Northwest News!

The following came from here, and I thought there were some good ideas in the article.  We never want to forget why God has put our church here - to glorify God through reaching the world with the gospel.

There are things we can do to help our kids love the nations and the cause of Christ, even though a heart and calling for the Great Commission is ultimately something only God can grant. Here are a few ideas from Ryan and Anna, who are currently preparing to serve in Asia with their two young daughters.

1. Pray for missionaries as a family. We keep a stack of prayer cards on the dinner table and rotate through them during mealtime prayers.

2. Read missionary biographies to your children. The stories of Hudson Taylor, Adoniram Judson, William Carey, Gladys Aylward, and other missionary pioneers are captivating ways to orient a child’s heart on the most important things in life.

3. Draw the whole family into supporting missionaries financially. Teach your kids from a young age that being a good steward of their money involves channeling resources toward the the cause of Christ in missions. Older kids can donate some of their lawn mowing and babysitting money. Younger children can earn money doing chores around the house which can be set aside for missionaries.

4. Find your child a missionary kid pen pal. Many children of missionaries around the world would be delighted to get mail from a child their age in their parent’s culture. Your child (and the whole family) will learn valuable insights about living abroad through the eyes of a child. Additionally, when the missionaries visit your church, your child will already have a relationship with the MK and will be able to include them more easily.

5. Entertain missionaries in your home. Inviting missionaries over will be as much of a blessing to your family as to the missionaries. Host them for dinner or for a whole furlough. Build or buy your house with this in mind.

6. Take risks as a family. There are ways to live life which help children grasp the reality that discomfort and suffering are normal and rewarding parts of the Christian experience. Volunteer at a rescue mission; house a single mother; move to the inner-city.

7. Affirm and nurture qualities in your children which could serve them on the mission field. As your children grow in knowledge and skill, encourage them to think about how they could use their gifts in missions work. Then, if God says, “go,” release them to go!

8. Teach your children to be world Christians. Don’t expose them to only the American perspective on news and realities around the world. Go out of your way to make them more aware than the average American Christian about geography, world history, and the plights and perspectives of people across the globe.

9. Read missionary prayer letters to your children. Ask them questions about the content and look up facts about the missionaries’ location on the Internet.

10. Use missions fact books and resources such as Operation World, the Global Prayer Digest, the Joshua Project, and Voice of the Martyrs (VOM). Kids of Courage is the youth-oriented arm of VOM and offers activity books, spotlights on the persecuted world, and more.

Most of all, pray every day that your kids will develop hearts that mirror God’s compassion for the nations and love for his glory in them!

How can parents explain the gospel to their children without toning down the commands of Scripture?Certainly children are limited in their ability to understand spiritual truth, but so are adults. Very few people intellectually understand all the gospel truth at the moment of salvation. Fortunately, the essential truths are basic enough that even a child can understand. Jesus Himself characterized saving faith as childlikeness (Mark 10:15). True belief is not a function of advanced intellect, sophisticated theological understanding, or complex doctrinal knowledge.

Children old enough to be saved can grasp the concept of coming to Christ with an obedient heart, and letting Him be the Lord of their lives.

When sharing the gospel with a child, keep these points in mind:

Click here to read on.

We are excited about our Christmas Play coming up on December 16.  The children will be putting on a great play for us on that Sunday at 11.30 AM.  You won’t want to miss it!  Begin to invite your friends now.

If you would like your children to be involved, please let us know.  You can find out more here.

I thought this post was good about why churches should have specialized time for Children.  At our church, we have a children’s service during the second half of the Sunday morning service called “Discovery Zone.”  It is working very well for us, and I thought this was some good insight into why having a specialized service for them is a good thing.

I though there were some very helpful suggestions in the following article called “Let Them Come Home.”

At first I pretended that my reasoning was high-minded and philosophical. But really I just wanted to drink gallons of cheap sangria and sleep around. Four years of this and I was strung out, stupefied and generally pretty low. Especially when I was sober or alone.

My parents, who are strong believers and who raised their kids as well as any parents I’ve ever seen, were brokenhearted and baffled. (See sidebar.) I’m sure they were wondering why the child they tried to raise right was such a ridiculous screw-up now. But God was in control.

Click here to read more.

Here are a few pictures from our Holiday Bible Club on 16-17 August.  We released 100 balloons with invitations to Celebration Sunday on 16 September attached.  Also, below is a close-up of the hats that we gave to all the children.

I wanted to just give a quick report of the day today.  We had 40 kids today, and we praise the Lord for them coming.  We only ran 1 bus today instead of 3 which did the job and saved us some money as well. Many of the children we brought by parents.  It went very well.

We gave all of the children gift bags with sweets and invites for Celebration Sunday, as well as a hat the had Celebration Sunday on it.  Also, we did a balloon release at the end of 100 balloons with invites to Celebration Sunday attached to them.

Again, I want to thank Ronnie and Marsha Smith and family for their help.  Thank you to all of the parents who allowed their children to come, and thank you to my wife, who worked very hard and made so much of today and yesterday possible.  I have been working pretty much non-stop for the last couple of weeks, so on Monday and Tuesday, we are going to be away for a mini-holiday.

We are rejoicing and praising God.  To God be the glory.  Great things He hath done.

Also, looking forward to Sunday.  You won’t want to miss it.

We are at home relaxing now after the first day of our children’s meeting.  We had no idea how many would come to the meeting, but God blessed with 39 children, 7 workers, and 3 mums that stayed for the meeting.  Most of the young people came from families that we had never met before, so it is great to make contact with the families for future ministry and event.

All of the workers did a fantastic job, and we praise the Lord for their help.  We could not have done it with you!  It was great to have help from Ronnie and Marsha Smith and family from Roe Valley Baptist Church in Limavady.  They are Macedonia missionaries and have a great church in Limavady.

It was truly amazing to to see God bless and bring the young people in despite the raining weather, us not even being officially started as a church, and one of our mailouts not going out this past week.  We are having so much fun, and we just give God the glory for the great things He has done.

Well we have done a big mailout of children’s flyers last week, we have invited, sent letters to all the children who have come before, and put flyers in all of the shops around town.  The mailout for yesterday and Monday did not work because the company handling it messed it up.

We have done what we could to let people know about the Summer Celebration 4 Kids, so we will just leave it with God and let him give the increase.

Please pray for us as we work with the children and for God to give a good crown and souls saved.

Well, the buzz has begun.  The City News, the free newspaper that goes out to all the homes here in Derry/Londonderry, just came through our letterbox with our first flyer about the Summer Celebration 4 Kids, a two day event for children ages 5-12.  We have just purchased a special gift for all of the children when they leave the meeting that will remind them to come back for Celebration Sunday.

Also, we have just booked some great stuff for the children on Celebration Sunday - bouncy castle, large slide, kiddie carousel, obstacle course, facepainting, and balloon modelling!  This is going to be one fun day that you won’t want to miss.