You don’t have to parent alone. We’re not here to be the parent; we’re here to hook arms with you and help you with whatever’s taking place in your child’s life. If nothing is going on, let’s go ahead and put a lot into the savings account that we can draw from when something does happen.” Pastor Capps’ son, Evers, participated in the first year of NXTGEN summer internship five years ago, and now he serves as the children’s minister for Southview Assembly.

While they trust God and work hard to fill in the shortfall of trained KidMin pastors, Tim and Marcia also help to encourage and prepare lay people who are often the ones filling the need in local churches. Their district has arranged for them to do Q&A sessions with lay children’s workers. In local churches, the Joneses also show workers how to find affordable resources, how to network and share resources, how to plan the church KidMin program a month or two in advance, how to develop curriculum, and how to build a team so if the leader is away, children’s church can still go on. Emphasizing the importance of this lay training, Marcia says, “The world is coming at kids so much younger now, and we’ve got to be intentional and it can’t be babysitting. It really does have to be equipping.”

Tim and Marcia are enjoying God’s leading as he teaches them how to wisely navigate the right personal balance to stay healthy individually and as a couple while being stretched by the changing and growing needs that come with KidMin. The Lord’s faithfulness to these missionaries has been consistent even through serious challenge, over 30 years as children’s pastors, and now for over five years as U.S. missionaries. They have faced health issues including Tim’s diagnosis of melanoma early in their ministry when he was only given a 45 percent chance of survival. They have seen God carry their kids, who are now grown and both in full-time ministry, through their own health crises. More recently, Marcia served as primary caregiver for her mother who passed away from Parkinson’s Disease last fall. They praise God for His sustaining work in all circumstances.

Please pray with Tim and Marcia and NXTGEN Ministries, that God will give them all of the right connections with churches, as well as with the right NXTGEN School of Ministry students, who are called by God to minister to children. They are also looking to God to supply the financial needs for this growing work. The Joneses know that God ordains the time and the people in each generation to accomplish His will, and their desire is to be faithful and effective as they lead this ministry to reach the next generations.

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Steve Arnold

Steve Arnold is a U.S. missionary serving with Intercultural Ministries.