Part
of our missions team is attending a seminar on children’s ministry.
One of the speakers mentioned that in some
parts of Asia, churches don’t count children in their attendance count because
they are afraid that others will think they are inflating their numbers. That is
unfortunate, because it seems to imply that someone is not legitimately part of
the congregation until they reach a certain age.
Scripture
is full of intimations about how God values children. It also shows that they
have equal if not greater potential for the Kingdom than any other age group.
For
example, consider two heroes of the Old Testament, Joseph & David. Joseph’s
brothers were jealous of him, & despised him because he was the youngest.
But God gave him wisdom far beyond what his siblings thought was possible for
someone his age.
When
David offered to fight the Philistine Goliath, his older brothers tried to
shame him into complacency & acceptance of the defeat that they believed
was inevitable. He didn’t buy it. Instead, he did what the “old timers” were
unwilling to do.
“And
(Jesus) called a child to Himself and set him before them, and said, ‘Truly I
say to you, unless you are converted and become like children, you will not
enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever then humbles himself as this child, he is
the greatest in the kingdom of heaven’” (Matthew 18:2-4).
I’ve
heard it said a number of times that, instead of calling children to make an
adult kind of commitment to Himself, Jesus actually called adults to have
child-like faith. This observation recognizes the kind & quality of the faith
that children can have in the Lord. Since God calls people to faith, trust,
& obedience, doesn’t it make sense that we bring the Gospel to &
disciple those who are most open to it?
No comments:
Post a Comment