“But Jesus called them to him, saying, ‘Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God'” (Luke 18:16 ESV).
We met this past Tuesday to debrief our KidzFest event. The results were amazing. God is really blessing our church. He is trusting us with young families and their children. And when we see God blessing something, we want to make sure that we join Him. And when God sends us children, we want to make sure that we do nothing to hinder them from coming to Jesus.
During our five-night KidzFest event last week, we had 210 children attend. Not every child came every night, but we still averaged around 180 children. We promoted this event as an outreach to families who don’t attend our church. We extended invitations to the local day care facilities and the Wilson youth center called “The Spot.” As a result of our prayers and promotion, over 63% of the children that attended our event were not WCC attenders. This is a huge result because we want to be a blessing to our city, not just to our members. And God allowed us to see this happen!
Another amazing statistic was the number of WCC volunteers that showed up every night to serve. We counted around 103 volunteers that worked every night. Especially impressive was how many youth and men showed up to help. We’re not diminishing our women’s contribution; they are always the most faithful in working with children. But it was awesome to see our WCC men working with the kids. Many of the children were especially attracted to the men because they have no fathers in their homes. This was a powerful learning. We need more men in the children’s ministry, especially to make sure that little boys are not “hindered” from coming to Jesus.
Perhaps the most profound outcome of last week’s KidFest was the number of families that visited our church on Sunday for the first time. We invited them to come and watch their children perform the song that we taught them during the week. We gave out invite cards to everyone on the last two nights of the event. So when Sunday came, we were blown away by the number of first-time guests. We had the largest Sunday children’s ministry attendance in our church’s history. It was awesome. Both Sunday services were packed, especially the 11:00 AM service.
When we looked at the connection cards for all of these first-timers, we noticed a trend. Nearly all of them were in the 23-30 year old age group with at least two young children. No wonder our 3-4 year old class was packed!
As your pastor, I want to give praise and thanks to God for trusting us with these young families and their children. What a blessing! I am also thankful to God for our WCC members who really showed up during this event to serve. It is so awesome to be your pastor knowing that you really get the vision of reaching our community for Jesus. I love being your pastor!
But there is one problem. We need to do something about making room for all of these kids and young families! We’re out of room! Will you join me in prayer about this? We don’t want the size of our facility or our number of services to “hinder” the children that God is sending our way.
We want to be a church that always makes room to “Let the children come.”