CDM Archive

Discipleship Ministries of the PCA

Teachers/Disciplers

Making Kingdom Disciples: The Kingdom Framework

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Editor’s note: The following is an abridged interview with Dr. Charles: Dunahoo given by pastor R. J. Umandap over station TBC 88.5 FM in Kingston, Jamaica. Dr. Dunahoo gave the interview during a recent visit to teach his new book, Making Kingdom Disciples: A New Framework.

Listen to the Entire Interview (47 minutes):

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R. J.: The church has been regarded as being “personally engaging but socially irrelevant.” This is the way one philosopher has described Christianity. Unfortunately, it has become all too true in our day. Recognizing this problem, Dr. Charles Dunahoo has written a book entitled Making Kingdom Disciples. He has graciously accepted our invitation to be interviewed today so we are welcoming Dr. Dunahoo to our program.

You say that we have been operating, often unintentionally, with more of a man-centered rather than a God-centered approach to making disciples. Would you explain?

Charles: Thank you for the opportunity to talk about something that is very dear to my heart. Clearly, we are not being effective in making disciples and it’s being demonstrated by the reality that Christians are living like non-Christians. It’s hard to tell them apart in the culture today. I have researched, studied, and interviewed people involved in disciple-making and concluded there are elements not being incorporated in our methodology, especially the concept of the kingdom of God. Many approaches…tend to focus on us and our spiritual development more than on God and His perspective, which of course will affect our spiritual development. The kingdom aspect helps us understand that Christ is the King in all of life. There is no area of life over which Christ has not said “Mine.” I have to be more than a “Sunday Christian.” I have to do more than just read my Bible and pray. I have to learn how to interact with the world as the salt and light because Jesus said His disciples are to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world. Our presence is to be known and felt in the world. Being a kingdom person, “thinking God’s thoughts after Him” as we learn them in the Scriptures and apply them to all of life, I believe is the key missing element. Actually the name of my book, Making Kingdom Disciples: A New Framework is not a new framework; it’s all in the Scriptures. It’s a biblical framework that we have not been using.

R. J.: You talk about living under the reign of Jesus Christ and I guess you need a bit more of a framework for understanding what it means to live under the reign of Christ.

Charles: One of the things often missing in a person’s Christian life is that ability to see the Christian life as a total life system–a total way of life. Christianity not only refers to my relationship to Christ and my church but to my family, my work and my friends, as well as the decisions and choices I make. I have to do that consciously as a kingdom person because Jesus said, “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.” A kingdom disciple is someone who is committed to seeking that righteousness in everything they do.

R. J.: To consider that Jesus Christ is king over all of my life and every aspect of my life seems to imply my way of viewing the world itself must change. Would that be a fair statement?

Charles: Absolutely! Because of our relationship to Christ. If I understand what the Scriptures are saying, it’s a perspective that not only affects my personal relationship to the Lord, but also to the world around me. Jesus, in His Great Commission before He ascended to heaven, said that we are to go into the world and make disciples by teaching them. Christianity has a broader implication than my own personal growth, development, and service in the church. The church is the central part of that kingdom that trains and equips us to live for Christ every day of the week. One of the problems we have in western Christianity is that people don’t know how to incorporate their faith in Christ into their every day life. They bought into the idea that “here is a part of my life that belongs to God and I’ll call that the sacred and here is the rest of my life and I call that the secular.” We don’t see how God is involved in our work and in our family and in our friendships and in everything we do. In reality, it’s not about us but about Him and our whole way of life should reflect this.

R. J.: You’re talking about a world and life view and what you’re saying is that many Christians have…a dualistic world and life view. Can you explain this or talk about it?

Charles: Every human being as the image of God, has a worldview. God has put us together wonderfully and fearfully, as the Psalmist says, to live and act in certain ways. [We] may not know what [our] worldview is, but we all see the world through our worldview. It’s the spectacles through which we see life and affects how we interpret life. What has happened in Western Christianity over the past 200 years is that we have bought into a non-Christian notion that we call dualism, which grew out of the ancient Greek philosophers’ view that there is a part of life that is secular and a part that is sacred…There is a part of life that focuses on the supernatural and a part of life that focuses on the natural. What we have to do as Christians is realize this is not what the Bible teaches. The Bible teaches a unified total life. There is no dualistic secular and sacred.

