Suffer the Little Children

I am now back from camp, and I am happy to report that the counselors won the annual volleyball game again. I enjoy camp once I am there, but I never look forward to it. Leaving the family is not easy once you pass the age of about 18. Camp is a young person thing, not so much for old guys like me.

Still, I believe church camps are good and do a lot of good in the life of the church. Not only does it bring young people together from many churches creating a network of professing, believing, young people, but also it can serve to guide them and teach them in addition to entertain them. Our Heidelberg Youth Camp is very good at that, especially with the Senior High. Still, I do sometimes wonder if we could do more to engage the Junior High and even Senior High where they are. I always come back from camp learning that we are not doing a good enough job of reaching these kids and enabling them to deal with the trials that they normally face. Is the church speaking about tattoos, cuttings, and the like? Are we speaking to the dangers of on-line relationships, Facebook, and the new media that these kids are consumed by? Are we speaking to escapism of books, the moral assault of TV, and the worldviews of movies?

I come back every year challenged that the church needs to equip parents and get involved with young people on their level so that they can make Christian decisions. When we as a church think and talk about evangelism we need also to think and talk about reaching out to unbelieving children as well as adults. I fear that too often the church desires to raise its own kids in a Christian manner, but never plans to reach out to the lost until they have jobs and are all grown up. This was clearly not the way the early church did it as you read about the church running schools all the time. It was clearly not the way that Jesus did it. Not only do you have the rebuke of the disciples when Jesus utters his famous phrase of let the little children come to me (Matthew 19:13-14), but also you have instances such as Matthew 21:15 where the children are crying out praises to Jesus in the temple. Here it makes the Pharisees angry and they demand he stop them. Children are a battleground and it makes the enemy angry when the little children praise God. I pray that we as a church are able to reach out to the children of unbelievers and reach them with the gospel.