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Children Are Practicing
Join Us Each Wednesday, 6:45 p.m.
Kid’s, Get Your Bulletin!
Each Sunday, our greeters are offering a bulletin just for our children. There is a bulletin designed for children ages
3-5 and another for ages 7-12. Parents, the scripture references on the front of the bulletin will often correspond with our
Scripture Lessons in worship.
"Talking to Our Children About the Poor"
By Charles E. Poole
Perhaps we could begin by loving our children and teenagers enough to tell them the truth. I know it ’s a modest proposal, but we have to start somewhere. So
perhaps, when it comes to Baptists, the Bible, and the poor, we Baptists might begin with the simple act of loving our children
and teenagers enough to sit down with them in Sunday School and tell them something like this:
"We want to always speak the truth to you about God, Jesus and the world. The truth is, when Jesus was here,
he spoke often about the needs of the poor, and he also spoke often about how his followers should care more about the struggles
of others than about our own comforts and desires. Because that is the way Jesus was, and because the church is in the world
to keep the Jesus way going, we promise to do our best to keep the needs of the poor ahead of our own comforts. That means,
for example, that while we will always make sure you have a clean, safe place to learn and sing and play at church, there
may also be times when your classroom is a little too crowded, or the space where you meet is not perfect for your age group.
There ’s a very good reason for that. The reason is that there is a limit to how much
money any church has, including yours, and we can’t always spend the money it
would cost to make church space perfect for a few hours a week and have the money that is needed to help those who live in
terrible conditions all day everyday. So, we want you to know that, when your church has to choose between a little more comfort
for adults, youth and children for a few hours a week, and a lot more comfort for the poor that will help them all day everyday,
you can count on us to choose the Jesus way, which is more relief for the poor, over the usual way, which is more comfort
for us."
If we Baptists began to speak that kind of truth now, it isn’t hard to imagine, twenty or thirty years
from now, a generation of Baptist ministers, deacons and finance committee members who will always automatically measure their
churches’ plans and goals by a simple yardstick they picked up when they were young: "How do these dreams and plans
match up with the words and works of Jesus?"
It is, admittedly, a modest proposal; this small idea that we consider telling our children and youth the truth about the
difference between the church of the American dream and the church of Jesus. It isn’t much, but we have to start somewhere.
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