For many years we have had a weekly children’s Bible Club. This has been a great tool and I highly recommend any missionary to have something like this in the mission field. We are now in a new city and preparing to start the Bible Club for this year (it runs from September to May).
Some would not agree with me that this is a good ministry to put time into when you are first starting a church. The reason for this would be that the church planter should be using his time to develop people and then have the people start these kind of ministries. While this is true for a lot of non essential ministries, a focused Children’s Bible Club has proved itself to be a great way to achieve our goals as church planters. Let me briefly go over a few reasons why I believe this is a worthwhile effort.
Evangelism
When you are starting a church in a city where you don’t know a lot of people, you need to treasure all the ways that allow you to meet new people. A goal that we have is to be always developing a quality contact list. The reason? So that more people can hear the Gospel and be saved. The spreading of the Gospel brings glory to God and that is always the goal.
With our Bible Club we reach the children and we get to meet the parents and extended family. Bear in mind that the Bible Club is not only for the church kids. We are trying to reach those that would not be allowed to come to a church service, but are allowed to come to a time of stories, lessons and activities that are designed specifically for children.
It is a lot easier to visit a family of one of our Bible Club children, than to knock on a door of someone we have never met. We know this because we do both! By conducting a weekly Bible Club, even though it is a lot of work, we are reaching children, youth and adults with the Gospel of Christ.
Community involvement
It has been the norm in our church planting ministry in Portugal that our church plants rent their own meeting place. We are then allowed to put up a sign and have the door open to visitors. This gives us a visible presence in the community. Whether we want it or not, people in the community will be paying attention to what goes on in “that place”. They will even comment among themselves about the new church that opened their doors.
In Portugal, our churches usually meet in store front buildings that are located on the ground floor of residential buildings. Most people in Portugal live in apartments. It is a good testimony that people see that our churches are interested and invest in the spiritual well being of children. Even the harshest of cultures have a love for children.
Our church in Albufeira, Southern Portugal, has a good size open courtyard in front of it that is separate from the busy road in front. We would use that area to have games with our Bible Club children on Saturday afternoons. It was very common for people to come to their varandas to see the games, laughter and fun. Some parents would, then, send their children to join ours. The Bible Club made us to be directly involved with the community around us. Most of the children would walk to the Bible Club, some of them picking up friends on their way to church.
Training of workers
It is false that by having a weekly Bible Club for children we are using time that we could be using for the training of leaders. We are actually doing both! Many of the people that are still serving the Lord in leadership positions in the church in Albufeira started as volunteers in our Bible Club. That allowed us to spent time with them, teach them, and give them more and more responsibilities in the Lord’s work. Our goal continues to be to train the members for the work of the ministry (Ephesians 4).
We will be sharing with you the news of howe things are going and even the date we plan to start our Bible Club. Would you join us praying:
- That people would be open as we invite children to come.
- For the Lord to open up opportunities for evangelism with the children and their families.
- That hearts would be ready and we will see people saved as a result of this work.
- For the church people that have already volunteered to work in this year’s Bible Club, that they would grow and take ownership of their respective areas of ministry.