How Christians Can Reach Kids with the Gospel: A Conversation with Fred Pry of Child Evangelism Fellowship

The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that deny God. As such, we need thinking Christian to become as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian podcast. I'm Dr. James Spencer. Through calm, thoughtful theological discussions, Thinking Christian highlights the ways God is working in the world and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now, on to today's episode of Thinking Christian. Hey, everyone. Welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. I'm Dr. James Spencer, and I'm joined today by Fred Pry. Fred is the vice president of administration at CEF, or Child Evangelism Fellowship. And today we're going to talk about what CEF does, what some of the challenges they're facing, and how we might be able to clear up some of the misconceptions people have about working with public schools as Christians. And so, Fred, I'm really excited to have you here. I'm glad to have you on the program. Thanks for being here. Oh, it's my joy to be with you, James. You know, Fred, just give us a little bit of your background personally, just so people can get to know you as we begin our conversation here. You know, how did you come to Christ and what led you to CEF? Sure. I'm happy to share my story, but honestly, my story is God's story because it's all about him. Yes, I came to Christ at the actual age of nine. So I'm a product of child evangelism, not necessarily child evangelism fellowship, but child evangelism. And yes, my parents were believers and I grew up. So I grew up in a Christian home. Actually, my father came to Christ just two weeks before I was born. And so but what's interesting about that is God doesn't have grandchildren. He only has children. So I had to come to that realization that I needed Christ. I was a sinner. I needed saved. I needed Christ in my life to make a difference in my life. So I wasn't following my own ways. And that happened at age nine for me at a camp up in the mountains of Pennsylvania, which is where I was born and raised. And it was through an organization like Boy Scouts, but as a Christian Boy Scouts. And it was called Christian Service Brigade. And we were sitting around a campfire and that's when the gospel became real to me and I came to Christ. So that's where my journey began with the Lord. And of course, as a young fellow, as a teenager, did things that no one's proud of doing those things. But it's that constant reminder of how I needed Christ in my life. And so but but coming to Christ at that young age, God gave me just a desire for his word. And that was powerful in my life. And God used that in many ways. Just having a love of service and teaching God's word and being part of the family of God, going to church. And so that's really part of my life, at least the way it began. And then, of course, coming into the ministry, of course, I got married, married a believer. We have four wonderful children. They're three of those are married now. They have children. And God has just done some amazing things in my life. Yes, I was in the business world for over 25 years and God called me into ministry. Now, I was always in ministry. You're in ministry, whether you're in the business world, the secular world or wherever you're at, you're in ministry. But God called me into full time ministry as a missionary. I felt that call as a teenager, but God didn't actually do it till many years later after we had raised our children. And then he called me into CEF full time. So what got you into CEF in the first place? My understanding is you sort of started as a, you know, directing a more of a local chapter in Pennsylvania. Is that right? So what drew you into that? So honestly, I'll tell you, it was the involvement of my children, my own children in CEF ministry in a ministry called Christian Youth in Action, which are which are training young people to teach five day clubs during the summer while they're on school break to other boys and girls. And I saw a change in my kids. The gospel became real to them. Their walk with Christ became more, more powerful, more. It was strengthened and they had they just had a different outlook on life. They were looking at the world through a different lens. And even though when the church doors were open, our kids were there, they were involved in ministry in the church. But there was a difference when they took the gospel, learned it for themselves and prepared to tell others about it. And they were teaching God's word. That made the difference. And that was the door opening to me coming into CEF. And I just thank the Lord for for that. Now, I was asked to come into CEF as a local director. Actually, I wasn't the local director at the first at the beginning, but a few months after I became involved with CEF full time, I was asked to be the local director. And so I did that for nine years. And that was in Pennsylvania in a chapter where we had many schools to reach boys and girls, many children in the county. And so I did that for nine years and then God called me to ministry, continuing ministry in CEF. But that was a state director for the state of Virginia. So that caused me to pick up my wife and my one son. The other ones were out of the house and moved to