As most of you know, Shawn and I have been working with Vineyard College of Mission to develop the new Children in Crisis track. Someone asked me to make a case for it, so here are my thoughts so far! If you have any thoughts, I welcome them!
Here’s why “Children In Crisis”…
Dallas Willard wrote about the nature of faith : “Namely, we believe something not when we say we do or even when we believe we do, but when we act as if we do”
Today there is a culture of death which has taken away the value of every human being. We are seeing an unbelievable disregard for human life, especially towards kids! 1/3 of the world’s population is under 15 years of age and 80% of these live in the developing world. The urgency of the hour is punctuated by the newly minted 4/14 window- 85% if Christians get saved between age 4-14. As the church, we have the awesome opportunity to not only address their immediate physical needs, but also their soul and their eternity!
Some of the major issues around the world affecting children are…
1. Poverty: By Oct. 2003 UNICEF estimates that more than 1 billion kids around the world are suffering from the debilitating effects of poverty.. Major issues here are lack of immunization, death from preventable causes such as malnutrition and dehydration. Between 100-200 million kids are forced to work, which means they receive no education.
2. Human Trafficking: It is estimated that over 10 Million kids are involved in the sex industry. 10 Million KIDS, and a new 1 million are added every year. In Thailand, Viva Network estimates the 80% of the 1 million are under the age of 16, some are as young as 4. This issue affects every community in the developing world and is happening in the west as well. Get educated on this!
3. AIDS: To date, an estimated 50 million people have contracted HIV; about 25 million people are from sub-Saharan Africa, and about 3 million of these people die annually. This has created an AIDS orphan crisis throughout the world! There are about 17 million AIDS orphans worldwide, 12 million are in sub-Saharan Africa. This is the orphanage we worked with in India
4. Street Children: 100 million kids worldwide are believed to live at least part of the time on the streets. Of great concern are countries like Brazil where 12 million street kids roam. This is an entire generation growing up without parental guidance, rules or love. In many countries these kids are routinely abused by police and others, they also live in fear of being trafficked or captured to be child soldiers. Another rad org. helping with these kids
5. Abortion: Over 1/3 of this generation did not get the chance to breath. The abortion industry has used propaganda and outright lies to devalue life at it’s very core. Some rad info.
This is absolutely not an exhaustive list, but it is some of the major issues…
some great resources to discover more include, again, not an exhaustive list but a great start:
Good News About Injustice by Gary Haugan
Be A Hero by Wesley Campbell
The aWake Project by lot’s of people (about AIDS)
The Revolution by
www.peaceplan.org
Where can the local church help with this?
Oh my, the possibilities are endless!!
Educate:
These topics need to be talked about. Most people are somewhat aware that these issues are around. They crave to be called to fight against this! We, as the church, must be the ones to educate them on the big picture and also on God’s heart toward this injustice! They should know what God says about it and there role as Christians. In the past, most of the resources to fight against these injustices have been provided by parachurch organizations, which is great, but limits the amount of individuals that can be involved. We want our people to be able to help through the church, that it would just be a natural part of their Christian life!
Equip
All missionaries and mission partnerships could include training on these issues and pro-active solutions and resources for the local pastors and churches that encounter these issues daily. Perhaps we could even provide on the site training for specific areas depending on their local issues. We have specialist that deal with after-care of children forced into prostitution that can train local leaders on how to provide a safe haven for these precious individuals.
So much of the disease and such can be easily prevented. There are salt, sugar and water mixtures that can save a child dying of dehydration from diarrhea. All our churches can educate their communities on that!
Network
The fact is that many Vineyards are already involved in many of these issues, but they are each working as individual churches. What if we had a “Justice Task Force” to gather this information? Check out www.vineyardcompassion.org...it's a work in progress.
Justice Youth Retreats
Last year we began a model of regional Vineyard youth retreats that deal with social justice and the battle tools. (Check out IJM's (International Justice Mission)awesome youth training on this.)These retreats also serve as a great place to promote VCOM and it’s opportunity for training and such! This makes sure that no Vineyard youth graduate without knowing about these issues and how to fight them WITH the local church!
