Dear Willowdale Church Family, greetings!
I am enjoying my time on Thunder Island throughout this week at the Vacation Bible School (VBS). Our theme for this year is Thunder Island, and it is a place where God speaks to us from the thunder to tell us how much He loves us. There are 34 kids whose ages are from 4 to 10 in the VBS program and 19 children whose ages are 11 to 13 in the Vacation Bible Experience (VBX) program. Moreover, we have 4 toddlers in the preschool program. Along with those 57 children, there are 56 volunteers joining VBS and working for the kids. The Kids are learning more about Jesus through Bible stories from the Gospel of John along with Christ-centered activities, and they are building more confidence in the truth that Jesus is always with them.
It is truly a great joy and reward for me to see over 100 children and volunteers praising Jesus and learning about His love at the church every day from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. I thank God for allowing us such a joyful week, and I am so grateful to all my Willowdale family for their prayers and support for this big event of the children’s ministry. Since it is VBS week, I think it would be good to share the importance of children as outlined in the General Conference Children’s Ministry philosophy. This is what they say:
The Bible makes it very clear that children are very special to God. If you examine what the Bible says about children, you will notice a great number of perspectives:
If children matter this much to God, then they should matter as much to us, too. Jesus’ Great Commission is: “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely, I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matthew 28:19, 20). Surly, this includes making disciples of children and leading them to make a personal commitment to Jesus. (https://children.adventist.org/our-philosophy). |
As mentioned above, our church’s children’s ministry’s goal is to lead children to Jesus and make them His disciples. In other words, we want them to “know Jesus and make Jesus known.” VBS is the biggest and most important event of the year for our children’s ministry department to fulfill that mission.
Ellen White states, “So if there had been but one lost soul, Christ would have died for that one” (Christ’s Object Lesson, 187). She is right. The value of a single soul is priceless. Only when we look at that soul through the lens of the cross of Jesus do we realize its true value, and it makes no difference whether that soul is an adult or a child, old or young. I want to make sure that the effort, time, and money we put into VBS this week will be well worth it if we can lead even one child to Christ. But I hope and pray that not just one but many more children have met Jesus through our VBS this week and that they will have a lifelong, living relationship with Him.
Finally, I would like to thank all the volunteers who have been working so hard to make this VBS happen. Because of your dedication, many children will have encountered Jesus, and we will praise God later when we see the fruit of the seeds we planted this week. Most of all, I praise God for sending His precious children to our church and for allowing us to enjoy a gracious and exciting VBS.
Pastor Dae-Eun Kim