Virginia. And we did that for several years. And then God asked me to consider or someone asked me and God confirmed it to consider being the director of literature here at our international headquarters in Warrington, Missouri, just west of St. Louis. OK. And, you know, as you think about what CEF does, how would you really describe it? I would say my connection with CEF is pretty recent. I did some I worked with some pieces on Jesse Overholzer and his connection and influence, the way he was influenced by D.L. Moody. And so that was really interesting to learn about CEF sort of through the life of Jesse Overholzer and how he started the organization. But where is CEF now? What do you all do? What are some of the ministries you work with? So, yes, 1937 was when Jesse began the ministry of Child Evangelism Fellowship. And it had some interesting beginnings, had an interesting, of course, Jesse felt he wasn't sure children could be saved. And so he did that little test. I think you're probably aware of that test that he did. And he led a couple of children to the Lord and just sat back and watched. And he didn't want to tell anybody. He didn't tell anybody. He did that. And that influenced him because he saw the results. And not only in the children's lives, but in the parents of the children he led to Christ. It made a difference in their lives as well. And that's what began this ministry back in 1937. So where it began is one thing. Where it's grown to today is something totally different. And we're around the world in most every country in this, in the world, in the, on the globe today. We're in almost every country. In fact, there are some countries we don't talk about because we call them red countries. We won't even speak the name of that country because our workers are there. We want to keep them safe. So CEF has been around now since 1937. And God just continues to use it to impact boys and girls' lives, but not just boys and girls, the teenagers, as I mentioned, my own teenagers, but we see that duplicated around the world. But he, he works through the hundreds of thousands of volunteers that we teach to go into the public school, to go into the public arena and teach the gospel to boys and girls. And when I say the gospel, we're teaching them so that a child can understand what the gospel is and believe and put their faith and trust in Jesus Christ. And so we, we teach that at a child's level. Okay. And you, so when you talk about doing this in the public sphere, I, I know that you do some military children's ministry, but you're also really talking about diving into public schools, right? Yes, we do that. Even, even on the, through military children's ministry. So some of the bases are that large. Some installations are that large in this country that they actually have public schools or schools that are taught to the general public. But on the base itself. So there are, are military installations that have schools in them. There are also schools that have surrounded those bases because so many children are moving. They're there with their families. And so we're going to those military installations, working with the chaplains and conducting ministry within those bases as well. But so, so that's the military side of it, but that's duplicated out in the public sector, in the public schools around this nation. And we have over 3000 good news clubs meeting about 2,500 of them are in the public school, either after school or before school or during school as a release time. Okay. And my guess is, and I don't understand fully how all of this works, but my guess is there might be some misconceptions about how that's even possible. The public schools have been taking it. My kids are actually in public school. They've been in public school from, you know, I don't know, preschool all the way up through. It was just sort of the way it worked out. We toyed with private Christian school, but then ended up opting to just send them to the public schools that were nearest because they seemed pretty good. And so, you know, my wife and I and our four kids now have deep experience in the public schools and we've

At the same time, they're not teaching the Bible. You know, there is a fair separation between even in where we are now, which is kind of central, southern Illinois, or the southern end of central Illinois, you know, we get a little bit more maybe traditional values, let's say, but we don't get straight on Bible Christian teaching, those kind of things. And so how is it that you've been able to navigate what seems like a fairly antagonistic context, or what is often framed as a fairly antagonistic context with your Good News clubs, with these Bible offerings? Sure. So when the ministry began back in 1937, the antagonism wasn't there. It wasn't until the 60s when, of course, I think your listeners probably are aware of the Bible being yanked out of the public school. I even went to school. I know I'm dating myself here a little bit, but I went to school when the Gideons would come in with their New Testaments and pass them out to all the children in the school. I remember getting one of those little Gideon New Testament Bibles. That's funny. Wow. And I prized that. But, but it wasn't that long once I entered public school that those Bibles were no longer permitted. Those organizations