Salem Spanish Adventist Church, also known as Fortaleza Salem, recently celebrated a milestone: nearly 60 members receiving their North American Division Children’s Ministries Certification.
“When my wife and I were dating, an older pastoral couple told us, ‘If you want to have a healthy church, work with the children,’” shared Walter Ramos, Fortaleza Salem pastor. “Children bring parents and grandparents, uncles and aunts, siblings and friends. Everyone works to support children in a family, so when you take good care of kids, you have the whole family working with you. We want our church to be a big family. If you want that big family to be healthy, you work to make individual families healthy, and children are the most important part!”
To rally the community behind this mission, Ramos says much of the turnout can be credited to the hard work of two women: Dina, his wife, and Silvia Sanchez-Vazquez, church ministry director.
“We presented the idea to everyone, and they liked the plan. But often, people will say yes to something like this and then not show up," shared Ramos. "But Silvia is tremendous when it comes to logistics. She called everyone. Thanks to her, only about 25% of people dropped out. We started with around 80 people interested and ended up with 58 people graduating from the program!”
Dina’s education and training also played a major role in the experience. “I’ve always been a motivator and presented ideas in every church we’ve worked,” continued Ramos, “but I married a children’s expert. She has a degree and is an expert in early childhood education, so she develops the plan. She’s fundamental to this, and she and Silvia made a great team!”
“A church that prioritizes children is a church that doesn’t prevent children from coming to Jesus,” said Dina. “It’s a church where children can participate just like adults. That’s the culture we want — a place where children can preach, lead worship and be leaders to carry out the mission, not just one where they’re taking in information. Instead, they can take in, give and grow. That’s a church where children are the priority. Not only are the leaders being trained to accompany the child, but the child is being trained to be an active part of the church.”
For those in churches that do not currently have any children, Ramos has this advice: “Even if you don’t have children attending now, prepare yourselves to care for children in your church. Train your adults to serve children, because sometimes the reason families with kids don’t stay is that the other adults don’t have the patience or understanding to relate to them. They never prepared. Like the farmer who plows the land in the summer to plant when the rains come, you must prepare the land before the planting and rain.”
Nearly 60 members of Fortaleza Salem Church received Children’s Ministries Certification.
