I don’t know about you, but for me as a small boy maybe 5-7 years of age I was able to roam within a 3-4 block radius of my house without any problems or worries (by me or my mother). I know we lived within that distance of our old down town square in Lawson, MO. We still had an actual 50’s style soda shop and a few doors down from that was a working dime store. My younger brother and I would venture into that dime store that was just loaded with candy and trinket toys in counters that wrapped the room. These counters were red in color and were short enough for a little guy to be able to peer into them with excitement. Believe it or not the name of the owner and operator of the dime store was Gladys. I bet she was maybe four feet six inches tall with gray/blue hair and always had glasses chained around her neck, a true granny through and through. She would follow us around the store from behind the counter with that smile and would answer all of our questions about the cool trinkets she was selling. I know she slid that back counter door open a dozen times so that we could see, touch, and feel a particular toy. I would venture to say that most of the time the toys we asked to see cost more than we had to spend. My brother and I had $.25 each, and buddy….it seemed we always scored a brown bag full of candy and toys. I do remember haggling with Gladys every time and I suspect now that she lost money on the two Seibert boys…But you know she had love in her heart and as I said a true grandmother through and through; although I don’t remember her ever squeezing our cheeks as our actual grandmother would do. OK…enough about me so to the point….
Kids today are texting and gaming on their own phones and tablets by age 7 and are always found in their home and certainly not normally blocks from their house by themselves. I have two adorable nieces that come to visit and spend a portion of their visit time playing games on their tablets. As a parent or aunt/uncle you already know we compete with those games for attention and that attention is ever more demanding to be entertained by something bigger and better all the time. I have to say that if my future allows for grandchildren their attention will be hard earned I am sure.
However, I like to argue against some of this line of thinking and bring up the possibility that maybe it isn’t our kids looking for the next bigger better entertaining thing, but that they are just looking for something or someone that they feel they can relate to; maybe someone they feel they can communicate with and will entertain their time. I think back and I know that it was I who introduced that gaming system to my oldest son. Just the day before I did that he was so content and happy with his dad reading to him, playing with him, talking to him, teaching him. I think I introduced into his life a substitute for my attention and my love. Of course this was not my intention, I just thought that he would have fun playing those games and I wanted him to have fun. I thought that he would have such joy and excitement from playing those games, and he did. He had a lot of fun and he got older and the games got newer and more exciting it seems. My time with him grew less as the games grew more. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, after all we still lived in the same house, ate the same food, and I worked and he went to school. Things seemed to be normal, right? Or is there a better way?
So how do we engage our kids and compete with “fun” things like games, texting, and internet? I don’t have a golden answer but I do have a great idea if you are looking for a way to get involved in your local church and engage kids at the same time. Try this idea I am sharing or put a new spin on it. Be creative and have fun. God wants us to be social with each other and he wants us to have relationships with each other. Check this out.
Last year, about this time, I had a thought as I was trying to help my wife with ideas about our churches vacation bible school. How can we get more kids to come to VBS? How can we get kids out of the house to engage in something other than a computer game, tablet, or IPhone? My mind drifted back to the days of my youth and what I would do during the summers. What is missing today that was a common summer activity and adventure in my case? (No suspense here.) It was the ice cream truck…… If you were like me your summers were hot, you had no air conditioning, and you were outside playing most of the day. My day seemed to get a lot better when it was interrupted by a distant bell and a faint tune of some happy go lucky clown music. That was our warning bell….My brother and I had no time to spare to run into the house, locate our mom, and quickly and efficiently beg for a dime or if we were lucky a quarter for each of us. We then had to run out and sometimes chase the van a block down the road. Extreme situations demanded that we trek through a neighbor’s yard to cut the van off the next block over. The prize was worth the effort every time.
That was it, the ice cream truck. If we could somehow capture that energy, harness its power and channel that into the flux capacitor….we would be home free. OK…so my wife’s uncle actually owns an ice cream truck. No animals were harmed during the production of “The Ice Cream Truck”…
The PLAN and ACTION: So we hire the truck, we buy all the ice cream, we drive into various neighborhoods, we spread out with flyers about VBS, and we knock on doors and kids and parents are invited to come out and have a free ice cream bar. WHAT WE SHARE: We talk with them, we show them that we actually do care and we want to share with them about how our VBS is a great place to know more about Jesus while having fun; a win-win situation for all the kids. THE KNOWLEDGE: We had sign-up sheets ready and people on the team were full of great information on how VBS works, how we have a bus that will pick up and drop off their kids, and when and where this all took place. This was a great way to personally visit our neighborhood and to personally invite every child to come have fun at our VBS.
I believe we had one of the largest VBS attendances last year and I also heard that at least one of the kids that we invited through the “Ice Cream Social” ended up accepting Christ into their heart. For me this was a great way to express love toward others, to share with others, and to connect with kids in a way that they normally wouldn’t expect. It gets them out of the house and gets them engaged with a great group of people from a church in their neighborhood. This is what it is all about isn’t it? Touching lives one person at a time, sharing Christ with one person and who knows….you may share Christ with that one person for their first time and the result can lead to a grand celebration in Heaven over the life of one person saved; reference Luke 15:7 NIV.
I will say that it is a good idea to have your church youth be a part of the team that shares and invites your neighborhood to VBS. This is an eye opening experience that shows us all that there are so many people in our neighborhoods who don’t know Christ, who haven’t personally been approached by anyone who is willing to give time, accept them where they are, and just share Christ. I would also recommend that there would be some adults who are great at sharing and loving on parents and grandparents of the kids you will see. So many of them are also in need of someone who can share with them and invite them to a place where they can be accepted where they are and to be given the opportunity to come to Christ and to begin that journey, that relationship with our Savior.
God Bless,
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