Dear Theophilus Archive: March 2002
Quo Vadis Children's Church: Necessary, Not Noble
By Pastor Dwight Yoo
Click here to view QV Children's Church pics
What makes something a noble act? When one goes above and beyond what was expected. It always moves me when I think of the noble sacrifice of the firemen and police officers who ran in the direction of arguably the greatest disaster in American history. I have been intrigued and inspired by the noble sacrifice of soldiers at war laying down their lives for God, country, and men. However, I have no doubt that if you were to commend one of these policemen, firemen, or soldiers for their noble act of sacrifice, they would simply reply, “We were just doing our job.” To these men, these acts are not noble so much as they are necessary. These men know that in order to save lives, it may be necessary to give one’s own life.
In this sense, we should rethink calling Christ’s death a noble act. Before you get upset, let me explain. We often treat Christ’s death as if it were something he did not really have to do, but rather an extreme demonstration of his love-choosing a cross as his method of redemptive death. However, Christ was not out to simply impress the world by the noble act of dying on a cross. Instead, I believe Christ saw a dying world, full of hatred, arrogance, cheating, and murder. In order to save the people his Father sent him to save, he had to lay down his life. There was no other way for people to be saved. It was a necessary course of action, the only course of action for a God who loved dying people. His love and obedience to the Father made the cross a necessary act.
Whenever I speak with people about the Quo Vadis Children’s Church, many people respond by saying, “That’s such a noble thing you are doing, starting a church for inner city kids. How noble of your church.” I am sincerely thankful for those people who do try to encourage us. However, I quickly reply by saying, “We’re just doing our job. It’s not that noble, it’s just necessary. It’s just right.”
Praise the Lord for our students who have accepted Christ and whose souls are forever His. God’s call to us is not to make converts of all nations, but disciples. This entails teaching, preaching, worship, discipline, and fellowship; all of the things we do in a local church. God’s call to the children who are now in the body of believers is to honor the Sabbath by keeping it holy (Exodus 20:8). Therefore, our necessary course of action was to start a Sunday service for the children, in short, a children’s church.
As we do not so much what is noble but what is right in the eyes of God, I trust and believe that He will bring great blessing and that our labor for the Lord will not be in vain. I was recently reminded of this by one of our students. Pray that God would grant us the power of his Spirit to raise young, worshipping disciples for Christ in West Philadelphia, for God knows that it is only by His Spirit that a 6th grade boy could say as he got out of my car, “Mr. Dwight, church was awesome today. Church is da bomb.”
QV Childred's Church Service is every Sunday at 2:30pm in Bethleham Chapel on the 2nd floor. This is followed by age appropriate Bible Study.
