Greetings and blessings friends,
Hope this finds you blessed and in good health. Spring has sprung and summer is quickly approaching, so the question I have for you is: What are your summer plans?
At CEF Dallas, we are gearing up for Summer Party Clubs and our lesson plan is Dinosaur Tracks. Kids love dinosaurs. In fact, children very likely know more about dinosaurs than they do about Jesus. This is one reason why we need to reach more children.
In partnership with the ICR Discovery Center, we hope to share dinosaurs and Jesus with up to 1,000 children this summer. We invite you to join us.
One of our committee members recently shared a story that speaks to the urgent need to reach more children for Christ. She asked her 30 elementary students if they had been to church this past Easter Sunday. Only 2 raised their hands. That’s just 6% of this group of children who attended church on Easter.
But the numbers are more troubling than that. In a 2020 study, only 2% of Millennials had a Biblical Worldview. Millennials are today’s parents, raising the children we are trying to reach. If today’s parents do not possess a Biblical worldview they won’t raise their children knowing who Jesus is for them. Previous studies indicated that only 4% of Gen Z (born after 1995) had a Biblical worldview. But we’re now reaching Gen Alpha (born after 2010) and so if the 2% of millennial parents is any indication even fewer children will have a Biblical worldview.
It would be easy to be discouraged by the state of Christianity in our nation. We see our nation falling into greater confusion and chaos. But let us not grow weary in well doing for we will reap a harvest if we fail not. Instead, let’s commit to do more to reach more children, partner with more churches, mobilize more workers. The harvest is plentiful!
A demographic study of our chapter region revealed that there are at least 1 million pre-k to 5th grade children in our chapter region. If only 2% of these children understand who Jesus is, that’s just 20,000 children.
How can we reach the rest?
If we believe that God answers prayer, and I sure hope we all do, then we can start in prayer. Here’s a simple idea and an initiative we’re working on developing: If we mobilize 1,000 pray-ers to pray just 3 minutes a day that’s more than 1 million minutes of prayer each year for our 1 million children. We’re still working to develop our new prayer initiative, but would you commit to just 3 minutes of prayer each day for the children in our chapter region? We’ll share more about this at our Volunteer Appreciation Lunch, so be sure to register below as registration will close on May 12.
We must also be willing to be the answer to our own prayers when it comes to the harvest. In Luke 10:2, Jesus tells his disciples that the harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Jesus tells them to ask the LORD of the harvest to send out the workers. The very next thing Jesus says to them, is “Go, I’m sending you out…” And, they went immediately!
This Summer would you GO and do more for the LORD through Summer Party Clubs?
We’ll schedule a site, we’ll provide the resources, and we’ll train you for Dinosaur Party Clubs. We just need you to say yes to Jesus saying GO!
We look forward to seeing many of you on May 25 for the Volunteer Appreciation Lunch.
In Christ,
Brian Considine
Director, CEF Dallas