David says, “How precious are your thoughts to me, oh God; how vast the treasure of them.” He did not say, ‘how precious are my thoughts about you’ One of the things I found that Christians often do that lead [us] in different directions is we spend most our time thinking our thoughts about God from our command center…Without starting with God we will not reach the right conclusions. Therefore, our responsibility as kingdom disciples is to think about God the way He tells us in the Bible how to know and think about Him. For example, we lost a five-and-half month old grandson a few years ago. He died after a heart transplant. The only way I could make any sense out of that was having God as my framework in trying to figure out why my grandson went through that. Five and a half months of his life was spent in the hospital waiting on a heart and then getting a heart and then it not working. That was hard for me to deal with until I stepped back and got God’s perspective on this and it helped us as a family to cope with that crisis.

Continued, page 2.

Be a Kingdom Disciple

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Be a Kingdom disciple? Isn’t it hard enough just being an “ordinary” disciple of Jesus?

According to Matthew 28, discipleship involves:

1. Baptizing. We might call it “introducing people to Jesus.” One reason Jesus might have talked about baptism is this: baptism is a rite of the church. Making disciples refers to the work of the church. That means it is part of your work, part of the educational ministry of your church. How would you evaluate your outward focus?

2. Teaching. At creation God gave what is called the “cultural mandate” (Genesis 1:28-30). That has never been abrogated. And the implications are broad. That’s where Kingdom discipleship comes in. As followers of the King we are to take the values of the Kingdom wherever we go. What are those values? They are derived directly and indirectly from Scripture.

At the church where I serve, middle- and high-schoolers are getting another introduction to the Westminster Shorter Catechism. That is combined with a study of Nancy Pearcey’s Total Truth for high-schoolers. Part of the challenge is offering a Christian foundation that will prepare them for the secular university and, beyond that, living in an alien society.

Ask yourself: what does it mean for your children and young people to take the values of the Kingdom to their school? To have them reflected in their relationships? The same kind of questions should be raised with adults. Your next question is: how do we effectively communicate Kingdom values in our churches?

3. Teaching – to the end that we will obey. Christianity is much more than a philosophical system. It’s a way of life centered on a relationship to the person of Jesus. Using words from the Old Testament, Jesus summarized the law this way: love God and love your neighbor. Paul simply says, “love your neighbor.” And John reminds us that if we can’t love those we can see, how can we love God who we can’t see?

It doesn’t take much thought to realize that his command is impossible. Individually most of us are miserable failures. Consequently as instructors, we can easily come off as hypocritical. So what makes it worth the effort? Jesus tells us that He has the power. And His promise to fumbling, stumbling people like us is, “I will be with you always.” And His presence is life changing.

With that confidence we can take up our Lord’s challenge to be disciples and to make disciples. We can even work at becoming Kingdom disciples because He has the power and He is with us. Does that give you another level of confidence or what?

Something Different

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Your evaluation of previous years’ efforts may prompt you to make some adjustments in your summer activities.

Sunday Evening

For the past two years the church I serve (Covenant in Fayetteville, GA) has offered prepared meals during June and July. This combined with a special program each week attracted about half of our Sunday morning congregation. Some features included: young musician’s night, which has brought grandparents, uncles, aunts, etc.; missionaries known to the church; an old fashioned hymn sing, as well as musical groups and speakers outside our church family.

The result:

1) It fostered relationships within the church (we have two morning services).

2) It generated ongoing enthusiasm for other activities during what has usually been a down time.

3) Visitors from our morning services were invited as our special guests and many came. It helped some determine that they wanted to make the church their home.

Sunday Morning

Sunday School

Adults

We’ve offered one-month and/or six-week studies over the summer. We are doing two-month blocks the rest of the year. The jury is still out on whether that is a factor in increasing attendance.

Children

All our young children (4 years and older), middle- and high-school kids work on a construction project over the summer, along with any adults who wish to participate. The first year we did the tabernacle, last summer it was Noah’s Ark, and in ’05 we will make a replica of New Jerusalem.

The result:

1) It has brought some children to Sunday school who don’t ordinarily come.

2) It produced a significant bump in attendance.

3) It gave most teachers a two and a half month break.

4) It avoided having just one or two children in a class.

5) It gave us an intergenerational learning activity.

Since our schools begin in mid-August, we start fall activities then. (If you use CE&P curriculum, it’s no problem getting materials for a mid-August start.)

VBS

If you’re struggling, reflect again on your purpose and how you want to achieve it.

Last summer our church’s intern did a Backyard Bible Club in a neighboring county where we are planting a church. There were 204 children who came for one or more of the three days. They heard the gospel. Also several contacts were made for the new congregation.