were no longer permitted to come in and do that. So yes, that, that has happened in my lifetime. What's interesting is, so, so you have that history, but then in the more recent times, certainly it's become more antagonistic. And we do have to follow the laws of the land. And sometimes we have to take some of the school districts to court or challenge them with our lawyer and their lawyer talking about the freedom of speech and the freedom of religion and what that means for equal treatment uh in the public school. And so because a school opens their doors to other organizations after school to come in and do clubs, they can't discriminate against a religious organization because we have that freedom. So it's that equal treatment, equal rights, equal treatment clause that allows us to do that. And the Supreme court confirmed that right back in 2001 through a court case that we actually won. And God has just opened the doors for us to to do that. And like I said, we're in over 2,500 public elementary schools today because of that. And we're reaching, by the way, there are there are children in our schools, and I know I know your listeners understand this, but many of the children, they don't even know what God is or who God is or who Jesus is. They only hear that word, those words as swear words. And so when we go in there, we start teaching them the truth. We show them what a Bible is and they say, I've never held a Bible in my hand. That makes an that makes an impact. When we walk through the school after school, when you hear the children singing gospel songs, you hear a Bible lesson being taught, you hear them memorizing verses and reciting those verses in the school. It thrills my heart knowing the Bible has gone back to the public school when it was once teared, torn out of the public school. Do you do you collaborate a fair amount with local churches in your efforts? So, you know, if you're in a public education setting, you know, obviously you can have a big impact there on the students in that setting, but then there's also all of the rest of life that's sort of happening around them. So how do you partner with other local ministries, local churches to sort of pull kids in and hopefully their parents in as well? Yes, I'm so glad you asked that question because that is exactly what we do. We partner with the local church because our threefold purpose of CEF is to evangelize boys and girls, disciple them in the word of God, in other words, teach them truths that will help them once they come to Christ. But then the third purpose of CEF is to establish them in a local Bible believing church. And the way we do that is we partner with the church. We go to the pastors, we go to the children's workers, and we do, we basically ask this question, how would you like to grow your Sunday school in the public arena? How would you like to minister to two or three or four times the number of children? How would you like to see children come to Christ in your community and then you get the opportunity to minister to them, invite them and their families to your church? Pastors love to hear that. They come to us and say, we've been looking for opportunities like this. It's one thing to open our doors and say, come. It's another thing to go out into the highways and byways and invite them in. And that's exactly what we do. We partner with them. We teach them the ropes, so to speak. We open the doors. We get all the insurance requirements that the schools require of us. So we take care of all those logistics. We train the workers that are going to the public school and then we release them to do the ministry. And it's just powerful. We've had teachers tell us, these are the volunteer teachers from the churches, this is my calling. I don't, I didn't know how to share the gospel. I was nervous about doing it, but now this is where God wants me. He's opened the door. I am following the great commission. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility, and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian-owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free Retirement Defense Guide or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. by going to the public school and teaching boys and girls about Jesus. And so once you lay all those tracks, sort of get, like you were saying, the insurance and all those kind of fun administrative things that nobody really wants to deal with out of the way, do you, do you sort of take hands off? How do you stay in contact with the volunteers who are teaching and, you know, what does that really look like as an ongoing relationship between you and the local church? How is that, how is that connection forged? Excuse me, just lost my piece there for a second. I guess I was getting too excited in my last answer. So yes, basically we, we have one of the things that we do with the churches is we have this ongoing relationship. And what, what that means is on a yearly basis, at least on a yearly basis, a lot of times twice a year, we'll actually bring those teachers back together. We do some training with them. We further develop their skills. We show them the new curriculum. We get them excited about doing the ministry again. We, we teach new teachers because there's always new people coming in and wanting to get involved. The clubs are