Kansas Megachurch Tells Kids Workers to Stop Saying Boys and Girls Latest News

A children's ministry message landed in an election week, and it did not read like a sermon outline. Stop saying boys and girls, it said, and the suggested replacements included peep-a-doodles, homo sapiens, niblings, kiddos, kitties, comrades and folks.

The message was circulated to children's ministry workers at Church of the Resurrection in Kansas, according to reporting on a message obtained by Breitbart News. The church is described in the reporting as the largest United Methodist congregation in America by attendance, and it is led by Adam Hamilton, the Democratic nominee for the US Senate in Kansas.

The story was reported on 25 to 27 October 2026, in the final stretch of a Senate campaign. That timing is part of why a message about words used with children travelled so far, so fast, and it is also why the facts of the message itself need to be kept seperate from the political argument that grew around it.

According to the reporting, the message followed a conversation on a Sunday about words, and about working towards being more gender neutral so that all kids feel welcome. The list that followed was presented as words workers could start using instead of boys and girls, and the message was described as a follow-up to that conversation.

Kansas Megachurch Guidance: Gender-Neutral Terms for Kids Ministry

The wording of the message, as quoted in the reporting, was plain and practical in tone. It addressed workers directly, it referred back to the Sunday conversation, and it offered a list rather than a lecture.

Hey! In follow up from our conversation on Sunday about our words and working towards being more gender neutral so that all kids feel welcome... here is the promised list of words we can start using instead of boys/girls.

That wording comes from the message as quoted by Breitbart News via Charisma reporting. The sources reviewed do not say that Hamilton personally wrote the message, and this article does not claim that he did. The sources say the church circulated the guidance to children's ministry workers.

The list itself is where most readers stopped and stared, because some of the words are familiar and some are not. Kiddos and folks are words many churches already use, while peep-a-doodles and homo sapiens sound playful, strange, or both. An image connected with the guidance credited inspiration to @sara.levine1 and @themilajam, the account of Mila Jam, described in reporting as a transgender singer, actor and LGBTQ activist.

Outlets reporting the story placed it firmly inside the Senate race, and some used strongly critical language about the guidance. Those characterisations belong to the reporting outlets, and they are not adopted here as this article's own description of the church or its ministry. What can be stated neutrally is that the guidance was circulated, that it used the words quoted above, and that it arrived while Hamilton was campaigning.

Adam Hamilton Senate Race: Church Guidance Reported During Campaign

Hamilton is campaigning to unseat the incumbent senator, Roger Marshall, a Republican. The reporting places the guidance story inside that contest, where every detail about a candidate's church can become campaign material, whether the candidate intended it that way or not.

Polling cited in the reporting, via DNA Magazine, put the race very close. A RealClearPolling average covering 8 September to 14 October put Marshall at 46 percent and Hamilton at 45.7 percent, a gap of less than half a percentage point. Those numbers describe a race in which small shifts in attention can matter, and they help explain the speed with which the message spread.

No church response was included in the sources reviewed for this article. That absence matters, because readers cannot tell from those sources whether the church sees the list as a firm rule, a suggestion, a work in progress, or something else entirely. Inventing a response would fill the gap with fiction, so this article leaves the gap visible instead.

For the workers who recieved the message, the practical question is simpler than the political one. What do you call a room full of children on a Sunday morning, in a way that welcomes each child who walks through the door.

Other churches in America are also making large decisions about identity and belonging. A Texas megachurch voting to leave the United Methodist Church shows how a congregation can reach a formal turning point on questions of identity.

Churches and courts also meet over questions involving children. A church preschool case heading to the Supreme Court involves a different dispute, but it sits in the same broad territory where faith, children and public rules overlap.

In Britain, a church has been in court over a different kind of public expression. A UK church fighting a ban on street preaching in court shows how quickly a local ministry decision can become a legal argument.

What remains unknown is how the guidance will be used on the ground, and whether the church will say more about it. Workers may adopt some of the words, adapt them, or keep using the words they have always used.

The next detail to watch belongs to the church itself. Will Church of the Resurrection explain the guidance in its own words, and will workers describe how the list works in a real room full of children on a Sunday morning.

But the most surprising part of this story is yet to come — keep reading.