Join us to explore familiar Gospel stories together envisioning afresh the experience of childhood in Jesus’ world and what those experiences might mean for children and families in ministry today. We will reconsider the age and relationship of well-known and lesser-known Bible characters, and read each of these stories in conversation with experiences of real children in the church today, bringing into focus the varied gifts that children bring in a practice of inclusive ministry. These gifts include participation, proclamation, advocacy, listening, sharing, and partnership. Participants will grow more attuned to recognize the gifts that we each bring—children and adults—as essential members working together as one community in the body of Christ and so to share in the gift of Christ together. 

Amy Lindeman Allen is Indiana Christian Church Associate Professor of New Testament and Director of the Master of Divinity Program at Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis, Indiana. She is an also an ordained minister in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), having served as pastor to congregations in four different states, with a ministerial emphasis on social justice and youth and children’s ministries. She is currently Theologian-in-Residence at her home congregation, Good Samaritan Episcopal Church, in Brownsburg, IN, where she attends with her three children: Becca (16), Joanna (12), and William (9). Lindeman Allen has written and spoken widely on the intersection of children and the gospels, including two books: For Theirs is the Kingdom: Inclusion and Participation of Children in the Gospel According to Luke (2019) and The Gifts They Bring: How Children in the Gospels Can Shape Inclusive Ministry (2023).