Seedlings in Wanhua
03/01/2011 9:00 am <>
I hadn’t had very much experience with children’s ministry until I came to Taiwan a year ago, and yet here I am, working full time amongst the children and young people in the Wanhua area of Taipei! God has been giving our team many opportunities to do outreach to children. We go to the local park every week, connecting with the kids through running games, board games, songs, and Bible stories. We are amazed to have the opportunity to go into schools, as well. We’ve been running an after school club in the Da Li Elementary School for many years now, and very recently have had the opportunity to start going into the Da Li High School. We praise God for these and many other opportunities!
The ministry, though, presents the challenge that in many of our encounters we only have a short amount of time to share Jesus with the children. In the park, for instance, a child may come to listen to us for five minutes before running off to play football, or going home because their parents called them for dinner! The pressure to do well at school is often the distraction for teenagers, and though they may promise to come along to youth club and hear more about Jesus, at the last minute they may send a text message saying: “Too much homework.” or “I have to go to an extra class.” A child may come to the summer camp at the elementary school and get really enthusiastic about Jesus, but then we may never see the child again or have the opportunity to follow up. Can God use these tiny glimpses of the gospel in these children’s lives?
In 1 Corinthians 3:6-7 Paul points out that when it comes to evangelism, often one person “plants the seed,” and another “waters it,” but it is always God who makes it grow. In other words, though we may be doing God’s work, it is nothing without the mighty power of God. We must trust God to develop the gospel in the hearts of these young people, and God often has his own timing…
When we hear the testimonies of adult believers here in Taiwan, many times it turns out that they had first heard the gospel as children! Many years later that small seed, planted twenty, thirty, or forty years beforehand, took on a new life, sprouted, and bore fruit. Those stories they remembered hearing as children finally became real to them as adult Christians.
It is so encouraging to hear these testimonies, and I have been learning an important lesson while I’ve been here in Taiwan: no matter where someone is in their spiritual journey, it is still God who makes the seed grow – not me or anyone else! In many ways this is freeing; we are free to sow seeds and water plants, and the rest is up to God. We can give it up to Him. Sometimes we may see fruit, and we can rejoice and praise God for that. Sometimes we will never know what happened, and we can rejoice that that person is in the hands of the loving Father. So in all things we can rejoice.
Jennifer Rawlings - Taipei
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