Club 56

Club 56 is our ministry to CCF 5^th and 6^th graders every Sunday morning. They are using some material called Grapple. Each week they Grapple with another deep spiritual question. Rebecca Winner provides leadership for this ministry. She sent me this email earlier this week. With her permission, I am sharing it with you, and I think it will encourage you as it has me:

Sunday’s lesson was "Why doesn't everybody go to heaven?" It's the first in a 4-week unit on Jesus and salvation. We started during the clue time (which is where kids do some exploring in the Bible to answer questions related to the lesson of the day, under the coaching of their small group leader) by having kids look through the gospels for the different ways that Jesus described the Kingdom of heaven. We shared those verses with our small groups, and then each kid wrote a short description of what they thought heaven was like based on Jesus' words. They had a variety of insights. Then we moved into a small group time where we discussed several passages about who gets into heaven, and what the critera is: Matthew 7: 13-14; Romans 6:23; Isaiah 59: 1-2; and Romans 5: 20-21. Our 2 key points were that sin separates everyone from God, and that salvation is God's free gift through Jesus.

Many, many of our kids thought of heaven as a reward for doing good and had a hard time coming to terms with the fact that salvation isn't tied to our behavior. They had lots of questions: What if someone is bad for their whole life and then asks for forgiveness? Why should we bother doing good things if that's not what gets us into heaven? What if we're doing bad things for a good reason? What if we're not murderers but we still sin a little? We ended our time of Bible study by emphasizing the fact that salvation is God's free gift through Jesus: we can't earn it and we don't deserve it, and if we think we deserve it, we're not being honest with ourselves.

And AFTER this great class discussion, one young girl came to and asked me how she could be in a right relationship with God! We talked about what it means to ask God to forgive your sins and accept what Jesus has done for us on the cross, and about Jesus coming to live in our hearts, and then what it means to follow Jesus in our day to day lives. I encouraged her to think about all this and told her that when she was ready, I would be happy to pray with her.

So please pray for this young girl and for the 18 other kids who were in Club 56 last Sunday...they are thinking deeply about important spiritual issues, including their own salvation. I'd appreciate it if you would pass this prayer request on to anyone else that you think would be willing to pray specifically for the 5/6 graders this week and during the next three weeks as we continue to challenge them with their need to accept Jesus's free gift of salvation for themselves.

Club 56 has a great team of leaders: Rebecca Winner, Dami Bello, Joyce Brown, Lisa Edwards, Cori Haynes, Joe Kaye, Gail Medford, and Darrell Winner. They could really use 2 things:

1. Prayer for these kids during this unit.
2. One more male small group leader! They need a guy who likes kids, loves the Lord and can give us one Sunday a month. Small groups are 4 to 8 kids--never more than 8--and leading a small group involves coaching them through clue time and leading the discussion during Bible study time.