Parents often treat boredom like a small emergency. A child announces, “I’m bored,” and we begin offering solutions. Read a book. Build something. Call a friend. Clean your room. That final suggestion occasionally cures boredom immediately. But boredom is not always a problem to solve. It may be the threshold children need to cross before imagination begins.

For decades, China restricted family size to control population growth. Now the nation is facing the long-term consequences of a shrinking and aging population and is encouraging families to have more children. But generations do not reverse direction as quickly as government policy.

Families have built lives around smaller households. Housing is expensive. Employment feels uncertain. Education is intensely competitive. Parents calculate the cost of raising a child and decide the numbers just don’t work.

When we say children are only the future of the church, we unintentionally suggest that the church belongs primarily to adults and that children are waiting in the lobby until they become mature enough to enter.

But children are the church. They belong to the body of Christ today. They can encourage, give, pray, learn, confess, forgive, welcome, and make God known today. Children will become adult members of the church later. But they are not spiritual apprentices without present standing.