a Sunday School b
The
children’s ministry at North County Japanese Christian Church has had a
wonderful year. We have lost some
children due to moves. When you have
military families in your congregation, it is the natural cycle to have some
very dear members moving away. It is
also a blessing because it means that new people are arriving too! Our children have been great about inviting
their friends to join us and a few friends have now become one of us as they
join us regularly.
We spent the past
year helping the children to grow beyond their moment of salvation. We worked on equipping them in the basics of
their faith and helping them to understand what they believe and why they
believe it. Much of our time was spent
in the Old Testament learning about how prophesies were given and then seeing
how they were later fulfilled exactly as God said they would be. We also worked on helping the children to
feel very comfortable with the Bible by knowing their way around the many books
and chapters. Most of our students are
able to recite all the books of the New Testament and are working their way
through the Old Testament. One of our
students already can recite every book of the Bible in order. Can you do that? Now that the students know their way around
the Bible a little better, there are many more volunteers when I ask someone to
read a particular passage. They know
right where to go and get there quickly.
The embarrassment of not knowing where the verse is located has
disappeared and the students are anxious to see how quickly they can find the
verse and volunteer to read it.
We still have a huge
range in the ages of our children. We
span from 4 years to 14 years. It is
always a challenge to find a way to engage all of the children at the same time
when their ages and abilities are so different.
We have introduced to
the children the fact that they have a God given responsibility to share the
gospel with others. This fact has
brought up many questions among the children.
We will spend the next year answering their questions as well as giving
them tangible ways to share the gospel with others. They will be learning how to use the Roman’s
Road as a tool to tell others about God’s plan for salvation. We will talk about the objections that their
friends have about accepting Christ and then we will discover ways to answer
their objections. We will be doing some
role playing to help the children become more comfortable with sharing the
gospel. We also will discuss how our
behavior can help to tell people what Jesus is like.
Will you join us in
praying for our children’s ministry?
They are the future and the keys to expanding God’s kingdom. We ask that you would pray for our children
to gain the courage to share the gospel with others. We also pray that God would help us to find
creative ways to reach across the broad range in ages we have in our Sunday School. Finally, we
ask that you would join us in thanking God for the children He has brought to
us. It is a blessing to be a part of
their spiritual development. It is very exciting to see our nursery being
filled up so quickly too because it will not be long before those little babies
in diapers will be running to join us in Sunday School!