I don’t know when I first heard the line, but I like it and intend to keep using it until it is sent to pasture, there to graze with all the other tired clichés. With apologies to a cliché long retired, the new line says of children and youth, “They aren’t the future of the church; they are the church.” To be sure, they are no more the church than the old folks club or the harried parents group or the how-do-I –find-time-for-church cohort of young professionals and tradespeople. But children and youth as they come to know the love and trust the ways of the God we meet in Jesus Christ are, by definition, the church. Along with all those others who likewise love and trust Jesus Christ.
That’s what makes weeks like this past week at LPC so glorious. Yes, it was VBS week, and LPC folks will see the wonderful remnants of it tomorrow morning in worship as the chancel will, for one more day, remain that beach on shipwrecked island. We will hear a sampling of VBS singing from some of the kids who learned those new songs this past week.
The initial count of children and youth, four years old through eighth grade, is 126 younger kids and 23 junior high students, for 149 total. Numbers aren’t everything, but they are something. And we’ll let you know if the recount pushes us up and over 150! And then there are those 70 adults and older youth who made it all happen.
Tyler Stanhope, our Youth Director, thinks as many as ten of the non-LPC kids who were part of VBS may become regulars at youth group this fall. Numbers aren’t everything, but it means that those 11-, 12-, and 13-year olds who hear about the God who is there in the storms of life will be learning more about him week by week this coming school year. That’s something. That’s the way our sad world begins to change for the better.
Kay Brown, our Director of Congregational Life, may have been a bit tired on Friday afternoon, but her face glowed with a lot more joy than fatigue. It was a good week. To be sure, Kay and her amazing team have done this before, but never with this group of kids, never with this group of born well into the 21st Century children who need to know in ways perhaps other generations did not about the certainty of God’s love.
They aren’t the future of the church, they are the church. At LPC we believe that. That’s why we every dollar of youth and children’s ministry staff salary, every hour of volunteer time, every sticker, crayon, nerf ball, and snack, is mission. Not mission to a future we do not and cannot know, but mission for today, to and for those who will and are helping our sad world change for the better.
Thanks, Kay. Thanks, Tyler. Thanks mission volunteers!