Your setting might benefit from a one day or evening activity once a week over four to six weeks. Or you might be able to do a day camp running from morning into the afternoon. Years ago I led one in a mission congregation that had no property. We used a public park.

Another option would be a different kind of program, either a substitute for VBS or in addition. For two years we’ve had a Music Arts and Drama Camp. MAD Camp has attracted some who expressed no interest in VBS. The same was true for the Swim Camp we offered last summer. (There’s a pool on our property.)

Don’t do something different just to be different. But don’t be afraid to try something if you believe it will better utilize your resources to achieve your purpose. That means failure is always lurking. And you will fail. We tried a soccer camp two years ago. We had a professional player to lead and we live in a community where the sport is incredibly popular, but it didn’t work.

I’ve often said that much of what I have done hasn’t worked all that well. But the things that have worked make the effort worthwhile.

May God pour out his blessings as you attempt to serve him in the most effective way possible.

Why Bother Catechizing Our Children

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EquipJan-Feb2005.jpgBy Brad Winstead. In every issue of Equip for Ministry we see a list of children who have successfully recited the Shorter or Children’s Catechisms. We might smile and think, “that’s nice and quaint, but our children really don’t have time for such an anachronistic method of learning about Christianity. After all, as long as they believe Jesus Christ is Savior and Lord, this should be all the doctrine our children need.” Maybe that is why, for a denomination the size of the PCA, we see such a short list of covenant children who have demonstrated this knowledge. If we added up the children in each Equip issue (usually only a few from the same churches) at the end of the year we would have less than one fifth of one percent of our covenant children recognized which is pretty weak. Why is it that when we hear about catechizing our children we recoil? For many of us who never grew up learning the Children’s or Shorter Catechism the whole idea seems archaic and distinctly Roman Catholic. For others it brings up a nightmare of stumbling over recently crammed questions and dryly reciting answers to a stern-faced elder. Or maybe it is the work involved, all of those questions-when would anyone have the time? Sadly, perhaps we have forgotten why such a method of learning is so practical and needed today. Let me tell you a true story about a Presbyterian pastor who asked a priest why so many lapsed Catholics come back to the church when they are older. The Catholic priest’s answer was immediate. “We catechize our little children and it is part of them. Therefore, when they are seeking again the answers to life, their memorized catechism questions come back to them, and they return again to the source of that learning.” I like to use a metaphor that we are wiring the house of the child’s mind and are waiting for the Holy Spirit to flick the switch translating the head knowledge to heart knowledge.

For those familiar with the classical approach to education, the idea of beginning with the basics as a foundation is not novel. The catechism is the “grammar” of the faith. Catechism is the foundation upon our understanding of Christianity. In George Barna’s recent book, Transforming Children Into Spiritual Champions, he mentions four cornerstones on which our children’s Christian belief system must be anchored: 1. Cornerstone #1 – The child’s view of the Bible as a credible source of information and wisdom on how to think and live. 2. Cornerstone #2 – The child’s actual knowledge of the Bible. Most people say that the Bible is inspired by God, but know little of its contents. 3. Cornerstone #3 – A framework that is logical and comprehensive that makes sense to the child, and that provides practical counsel. 4. Cornerstone #4 – A burning desire to obey God. Our children should demonstrate a commitment to godly principles and standards.

It is in the third cornerstone that we as reformed Presbyterians have a tool that others do not-the Children’s (or Shorter) Catechism. We can be thankful as biblically committed Presbyterians that such a systematic way to learn the basics of the Christian faith exists and has been used for generations. The Westminster divines (theologians) drew up the Shorter Catechism version of the Confession of Faith in the 1640s. Later, Joseph Engels (a Presbyterian Sunday School teacher in the mid-1800s) simplified the Shorter Catechism for children. Yet many of us still ask, “Why bother? There’s lots of good stuff out there for our children to learn.”

