Your Church Can Affect Children Now

The Buckner Global Children's Offering

Is your church blessing children by practicing the words and actions of Jesus in Mark 10? “‘Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.’ He then took the children in His arms, put His hands on them and blessed them.” 

If you answered “yes,” let me challenge your answer. While internal children’s programs are truly effective in reaching your current population of attending children, many churches are not expressly devoting resources and efforts to reaching outside the church to reach children for God’s kingdom. Or to feed and clothe them. Or to insure they are safe. And children are the kingdom’s future.

Is your church blessing children like Christ did? It’s time to bless the children, and churches can provide a way a great way to do that through the 2008 Buckner Global Children’s Offering. It’s an opportunity for congregations to bless orphan and at-risk children around the world.

These are children growing up with abuse or neglect, trapped in orphanages, or at risk of disease, malnutrition and lack of skills to succeed as adults. They are children who will never know the love of parents, who may never know the love of Christ. They need a blessing now.

We’re asking congregations to take up a special offering, the Buckner Global Children’s Offering. Buckner gives them hope while sharing Christ’s love for them, a love that shows them they are special, they are cared for and prayed over by others and, even though they are orphans, that they have a Heavenly Father who loves them and will never leave them. You can have a part in that blessing.
But why ask churches directly? Why not rely on the larger denominational structures to support these types of initiatives?

A couple of reasons: a) denominational structures have weakened over the past few decades, to the point where they have constricted their focus to a few missional endeavors, and left ministry to the child out. Orphan and at-risk children, as a group, have been cut from the missions budgets. b) It is a church responsibility and not a denominational priority, what Albert Reyes calls “the Jesus Agenda.” He said it best in his March 20 blog on pandulce:

“Churches are still at the cutting edge of redemptive reality. The local church has all the resources it needs to get the Jesus agenda done. The resources are in the congregation and in the institutional ministries it supports. Churches are made up of the redeemed. Let them say so and do so. The imaginary and creative capacity of the Kingdom is in the church.”

Albert also says in his blog that “I think we need churches, institutions, and denominations to work together in a way that demonstrates maximum stewardship.”

I’m asking you to maximize your stewardship by giving directly to Buckner, so we can provide ministry directly to children.

Your church can promote the 2008 Buckner Global Children’s Offering, allowing your members to bless children. You can observe the offering during Mother’s Day or any special period devoted to children. Click here to start now.

Comments

[Ferrell Foster]

Ken,

As a fellow lover of ministry to children, I'm writing to offer one response to a comment you made in this post. You said one reason to ask churches directly for money was because “denominational structures have weakened over the past few decades, to the point where they have constricted their focus to a few missional endeavors, and left ministry to the child out. Orphan and at-risk children, as a group, have been cut from the missions budgets.”

While the BGCT is not a denomination, people could construe that the term “denominational structures” refers to the BGCT. No informed person could reasonably say that the BGCT has left out ministry to children. Over the past three years, the BGCT has channeled $1.1 million (2005), $947,715 (2006) and $956,454 (2007) from its churches to Buckner; and, of course, that doesn’t include our three other child care ministries. Most of this comes through Cooperative Program giving and some comes from other church designations. BGCT churches, the Executive Board and messengers to our annual meeting (where the budget is adopted) obviously care a great deal about ministry to children, and we all show it with our giving.

Of course, Texas Baptists care about a wide array of missions, evangelism and ministry efforts so the money gets spread widely to help address those needs.

As a member of a church, First Baptist Athens, that is very supportive of both the BGCT and Buckner, I would not want anyone to falsely construe that the BGCT does not care about ministry to children. I highly suspect that you agree. Thank you for caring about children with a passion.