One of my favorite worship services is the one when the children\u2019s choirs share their spring music concert. Last night was no exception. Children sang. Parents smiled. Grandparents smiled broader. Cameras flashed. It\u2019s no wonder Jesus loved children and rebuked His disciples when they tried to keep the kids away from Him. \u201cLet the little children come to Me, and do not forbid them; for of such is the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 19:14; Mark 10:14; Luke 18:16),\u201d He said. I\u2019ve never understood why some churches consistently have difficulty recruiting volunteer children\u2019s workers. I\u2019m often tempted to say on a given Sunday, \u201cSomeone else preach. I\u2019m going to work with the kids today.\u201d In fact, I said that in one church where I was serving as Interim Pastor and immediately had a host of volunteers. Seems no one wanted to preach. In the midst of all our slick strategies to grow churches, let\u2019s not forget that if we miss the children, we create the possibility for a dead church in two generations. Let the children come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One of my favorite worship services is the one when the children\u2019s choirs share their spring music concert. Last night was no exception. Children sang. Parents smiled. Grandparents smiled broader. Cameras flashed. It\u2019s no wonder Jesus loved children and rebuked His disciples when they tried to keep the kids away from Him. \u201cLet the little…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monday-morning-manna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}