Let’s look at the word “catechism.” It comes from two Greek prefixes: “cat” or down (catacombs comes from this group of letters), and “echeo” or to sound from (echo comes from this prefix). So catechism is to “sound down” expecting an echo. The teacher asks a question and the student answers it. Some would say, “Why, this is just the Socratic method of asking questions in learning.” Yes, but it is a whole lot more, because the answers have to do with eternal life or destruction. Throughout Scripture we see warnings that “when our children ask us what do these things mean” we must be ready to answer (Exodus 12:26, Deut 6:20, Joshua 4:21, Proverbs 1-4, Psalm 78:3-4). Here’s a brief summary of what the children’s catechism teaches on: Creation (Who made you? Why did God make you and all things?), the attributes of God (His knowledge, power and transcendence), the Bible, eternal life, covenants and promises of Scripture, evil and the devil, justification, adoption and sanctification, Christ as our Prophet, Priest and King, the moral law (the Ten Commandments), the Lord’s Prayer, the Lord’s Supper and baptism and the second coming of Jesus Christ. The Shorter Catechism summarizes the questions and answers by saying, “What man is to believe concerning God and what duty God requires of man” (questions #4 and #39 of the Westminster Shorter Catechism). The children’s catechism works systematically, building on one theme after another. It stays with the basics. It is God-centered. And, it does it all in a question-and-answer format. It’s like a road map. If I wanted to travel between Atlanta and Knoxville by car I could take a roundabout journey visiting an expanding square of towns until I eventually reached Knoxville several weeks later. I could also drive with a good map for four hours, directly and expeditiously.

So it is with the catechism. We could read from Genesis to Revelation to find out about God, and we would eventually obtain a long list of who He is. Of course that may take several weeks or even months. Or we could get the succinct, biblical answer in the Shorter Catechism, question #4, “God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal and unchangeable in His wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth.” Maybe a more important question is, “Why should we catechize our children?” In Deut 6:6-10, after God has told how important His commandments are, He states that we are to have them upon our hearts and to “press” them on our children, to talk about them when we sit at home, when we walk along the road, when we lie down and get up, tying them as symbols on our hands and foreheads, and writing them on our doorframes of our homes. The catechism gives us the structure to do this. Yet, we still might say, “Why?” In the next few verses of Deuteronomy 6, God tells us that we are a forgetful people, that we need to fear the Lord and not to follow after other gods. Isn’t it interesting that if we don’t know the true God (and His attributes and commands) our nature is to build our own gods? Plus, we see the questioning nature of children, again in verse 20, “and in the future when your son asks you, ‘What is the meaning of the stipulations, decrees, and laws the Lord our God has commanded you?'” Our children are always asking yet too often we don’t have the answers. Maybe by this point you agree that the Children’s or Shorter Catechism are important, but aren’t sure how we can “eat this elephant.” The answer is always the same–one bite (or question) at a time. There are lots of helpful resources available. For example Kids’ Quest, published by Great Commission Publications, can be fully instituted in a kids’ club type atmosphere in your church.

Along with the catechism there are exciting songs and colorful personal illustrations. Children’s Ministry International (CMI) will take you into each question, if you desire, using visuals through the flannel board visual depictions of each question with accompanying Bible verse, Bible lesson, songs and crafts. Or if you want the Westminster Shorter Catechism version, G.I. Williamson has written an excellent summary. There are several other resources that can be used in family worship. Starr Meade’s Shorter Catechism book takes you through a week for each question. CMI’s Daily Family Devotions Guide in three booklets is a comprehensive catechism guide along with hymns, prayers, and Bible stories. You can use it to go through the Shorter Catechism at your own pace with your family. CMI also has a nine-booklet Shorter Catechism instruction aimed at “Tens through Teens” for the classroom. All of these resources are available through the PCA Christian Education and Publication bookstore. These materials have been used in PCA churches for years. Well, what other excuses do you have for not catechizing your children? We have our covenant children for such a short time. Why not lay a permanent foundation of truth that will never leave them? Recently, a lady from a PCA church on the Georgia coast was very interested in starting a catechism program for her church. We set up a seminar and during that event, I found out firsthand why she thought it was so vital. I’ll close with her testimony of God’s grace in her life using the means of the catechism.

“When I was a young girl we went to a Presbyterian church where there was an active catechism program. I managed to memorize the shorter catechism by age eight through the hard work of many teachers there. When I was eight, my mother and father divorced, and I lived with my mother. We began attending one type of church after another as my mother took a journey searching for an elusive truth of who God was. We went through a smorgasbord of beliefs from Mormonism to Jehovah’s Witnesses, to liberal churches to Pentecostal denominations. What sustained me time and again were the answers that I learned as a child in the catechism. I knew there was a God that did not have a body but was a spirit, who existed in three persons same in substance equal in power and glory, that God had spoken the complete truth in His word, the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, and on and on, soundly refuting the error that was trying to be placed upon her at each turn. When I was a teenager, my mother relented and allowed me to go back into a Bible believing Presbyterian Church where I took up where I left off.” What a great testimony. Let’s do a similar work with our covenant children.