growing. We have to add teachers to help manage the children. So we're always investing in them. Plus what we do is we'll even offer to the church, Hey, do you, do you, would you like CEF to come in and help train your children's workers in your church to more effectively minister and to handle discipline issues and all kinds of things? So we have what we call super seminars. So we offer to churches and pastors and we actually serve the church. That is our desire because we know we are not the church. We're part of the church. I'm a believer. I'm a part of the church universal, but then we are supporting the local church because that's where these children need to go. That's where their parents need to go. That's where their siblings need to go. And we desire to come alongside them. So there's this ongoing relationship. We help them in a lot of different ways. We open those doors to the schools. Of course, what I said, but then we're actually encouraging them. Okay, why don't you come in to the, to the school? So we'll say to the pastor of the youth or the youth group leader or the children's worker, why don't you come in today and announce your VBS to the children before the end of school? Or why don't you announce this event or whatever the event is at the church? And so there's this ongoing relationship. And then we report to the pastors the, the, the breadth of the ministry. What's happened? You know, you had 75 children in your, in your Good News Club that you were sponsoring. And this is what, you know, here's the number of children that profess salvation. And we just encourage them to keep up the good work because the ministry can be challenging at times. We can get discouraged. Pastors get discouraged. And so we're there to really encourage them and their workers. Let me ask you before we kind of move away from Good News Clubs. My understanding is that there's a sort of competitor to the Good News Clubs that has in some ways taken advantage of your hard work and making sure that any organization can come into a public school and, you know, equal access, all that kind of fun stuff. Talk a little bit about your opposition here and, and how that's impacted the Good News Clubs. Yeah, I like how you framed that. Who is, as a believer, who is our opposition? Who opposes us? Well, and it

And they're trying to disrupt all of that to get CEF kicked out of the public school arena. And so what they do, this is their strategy, so I'm just revealing their strategy to all your listeners, is they come in, approach the school just like we do, and they say, because we're a religious, in quotes, organization, we have the same opportunities as CEF does, and so therefore, we want to start a Satan club in your school. Now, just those words frighten superintendents, principals, parents, and people get up in arms about that issue. But here's the reality. This is all a ploy to do exactly that. I know of a school that the principal or the superintendent said, no, we're not going to allow you in, but allowed other groups, including religious groups, to stay there. And the Satanic Temple took them to court and won that court case, and that's exactly what they want to do. They want to either win the court case and either get everybody kicked out because the school gets frustrated, parents get upset. And so what parents need to understand, what your listeners need to understand, is that this is a ploy to get everybody kicked out, including all the other good clubs, the chess club, everybody else. Get them all kicked out because they don't want the gospel, the Lord Jesus Christ's name being presented in a public school arena. So that's what they do. So if parents would just understand this is a ploy, what parent, well, let me just say to your listeners, parents are the gatekeepers. They have to sign permission slips just like they have to sign for their children to come to a Good News Club. They have to sign permission slips for their children to attend the Satan club. And our experience is very few parents actually do that. And if they do it, the club doesn't exist very long because that's not their purpose. You understand this is just a ploy. Right. What do they do? Exactly. So when you understand Satan's schemes, you can deal with them. And that's what I'm here to just share with your listeners. And so when you're thinking about those clubs like talk about a few of the other clubs, not the Satan club or the Good News Club, but what other clubs are we really talking about here? These are non-school sponsored clubs. Is that am I understanding that correctly? That's correct. So any non-school sponsored club, like you said, it could be a chess club. It could be a, you know, whatever, you know, maybe a different sport or a boys club. Okay. All those kind of different ones that are, you know, coming into the schools and grabbing the kids where they are and making it really convenient for parents to plug their kids into organizations that they may value are then either completely precluded if one is precluded, all of them have to be precluded. I'm sure there's exceptions to that, but basically that's the rule. Or if they're all included, they all have to be included. Is that the general idea? Am I summarizing that right? Yes, that is exactly right. And I'm assuming there are probably other things, you know, like