Looking Up to Our Kids

It's been quite a week and a half for our children and youth programs at Second B.

Our youth just returned from a week at camp with a 100-plus other youth and a whole campus full of tarantulas - that's right tarantulas! - at Austin College in Sherman, TX. Now this week another 100 kids have joined us here on our own campus for Vacation Bible School. All morning long, all week long the halls of our church are ringing out with the sound of kids running, laughing, singing, and squealing. I've even heard some hog calling during the morning drama. All this, plus if you look below you will see we are in the thick of planning for our upcoming mission trip to Mission, TX.

As you can see we are all busy, busy. Today is June 21 and summer at Second B has indeed officially begun!

With all this ministry to kids, I've been thinking on how important a part of Jesus' ministry young people were. It seems like every time we turn a Gospel page we see Jesus healing someone's daughter, raising someone's son, or using somebody else's kid as an example to try to live up to - or in one case, live down to.

In Matthew 18 Jesus overhears the disciples arguing with one another about which one of them is the greatest. Jesus responds by taking "a little child" and placing the child among the disciples. "Truly I tell you," Jesus says to them, "unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven," (Matthew 18:3).

Get it? All the disciples are looking up, high onto the ladder of success/standing, but Jesus is telling them to look down at the child who stands head and shoulders below them.

It makes me think, in the midst of all these summer activities where I, the "senior" pastor, am called upon to impart my knowledge to the kids, maybe Jesus has it in mind for the juniors of our church to do some teaching as well.

And it's already happened. Last week at camp I was privileged to be a part of a special night of very real and authentic sharing amongst our youth. The care with which our young people listened to and supported one another prompted one of the newer kids to the grew to say, "Ya'll have an awesome youth group." "No," said one of the other kids who has been around awhile, "we have an awesome youth group."

There it was. I went to camp to teach the youth about Jesus and His way and here was one of our youth showing me Jesus' way of inclusion. " Boy," I thought, "do I want to change and become like this kid."