Have you ever envisioned James and John of the infamous Peter, James, and John trio as teenage youth? Is that thought blowing your mind right now like it did mine when I first encountered it? Stories like the resurrection of Jairus’s daughter, Jesus’s transfiguration, and the garden of Gethsemane vigil will never read the same for me—all because of Amy Lindeman Allen’s book “The Gifts They Bring: How Children in the Gospels Can Shape Inclusive Ministry” (Westminster John Knox, 2023).

I read this book for the Roots & Wings: Intergenerational Formation Collaborative literature review in the spring of 2025. I found Allen’s work so thought-provoking that I wanted to share a few takeaways from “The Gifts They Bring” that may inform and enrich formation ministries for all ages in Christian communities today.

The Basics of the Book

“The Gifts They Bring” offers a creative, historically attuned, and child-centered examination of how children and youth show up in familiar gospel stories. Allen’s work has two key goals:

1. To correct a long-standing tendency in biblical scholarship as well as in churches to read scripture with and toward adults, which often occludes or minimizes the experiences of children and youth
2. To affirm and discern how the presence of children and youth is theologically and ethically meaningful for interpreting scripture and living into Christian faith

While Allen’s engagement with scripture yields profound insights well worth reading in their own right, the book truly shines in how Allen connects these insights to ministry contexts and concerns. Her hope for the book is that it might be a helpful tool for churches in fostering “full inclusion” of children and youth as vital members of the body of Christ (4), and she weaves together biblical interpretation, theological reflection, and practical application in a way that is accessible to lay audiences.

As you might guess from the title, the book’s main argument is that children and youth have distinctive gifts to give to churches. Allen identifies six gifts and devotes a chapter to each:

• “participation”
• “proclamation”
• “advocacy”
• “listening”
• “sharing”
• “partnership”

She illuminates each gift by putting stories about contemporary children and youth in conversation with gospel stories like Jesus welcoming little children (Mt 19, Mk 10, Lk 18), shepherds spreading the word about Jesus’s birth (Lk 2), and Jesus feeding the multitude (Mt 14, Mk 6, Lk 9, Jn 6). After exploring the historical and theological dimensions of the biblical texts with children and youth at the center, Allen suggests practices that Christian communities can implement in order to embrace the contributions that children and youth can and do make in Christ’s body.

5 Takeaways for Formation

Here are five takeaways from “The Gifts They Bring” that I find particularly significant for how Christian communities approach formation for members of all ages.

1. Children are part of scripture in more ways and places than we may realize

Allen highlights a number of key differences between ancient and contemporary understandings of children and draws upon the ancient historical context to note features in the gospel texts that point toward children’s presence and involvement. The result of her investigation is a bigger, richer collection of children-inclusive stories than many of us may realize.

Alongside the gospel stories that explicitly refer to children, Allen lifts up texts like Jesus calling his first disciples in Matthew 4, Mark 1, and Luke 5 as scenes that provide substantive grounds for viewing characters as children or youth rather than adults. In the case of James and John, for example, Allen points to details in how the gospels depict these brothers to propose that they could have ranged in age between seven and young adulthood (90–95). For Allen, their actions and identification as “Sons of Thunder” particularly lend themselves to perceiving these brothers as what we today would consider teenage youth (95). If we read James and John as youth, a significant number of stories in the gospels become texts where young people’s presence and experiences give meaning to the scriptures.

2. Attending to children in scripture is important for the whole church

Noticing and valuing children and youth in scripture can certainly be meaningful church practices for children’s and youth formation. Opportunities to find ourselves reflected in stories are important for people of all ages, and this matters all the more in a faith context as children, youth, and adults seek to discern where they may be in God’s story with creation.

However, attending to children and youth in scripture is an important practice for adults too. We adults also need opportunities to notice and value children and youth reflected in scripture because, as Allen’s entire book underscores, such stories can help us better listen to and learn from the child and adolescent members of our communities.

3. Children were active participants in Jesus’s ministry

The gospel accounts make clear that Jesus ministered to and with adults. What may be less clear is that Jesus also ministered to and with children. Allen’s examination of scripture shows that children participated in Jesus’s ministry in ways beyond receiving welcome and healing from Jesus. They played “active roles” alongside adults in Jesus’s ministry as well (17).