The Importance of Worldview: Applying the Christian Faith to All Areas of Life

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Often, in teaching and speaking on a biblical world and life view, I am asked, “Why is it so important to develop a Christian mind that knows how to think God’s thoughts after Him?” In one way or another, even recently in a seminar, I was asked that question again. I remember one person saying, “You sound like I have to be an intellectual to be a Christian.” If what is meant by being an intellectual is that you have to know philosophy and logic and all kinds of facts, then that is not necessarily what I mean. If, however, I mean knowing God’s word and our world, knowing how to live as a Kingdom disciple who loves God with his mind, heart, body, and soul, and knowing how to apply his or her heart unto wisdom, then I guess I do mean intellectual.

The Apostle Paul connects with this when he writes that we are to be transformed in our minds (Rom. 12:1, 2). Why? In order to know God’s good, perfect, and acceptable will. A kingdom disciple is to be characterized as someone who knows how to apply the Christian faith to all areas of life. If the Christian life is about God and not simply about us, then we must realize the centrality of knowing and doing God’s will. He is the King and we are his servants. Jesus said that a kingdom disciple must deny himself, take up the cross, and follow him. Life is about the Sovereign God.

The Westminster Divines had an understanding of the importance of this when they penned the first shorter catechism. “Q. What is man’s chief end? A. Man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.” They connected glorifying God with enjoying him. So must we!

We cannot enjoy God by leaving him out of any area of life, if it were really possible to do so. Joy comes as we know and do his will. Nancy Pearcey has written an outstanding book, Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from its Cultural Captivity, which in my opinion, should be the evangelical book of the year.

As I read this book and studied some of its sections with our CE&P staff, I reacted in a similar fashion as when I first read books like The Institutes of the Christian Religion by John Calvin, or The Stone Lectures by Abraham Kuyper, or The God Who is There by Francis Schaeffer, or The Defense of the Faith by Cornelius Van Til, or John Frame’s books on the Knowledge and Doctrine of God. Need I say more to communicate my feelings about this book?

Pearcey is an outstanding writer with the ability not only to express deep thoughts in a very readable way, but one who also understands a biblically reformed world and life view. My book, Making Kingdom Disciples, a New Framework, will be published in January 2005, and I found Total Truth to be a good companion book.

Pearcey is a familiar voice in the Presbyterian Church in America. She is a graduate of Covenant Theological Seminary. She has also completed graduate work at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto, and studied with Francis Schaeffer at L’Abri. She exemplifies our philosophy of the importance of understanding the Word and the world and how to communicate apologetically with today’s audience. Each chapter in this volume is a goldmine in itself. James Sire, the author of The Universe Next Door and, most recently Renaming the Elephant, called Total Truth “The best work of cultural analysis from a Christian standpoint available today.” James Skillen commented, “Seldom does one find a book with serious content, historical depth, and Christian integrity that is also easy to read. If you feel lost in the fog of today’s cultural confusions, read this book.”

If resources were available, I would give each teaching elder in the PCA a copy of this book along with Making Kingdom Disciples. These are crucial topics and somehow we are not communicating kingdom living or world and life view clearly, according to most polls, statistics, and testimonies. People who profess to love Jesus are not making the connection of that love with a total worldview. This is not a new phenomenon but it has great impact in this postmodern and post-Christian world.

Whether we are called to redeem culture or make cultural transformation can be debated, but no one can question our calling to be kingdom disciples living out our faith in all of life, doing all to the glory of God. We are to be the “salt of the earth,” and the “light of the world.” We cannot do that by separating our faith from life. Pearcey points to dualistic philosophy (attempting to create a dichotomy between the secular and the sacred) a reality of western evangelicalism, and she is absolutely right. I see no greater threat to the church and its witness, especially at this moment in time, than dualism.

Christian influence has continued to wane in western Christianity because the average Christian has not understood total truth, the Sovereignty of God, or the Lordship of Christ. This book will challenge the believer to understand the reality that Christianity has accommodated itself to the culture around it, if in no other way than by making it a Sunday religion. It will also offer an explanation as to why so many Christians do not enjoy their Christian life experience.

