Only 1 in 50 children who grow up without a father attending church will remain in the church as adults themselves.
That is a staggering statistic. Especially to a children's pastor who grew up with a father who didn't attend church.
I was blessed as a young man to have a friend who invited me to Wednesday night programs at his church. His family, the Nifongs, picked me up every Wednesday from 5th grade until I began to drive and took me to Wednesday Night Services at their church.
When I think about that statistic and how I was the 1 instead of the 49, I think about the blessing of having someone who was willing to go out of their way to get a kid to church. That's who I want to be, it's who I want FCCHP to be: People who have a heart for reaching kids that otherwise would not be at church anywhere.
This desire to reach unchurched children is why we have started a Children's Van Ministry.
We are currently targeting children who attend our after school program who are not attending church anywhere else. The first week we had four children that we picked up. This past week was week two and we already have two more children (with some other perspective leads) who have signed up for the program!
We are overjoyed, but we also have a problem. Of the six kids we now have signed up, we can only pick five of them up in a reasonable time in one van. We already need a second van to pick-up our sixth (and the other 3 perspective children would be on that route as well). We need volunteers to drive and to chaperone (we must have two adults in the vans every week) in the morning at 8 AM and directly after church (until about 12:40).
As one of the lucky "1's" I hope our church will see the value in bridging the gap for these kids, bringing them to church and laying the foundation for their spiritual futures. If you can drive, if you can't but you can sit in a passenger seat, you can be a part of changing the lives of these children!
*1 in 50 statistic comes from statistics presented at the Summit Men's Conference, Kernersville, NC January 2020.