But everywhere they went, they were tripping over children and teens. Finally, even though they had never been involved in children's ministry before, they began working with those spiritually and emotionally starved kids.
Five years later they have a solid, well-trained, hard-working, committed group of 50 to 75 youngsters who are now the backbone of their ministry. They've trained those kids to go out in the streets to minister to the drunks, the derelicts, and the drug addicts.
It's the children who pass out food and blankets to the homeless. It's the boys and girls who visit the old folks' homes and pray for the sick and elderly, seeing many miracles of healing. It's this small army of kids that go minister to the abandoned, neglected children in the orphanages. They are the church doing the work of the ministry.
Bill Wilson in New York City has become well known for his sidewalk Sunday School ministry. He has a congregation of ten thousand people that he and his workers minister to on a weekly basis.
Of that crowd, only one thousand are adults. In that church, children's ministry is everybody's calling! He so radically impacted his neighborhoods in New York City by his work with kids that he was asked to sit on the President's committee to deal with the problems of our nation's cities.
There are many "Bill Wilsons" following his example today, reaching out to the boys and girls of our nation's ghettos and projects. They have gathered their own congregations of hundreds.
As I travel across our country, it's not uncommon to hear similar reports from pastors on our Indian reservations. They tell us that kids are everywhere, but almost no one is taking the time to reach them.
I've been told that the kids' crusades we hold in communities such as these are the only exposure to the gospel those boys and girls will receive all year long. We must not give up praying for those special laborers Jesus told us to ask for!
When the great Dwight L. Moody began his ministry, he himself was just a teenager of seventeen. But he was a teenager who had been radically touched by God, and he burned with the desire to touch others.
When he asked if he could teach a Sunday School class, they told him yes, provided he'd go out and find his own students. On top of that, they made him rent the pews on which those students would sit. But that's all it tookâyoung Dwight hit the streets and began gathering in all the ragged ruffians he could find and kept four pews filled with young men and boys.
Later he started a mission of his own in an empty tavern in Chicago that quickly grew to a thousand. That's how his infamous ministry began. He reached literally thousands of boys, girls, and teens with the gospel of Jesus Christ, which became the foundation for the famed Moody Bible Institute, the Moody Press, and Moody Broadcasting Association.
The commitment of those organizations is to never forget that their roots began as ministries to children. (Dwight L. Moody, His Life and Labors, W. H. Feruson Company, Cincinnati, Ohio, 1899, pg 27-29.)
Children are hungry for the gospel. They are like baby birds with their mouths gaping open and necks stretched to their limit towards the ones that will break the gospel down into little pieces and feed them the juicy Word of God.
Though I have the heart of a children's pastor and as much as I love ministering to our own church kids, it stirs me beyond words to go into places where kids have never heard the gospel and be the one to bring them the story of Jesus for the first time.
Their hunger for the Good News is breathtaking! They can't be fed fast enough. The simplicity with which they receive Jesus, the infilling of the Holy Spirit, and their healings is fascinating.
All rights reserved. Used by permission.