Don’t forget the Children

If we don’t teach our children to follow Christ, the world will tell them not to.

Source: Pinterest

In the early 1900’s, Emily Pannal taught many students to read and write, including bible readings and prayers. Memorizing bible readings were all part of the school curriculum. Emily had taught a young farm boy who as a soldier served as a tunneller, digging trench ‘fox-holes’ in France, and she often wondered what had become of him. Years later he stopped by to see her and told her that when he was in the fox holes, he could not think or remember very much but he did remember the 23rd Psalm that Emily had taught him. He explained that he kept saying the Psalm over and over again. Proverbs 22:6 ‘Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it’. When I read that story, I thought about the painful times in my life, when I, and I’m sure all of us have been too hurt or scarred or numb to think of much or remember much, but at these times the Word of God would flood our soul and we would repeat comforting verses over and over again. If only we could go back and thank all those who taught us God’s Word long ago when we were young.

We should let those bible stories that we may have learned in Sunday School or elsewhere, burn in our hearts and to ‘live these stories out in our own lives! 2 Timothy 3:14 ‘…..continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it’. The Sunday Schools that I used to attend were mostly run by women although men were sometimes also used for this ministry. One such example is Pastor Bill Wilson who is one of the World’s most loved and respected children’s workers and his testimony is amazing. He was born in 1948 in South Boston and is the founder and Senior Pastor of Metro World Child which is America’s largest children’s ministry, however there are also branches in South Africa, Kenya, Romania, India and the Philippines. Pastor Wilson and his ministry act as an advocate for poor inner-city children. Bill was abandoned on a street corner in Florida, by his mother when he was a young child. Before she abandoned him, she told him ‘I can’t do this anymore, wait here’. That was the last time he ever saw his mother. The young child stayed on that street comer for three days and as you could imagine he could have been picked up by a gang member or a paedophile, however thankfully, God had other plans for him.

David Rudenis was a local car mechanic and a committed Christian who noticed this young boy on the street corner. He walked up to him and asked him if he was alright, an encounter that was about to change both of their lives forever. Even though David’s own son was in hospital at the time dying of leukaemia, and with his own world falling apart, he took the time to help a poor little boy that nobody else wanted. Out of hundreds of people who had passed him by, only one person stopped. Not the hot shot evangelist, but an ordinary man who by his act of kindness that day, God used to bring about a Worldwide Global Ministry and allow many thousands of children to hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ. David paid for the young boy to go to a Christian Summer camp, where he came to faith in Jesus Christ. This is a great example of how God uses ordinary people to do extraordinary things. Hebrews 6:10 ‘God is not unjust; he will not forget your work and the love you have shown him as you have helped his people and continue to help them’.

Source: Metro World Child

Bill Wilson later graduated with a degree from South Eastern University of the Assemblies of God and then returned to his church and pioneered one of the first Bus Ministries in the United States. Each week he and his team picked-up thousands of children from a variety of projects in Florida to participate in games, music and a gospel message. He decided to take his children’s ministry to Brooklyn New York, which was one of the rougher areas, and moved there himself. In Brooklyn, he took his children’s work onto the streets and called it ‘Sidewalk Sunday School’. The ministry also continued to work in other dangerous neighbourhoods. Bill has been shot, beaten, stabbed and hospitalised numerous times yet he remains committed to his work. His children’s ministry has been extended to urban areas around the world and he has raised millions to support his ministry and he has met Presidents.

Source: Metro Hope For Kids

God helped Bill to channel all the hurt and pain that he felt by being abandoned as a child into an amazing worldwide children’s ministry; ‘who said men don’t do children’s work’? Bill brought Jesus Christ into the hearts of abandoned and hurting children from the most dangerous and deprived urban areas that many people would not venture into. Matthew 18:10 ‘See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven’; and Matthew 9:37 ‘Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me does not welcome me but the one who sent me’. Today Bill Wilson and David Rudenis have remained firm friends, although David is quite elderly now and with failing health. One day Bill took David to a Street corner in Brooklyn New York and as they stood on that corner Bill showed him all of the buses going past to collect the City’s deprived Children for Sunday School. David was able to see the results of his single act of kindness, on that fateful day.

During church service, every week you may not notice your Sunday School teachers and others involved in children’s ministry, slip out of the service and later slip back in again. What they do may appear to go unnoticed by the majority of the congregation however it does not go unnoticed by God. This ministry is close to God’s heart and all those involved in children’s ministry are precious to Him. 1 Corinthians 15:58 Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain’.

So, let’s end as we started this article: Don’t forget the children and remember this; ‘If we don’t teach our children to follow Christ, the world will tell them not to’.

Author: Eileen Greaves

May God bless and enrich your life

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