Here is the situation and connection; Christians do not always “enjoy God,” because they do not understand what is necessary in order to do that. To glorify God, we have to do more than ask the blessing at mealtime or go to church on Sunday, even have family devotions, important as those things are. We have to see the inclusiveness of our Christian faith. Once we begin to do that, we begin to experience great freedom and challenge to live fully for God. As we do that, Pearcey’s contention along with the Westminster Divines, is that we begin to discover or rediscover the joy of the Christian life. She writes about many people who were genuinely desirous to be good Christians but at first had no understanding of how that touched every area of their lives.

After coming to realize the all-inclusiveness of the Christian life, one of the people mentioned said,”That’s when I rediscovered joy.” Pearcey writes, “Ordinary Christians working in business, industry, politics, factory work, and so on, are ‘the Church’s front-line troops’ in the spiritual battle. Are we taking seriously our duty to support them in their warfare? The church is nothing less than a training ground for sending out laypeople who are equipped to speak the gospel to the world.”

Our contention is that if self-conscious kingdom people see the totality of the Christian life and will seek to glorify God in every area of life, then the joy of the Lord will become more and more real. Pearcey’s thesis is “the key to recovering joy and purpose turned out to be a new understanding of Christianity as total truth-an insight that broke open the dam and poured the restoring waters of the gospel into the parched areas of life.”

I have often quoted Charles Malik, from his address at the dedication of the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton in 1980. He challenged the audience to the twofold task of evangelism, that of saving the souls and that of saving the minds. He said, if we do one without the other, we will fail to save the souls. We understand the importance of developing a Christian mind committed to total truth, and with God’s help, determining to apply that faith to all of life. Never has it been more important for Christians to be intentionally missional in their approach to life. To impact the world, however, we must know how to teach, model, and explain this to future generations what we mean by Christianity being “total truth,” and how the joy of the Lord is connected with that perspective.

If you buy only one book this year, this would be the book at the top of the list.

“The purpose of a worldview is to explain our experience of the world-and any philosophy can be judged by how well it succeeds in doing so. When Christianity is tested, we discover that it alone explains and makes sense of the most basic and universal human experiences,” Pearcey.

The Kingdom and Generations

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The church is getting older.

It might not seem like it where you are but there has been a steep decline in church attendance beginning with the baby boomers (those born between1946-1964) and continuing to the present generation. The most recent statistics indicate that we are not far from the place where the majority in the United States will identify themselves as something other than Protestant.

This presents a great challenge.

One is to reach the generation growing up around us. In many cases this group relates better to grandparents than parents.

In the church I serve there is an 87-year-old widow. She no longer drives. But she has become a Pioneer Club pal to a child some 80 years younger. That involves things like remembering a birthday, speaking briefly at a worship service, and praying for her pal.

To date, every child from age 2 to 5th graders has had a pal. Sometimes the child is invited to the pal’s home. On occasion pals attend school functions in which the child is participating. They might celebrate a birthday together.

There are adults who seem fearful of interacting with young people – especially middle and high schoolers.

If you’re a grandparent you have a great place to start. Should your grandchildren do what the vast majority of young people are predicted to do-either never start or drop out of church? Is it possible for you to build enough of a relationship with them so that you can be heard when you encourage them to follow Jesus? Are you willing to pray for them – regularly, fervently?

If you’re willing to take a bigger risk, talk to the person responsible for children or youth ministry at your church. Ask if there’s a place where you can help.

Another older lady in our church has participated in a project with our children and youth over the last two summers. One Sunday she gave her testimony to the group. She said she did it because she wants to get to know our young people.

A retired couple in our church has been Pioneer Club leaders for some time. They have become critical in making that ministry work. And they light up when they talk about the children– the way they memorize Scripture, what they do in their groups.

To make an impact will take more than a Sunday or two. Think of it as a long-term investment in the Kingdom.

Another challenge is this. There are seniors who are feeble and all but forgotten. They don’t come to services and after a while they’re not missed. Sometimes their faith gets shaky as this life draws to a close. A great many others have a faith that has never been sure. This is one reason so many of their children have decided not to make the Christian pilgrimage.

As those associated with the church advance in years it is our privilege and responsibility to demonstrate the reality of the gospel to them.

Last year one of our small groups took on the challenge of doing the “honey do” list an elderly couple had accumulated. They have suffered much. Their health is declining. And that group reminded them – our hope is real.

Were I to live through another generation or two, I might have trouble recognizing the church. But I am confident of this. There will be a church. And it will be composed of every age group just as it has people today from every nation, tribe, tongue, and generation.

We’ll see God work, in part, through our actions.