In addition to James and John, a couple more examples that Allen lifts up are:

• the shepherds in Luke’s account of Jesus’s birth, who probably included children and adults and who all spread the news about Jesus’s birth around town like the angels instructed them to do (56–61)
• Mary, the sister of Martha in Luke’s gospel, who may have been an adolescent—not yet an adult—and who chooses to listen at Jesus’s feet and learn from him (109–116)

4. Children matter to God

One of Allen’s key theological statements in the book is that “children are important to God” (24). This conviction is evident in stories like Jesus instructing his disciples to let the little children come to him. It is also evident in many healing and exorcism stories, in which Jesus takes time to restore children to health and liberate them from powers depriving them of life. The fullest and plainest expression of this conviction, however, as Allen notes, is the incarnation, in which God becomes an infant human being and identifies with newborn babies (52–56).

What makes this seemingly simple theological idea actually radical is how it runs counter to the first-century Greco-Roman social reality. As Allen points out, in this ancient social context, children occupied more vulnerable positions in society than adults, and some children—those who were impoverished, enslaved, or colonial subjects—were made even more vulnerable than others. Additionally, Jesus himself was an impoverished, subjugated, and possibly enslaved child. Jesus’s affirmation of the children he encountered—impoverished, subjugated, and enslaved children—as important to God, therefore, is a powerful, socially transformative, and life-giving message for ancient contexts as well as our own.

5. The gifts that children offer are vital to the body of Christ

When Allen describes children’s contributions to Christian communities as “gifts,” she is not characterizing children’s involvement as extraneous or simply beneficial. For Allen, the inclusion of children and youth in church life is essential to being the body of Christ. She says, “Full inclusion of children in worship is not just or even primarily about the children. [. . .] Full inclusion means accepting that we are all members of one another, working together with, rather than in opposition to, one another for the sake of the realm of God” (5).

I find Allen’s theological commitment striking in two ways. First, it underscores that Paul’s description of the body of Christ in I Corinthians 12 applies to children and youth members as much as it applies to adults. Children’s and teenagers’ differences in age and status from adults “[do] not make [them] any less a part of the body” (v. 15, NRSVUE) or warrant other members saying, “‘I have no need of you'” (v. 21). In fact, the status reversals in I Corinthians 12 suggest that the body of Christ is a place where children and youth are to be regarded as “indispensable” and to receive “greater honor” and “respect” (vv. 22–24).

Second, Allen’s thought turns upside down contemporary asymmetrical power dynamics between adults and young people. According to Allen, children and youth have gifts to offer in the body of Christ not simply as human persons in whom the Spirit is at work, but as persons immersed in childhood and adolescence. What I hear Allen saying is that these particular experiences and periods of time in people’s lives generate gifts that differ from the gifts that adulthood brings. The changes and development that humans experience through living and aging all have roles to play in bearing witness to the work of the Spirit. Children and youth, therefore, are vital to the whole body of Christ in their childhood and adolescence.

Embracing the Gifts of Children and Youth

What might it look like for our communities of faith to be the kind of places that Allen envisions: places where children and youth find affirmation in the gifts they contribute to the body of Christ? Where children and youth participate in worship (ch. 1), proclaim God’s good news (ch. 2), lead advocacy efforts to meet needs and seek justice in the wider community (ch. 3), occupy front row seats to listen to God (ch. 4), share in ministry alongside adults in ways that “respect” their “agency” (ch. 5, 143), and partner with adults in shaping church life and practices (ch. 6)?

In the tradition of Godly Play, and in the vein of Sarah Bentley Allred’s conviction in “Vibrant Worship for All Ages” that “we belong to each other as children of God” and “as younger and older images of the Creator,” I wonder if it might look like a fuller reflection of the God who loves us and has entrusted us all to one another. Like relationships forged through attentiveness that enable everyone to feel more deeply seen, heard, and known. Like the grace and freedom to be ourselves and the blessing that comes with experiencing life and faith with others. I wonder if it might look like the kind of community that we were made for.

Featured image is by insung yoon on Unsplash