Join us at a new location Sunday at 10am at the Crystal Community Center as we gather for public worship.

Behold & Become

A Discipleship Curriculum for Kids

The aim of our Discipleship Class curriculum is for children to have avenues to behold the goodness of God and become fitted servants for his kingdom. The local church not only has the opportunity but the responsibility to partner with parents to train and disciple their children. This curriculum will provide opportunities to behold God through familiarity with: his Word, songs of saints throughout time, and meditation on the Bible in context through memorization and reflection. We will also read and reflect upon Christian biographies in order to ground children in the Christian tradition by reminding them of the "great cloud of witnesses" who have gone before us. Children will be further shaped by the great Christian tradition as we explore worldviews and global missions.

Formation Foundations

The Value & Depravity of People

Who is the Teacher

Supporting Parents

Overview & Resources

The Value & Depravity of People

Children are created in God’s image and reflect Him. A progressive education model asks the utilitarian questions “Does this work?” or “Will it be productive?” as if people were merely fulfilling an evolutionary survival of the fittest paradigm. Children are not brains on sticks or vessels to be filled with facts and information. They are not computers merely conducting an information input/output life. They are not biological cogs in the workforce machine. They are people with their own wills, weaknesses, and trials. They are created very good—with integrated hearts, minds, bodies, and souls created in God’s image. Humanity is the highest of all God’s creation and because children are people created in God’s image, we are to respect those whom God has made stewarding them, not to conform to our likeness, but as a means of caring for and discipling them to conform more and more into His likeness.
Children are born sinners and can not have a right relationship with Him unless God saves them through Jesus. Their ears and hearts will not be drawn to God unless God moves in them a conviction of sin and a love of Him. Only through faith in Jesus can reconciliation with God happen. Conversion is the work of the Holy Spirit and we rely on God’s sovereign grace to accomplish salvation through his means. We pray that the children that come to Westview know the immense love of God, the glory of Jesus, and begin to confess their sins running to Him in repentance. May the kids at Westview begin their spiritual lives in the joy of God recounting a day in the future that they encountered God in the Word through His people in the church.

Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.

— Matthew 19:14

Because children are born as people (valued and sinful), they should not be “babied” or entertained during the Sunday Discipleship Class hour. We can expect that God will use his Word and Spirit to plant roots of faith in them. We honor them by esteeming them the same way God does. God has designed us to wonder and worship and all are born with an innate capacity to learn. They are living real lives now; real life is not just something they will do in the future. They ought to encounter the things of God in the present and not put them off until later when “real living” occurs. Children will experience suffering and sin today. How will they respond? What is the condition of their hearts? How can we best posture ourselves to communicate to them their need for God, in salvation and daily life? The time shared during the discipleship hour is not a passive babysitting opportunity but one of taking seriously a generous hospitality that welcomes children into the presence of God, His story, and His good design for them.