Hundreds of children between the ages of two to fourteen years, have been taught the word of God, fed and taken through several games at the 2015 Jesus Kids Rally, organised by the International Central Gospel Church (ICGC), Horeb Temple, at Weija West Hills in Accra.
The event, which is in its second year, is held every last Saturday of December. This year’s event attracted eight hundred and thirteen children.
With ninety volunteers, the children, gathered from the community to join the kids of the church, were adequately fed, taught the word of God and presented with Christmas hats and other gifts to make the day memorable.
They were later engaged in several fun games such as football, swinging, face painting, skipping rope, bouncy castle and trampoline amongst others.
A Pastoral Assistant at the Horeb Temple ICGC, Gilbert Quarcoopome, said the church uses the event as an evangelism tool to reach out to the children in the community and draw them to Christ.
“As a church, it’s first and foremost an evangelical tool to win people for Christ and also to imbibe into the children the Christian virtues because as you can see, as far as our generation has come, it has become more difficult to try and change certain things in our nation and we believe that it is the next generation that can bring the kind of change we are looking for. So it is important to raise the next generation with the right attitude so that they can take over and do the right thing”.
“The focus is the community where we are because we cannot neglect them; and we want to begin to impact our community and take it to the next step. Next year, we are hoping to take it higher and expand it to other communities. We want it to become one of the biggest kids programme in the nation.”
The Pastoral Assistant asked churches to focus more on nurturing Children in God’s word in order to raise a new generation of morally upright youth to save the country from corruption and other ills that threaten its development.
According to him, that is the only way to get Ghana on track since the current generation have become adamant to transformation. He says the nation faces a huge risk if much focus is not paid to the right upbringing of children.
“The risk is huge and enormous because there is a moral and attitudinal breakdown and a whole lot of things; and we believe that the only way to correct this kind of error is to raise the next generation with the right attitude; and so we are using this opportunity to teach them the word of God and the values of Christianity so we can leave that legacy with them and they can in turn bring the correction we need in this nation”.
“I think the Churches are doing enough but we need to do far more. Today churches neglect the Children and the youth ministry to the background. We don’t do that in our church; we really give them that priority and focus and that’s why we invest heavily into such a programme. Our budget for this event was Ghc20, 000 and I wonder how many people will be prepared to invest this much in a kids programme. We want to do our bit by raising the next generation; so the churches must not relegate the children and the youth to the background because whether we like it or not, they are the next generation and they are the future so we need to focus on them” he advocated.
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By: Ebenezer Afanyi Dadzie/citifmonline.com/Ghana
Follow @AfanyiDadzie