OK, so elsewhere I had (have?) a thread where my daughter (I called her George) was living a life of sin and drugs and abandonment of her children, and we were just praying for her to "come to herself" (as in the prodigal son "came to himself" and realized it would be better as a slave in her father's house than where he ended up).
I've held off on starting this thread, because sometimes, people relapse.
People who have strayed come back into the fold, then falter.
Not George.
So - we have been trying to build a youth ministry for a long time - probably the last 8 years.
We had a nice older lady leading it, but all we had was about 8-10 "outreach" kids.
"Outreach kids" are the ones you hope to draw in to love and minister to and hope they get saved and become disciples.
The problem was that we didn't have a "core group" - only this bunch of "outreach kids" who didn't seem interested in things spiritual, but things pizza and games and fun and water balloons and...
Covid shut all that down. Those kids disappeared.
Lo and behold, however, BECAUSE of Covid, we had three new families start attending our church, all three having teenagers in their families.
George took an interest in them, and started a Bible Study on Wednesday nights while I'm teaching adults.
Word spread, those kids were having a great time - they were SERIOUS Bible students (mostly coming from homeschool families) and we had a marvelous "core group" on which to build.
PRAISE GOD!!!!
So, now, she's having about as many youth in her meetings as I'm having adults in mine, and my adult group has more than doubled, nearly tripled.
Today we were contacted (one contacted her and one contacted me) by two NEW families who are interested in getting their kids in a Bible-believing Bible-teaching church, because right now they're in youth programs where it's all fun and games and mayhem.
To date, we have had THREE families join our Church because of our Youth Ministry, and TWO MORE families seriously considering it.
Again -- all we were praying for was for George to get out of the dark and come into the light.
We had no way of knowing that she would return to being a disciple, and charge forth to be, for all intents and purposes, an EVANGELIST!!!
God is so good.
I've held off on starting this thread, because sometimes, people relapse.
People who have strayed come back into the fold, then falter.
Not George.
So - we have been trying to build a youth ministry for a long time - probably the last 8 years.
We had a nice older lady leading it, but all we had was about 8-10 "outreach" kids.
"Outreach kids" are the ones you hope to draw in to love and minister to and hope they get saved and become disciples.
The problem was that we didn't have a "core group" - only this bunch of "outreach kids" who didn't seem interested in things spiritual, but things pizza and games and fun and water balloons and...
Covid shut all that down. Those kids disappeared.
Lo and behold, however, BECAUSE of Covid, we had three new families start attending our church, all three having teenagers in their families.
George took an interest in them, and started a Bible Study on Wednesday nights while I'm teaching adults.
Word spread, those kids were having a great time - they were SERIOUS Bible students (mostly coming from homeschool families) and we had a marvelous "core group" on which to build.
PRAISE GOD!!!!
So, now, she's having about as many youth in her meetings as I'm having adults in mine, and my adult group has more than doubled, nearly tripled.
Today we were contacted (one contacted her and one contacted me) by two NEW families who are interested in getting their kids in a Bible-believing Bible-teaching church, because right now they're in youth programs where it's all fun and games and mayhem.
To date, we have had THREE families join our Church because of our Youth Ministry, and TWO MORE families seriously considering it.
Again -- all we were praying for was for George to get out of the dark and come into the light.
We had no way of knowing that she would return to being a disciple, and charge forth to be, for all intents and purposes, an EVANGELIST!!!
God is so good.
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