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LA Story – I Know What You Did Last Summer
Are the International Churches of Christ a youth movement? I hope so. We are trying to be. An often heard comment of older visitors to our church services is, “Everyone seems so young!” Some of them mean that in a negative way, but I take it positively. The death knell of a religious movement is the loss of its young people. In so many denominations, their dying churches are mostly populated with members older than 40. Now, there is nothing wrong with being over 40 – I am 59. But, shouldn’t there be more young people than older people in God’s church? The young provide so much of the energy, enthusiasm and idealism that the healthy church body needs. For several years in the Kingdom of God, we neglected our young people. But we have repented.
Things are changing powerfully and rapidly. The first change was to energize our children’s ministries, “Kingdom Kids,” with top-notch curriculums and teaching materials. This project, headed by Kingdom Teacher Gordon Ferguson, took hundreds of hours, several hundreds of thousands of dollars and two years to complete. Now we have children’s ministries that are second to none. The second change was to restore a major evangelistic focus to the many college and university campuses. World Sector Leaders Marty and Chris Fuqua have been given
the charge of coordinating the building of great campus ministries all over the world. The third change came last year when Kip McKean called all of the churches to launch an unprecedented effort to make disciples of our own children, and to reach out to teens in our communities. Strong teen ministries are essential for strong churches.