I have asked the question of many people: Which ministry is harder, Children’s or Addiction Recovery? Usually I hear back that addition recovery is harder for various reasons. These reasons are all valid: people are set in the ways, they are not always looking for help, the power of addiction, etc.
I always tend to wager that children’s ministry is more difficult. I believe so because there are more tears. Since I have worked in children’s ministry, I can name over 180 kids that I have worked with, but there are also many more kids that I have not had on a roster of some kind. Some of the kids that I have worked with are now adults, some are teens, and some are still kids. I get to watch many of them grow up in this sin-polluted world, and I get to watch many of them fall into it becoming marred by the ways of the world. The tears come when you realize that there is no way to stop this. Or is there?
A Good Report
Many of the young people that I am still in contact with have their struggles, and they are all sinners, of course, but most keep clear of the serious moral issues that will destroy them. Praise the Lord that we do not necessarily have to hit bottom to be raised up in Glory, as many of the youth I have worked with over the years are gladly following Christ all on their own. This is a good report.
A Bad Report
I am called to work with some more difficult kids in addition to church kids. I can still remember seeing an old neighbor of mine when he was in diapers. I watched him grow up, taking vacations with him when he was eight, babysitting, tutoring, spending time with him. As he grew, he was into the wrong influences and was an addicted smoker at 12, even coming home drunk a few times at that age. The excitement of that life wore off and he moved onto harder things. He is now an adult, riddled with a life of heroin addiction, in and out of rehab. This is not isolated, particularly in my life. In college I had received word that my best friend from middle and high school had killed himself after struggling with heroin for a long period of time. About a year later, a co-worker suffered the same fate. Another co-worker totaled a car while drunk and died with three friends. I have spent time with these people, loved them, and I had to watch them die. First emotionally and then spiritually, and finally, physically. I cry many tears for the choices that many of the kids in my groups will make. Indeed, some of the kids I have worked with are already addicted to serious moral sin. Erwin Lutzer reported in a new sermon, Protecting Your Children in a Polluted World, that the average age that kids are exposed to hard-core pornography is at age 5! Sex and violence pours off of the television sets into the minds of the people, and the Christians all too often are in the front row. I cry tears for the sins that my kids will commit.
The Symptoms
I was discussing with my little brother today a problem with many churches around this land, and it is true in our church as well. A symptom that I reported was relayed by the book University of Destruction: An average of 51% of college students who claim to be Born Again Christians say that they are not Born Again at the end of their college experience. That is just a symptom. Other symptoms include the sin in the life of many congregations, as it is reported that at least 50% of church-going men are addicted to pornography, we have overly jovial attitudes toward the church, but are not sober enough to realize that scripturally, we are at war! We do not know our Bibles. Even at the camp ministries, our administrator was relaying the story that one game we play used to be initiated on Sunday night by giving the kids a list of 30 verses with the simple instruction to know them by Wednesday. Every cabin could break that list down into five verses or so each, and between the cabin, they would have it all memorized. In that same game now, we can give a list of verses, but the kids don’t know where the books are. We can give them the text, but they don’t know what it means. These are some of the symptoms.
The Solution
So what is the real problem? I believe that the problem is that the church as a whole is great at evangelizing, but they have no clue what to do with this mass of people that come in zealous for the Lord. Just look at the verses that we know. Everyone seems to know John 3:16, a widely used evangelical verse. Some even quote Revelation 3:20 evangelistically (though that is not the context), but how many of you know John 17:17? This is in a prayer that Jesus makes on behalf of His followers. It is a prayer for sanctification. After we are regenerated in Christ, we MUST begin the process of sanctification! The process is called Discipleship. It is growing people in Christ, that we might transform our minds, become like Christ, and live a Holy life without the need of filling our minds with rubbish. This point is made all the better by some conversations I have had over the years with kids at camp. I had one boy that was struggling with what it meant to be a Christian, so I asked him if he had ever prayed for salvation. He said that he has…seven times. “Seven!” I exclaimed. He said that he could never get it right, so he prayed to receive Christ each time thinking that it was not real. Even more recently, I had a conversation with a middle school student from a solid Christian home. He had also confessed that although he prayed to receive Christ, he could not find himself doing things that he thought God wanted him to do. Both of these stories have the same solution: sanctification – the synergy between yourself and God to produce Godly character in your life by transforming your mind by mediating on the scriptures and applying it to your life. I did like R.C. Sproul’s approach to this. He said to get a cheap New Testament and read it quickly with a red pen and green pen. Everything that you presently do, underline with the green pen while everything that you do not presently do, underline that with a red pen. Spend your life making the red parts green.
Conclusion
I wanted to return to the title of this article and what it really means as a conclusion. I said above that I cry over the sins that my kids will commit. I do not cry when they are 7 or 8 and experiment with shoplifting, as that can be common. I do not cry when they tease other kids, though I will quickly correct them and tell them to read Ephesians 4:29. I cry over the moral sins that they start to dabble with because they do not know they are sins, or worse yet, being raised in a church home where these problems are not addressed. I cry over drug use, sexual experimentation, and rebellion. I know that these will have the longest lasting negative impact. I hate to see the little guys that were so care-free get involved with sins that will rip apart their souls. But I only have a few kids. God has many, many kids on this earth, and he cries over the smallest of the sins. Let the church in America wake up and start discipleship, and then we will have a chance of easing the tears of God!