the school could keep a club from participating, let's say, if they were consistently not following guidelines or something like that set forth by the school. That's something like that. The school still has mechanisms and levers to pull to move an organization out. But essentially what the Satanic Temple is doing is saying, let's make it so onerous for the school to let us in that it really only has a couple of choices. It has to put up with us or get rid of everyone. That's the general strategy. That is correct. Okay. Very interesting. So, I mean, Christian parents, particularly, but I would say parents overall, they're encountering something that is actually pretty pernicious and challenging. They just need to sort of stay the course here, recognize the, I suppose, the control that they have over allowing their children to attend such a club. And they have the ability to starve these things out. And so, is what I'm hearing from you, is that a fair way to put it? That's exactly right. In fact, the Satanic Temple has said, the leader of the Satanic Temple has said to us, to us and to others, we don't go into the public school to start Satan clubs. We only go where a Christian club or a Good News club already exists. Again, they're making their purpose very, very clear. Yeah, yeah. Very interesting. Wow. Well, let me pivot to another question, and maybe this is an area we can discuss in, maybe it's not, but one of the things I've noticed as my kids have gotten older, my son participated in Awana when he was young. The churches that we went to when my daughters were, you know, Awana age just didn't have it. But as we've moved into sporting age, travel sports particularly, teenagers are busy. I have two 15-year-old daughters. They're extremely busy. And many times the sports don't respect Sundays. And so I'm wondering if you're noticing or hearing from the churches that you partner with that they're having difficulty sort of, how would I say it, maintaining the space to have children's ministry and teenage ministry, youth ministry on Sundays. Have you seen pivots and changes in that realm where you're trying to look at the Good News clubs and say, how can we help the church with these type of issues? How do we help the church become more of a priority in people's lives? What do we do with sporting events that have now encroached on what used to be sort of a sacred day? I mean, I don't remember having sporting events on Sunday mornings when I was a kid. So I don't know. Do you have any thoughts on that? Yeah, I could probably share a few thoughts. Even when we were raising our kids, I had two girls involved with soccer and a son that was on a traveling team for baseball. So I know exactly what you're talking about. And we as parents made a commitment. We said to our son, this cannot be a regular event where you miss a Sunday. Now, if they were traveling team and they were traveling several states over and it was over a weekend, we would allow that periodically. But we just made it a commitment as parents that this is important to us. Ministry is important to us. You being in ministry is important. You being involved in the church is important to us. It doesn't mean life stops, but you have to make sure your children understand the importance of it. Now, I think you're taking it a step further. You're working with all kinds of people, all kinds of parents that may not have that same perspective. And all I would say is to churches and pastors and parents is if if they are being ministered to by the church in an effective way and they feel and sense the love of God in the in the service by or in the church or in the ministry by their fellow students or even the, of course, the leaders as well. That makes a difference because they aren't going to get that anywhere else. They might find fulfillment in some of the sporting things, but they don't get that love, that unconditional love that comes from the church and from the people of God. And when that is established, when that is strengthened, when they, you know, it's not just a routine. Well, yeah, I got to go to church. It's a morning thing I do on Sundays or a Wednesday. But if they if they if you foster that in your young people that this is a place where you are loved and accepted and you will grow, they see the benefit in it. And that's what they're going to want. And that's really what it comes down to. It's not entertainment. You know, our churches shouldn't try to entertain the boys and girls because that's what the sports does. Sports is entertainment, but it should be ministry. And that's why it's so important. OK, yeah, that's helpful. Well, Child Evangelism Fellowship, and this was something I didn't realize until we kind of booked the interview and I was looking through all of CEF's offerings. You all don't just do face to face sort of programming. That's a lot of what you do. The Good News Clubs and those kind of things are probably at least what I knew you for. I used to be up in Chicago and so I was familiar with the Good News Clubs and those kind of things. But you've also got a pretty expansive set of literature that you distribute. And so talk to me a little bit about what the purpose of the literature is. Is this curriculum that's used in, you know, various clubs or is it more intended to be, you know, that broadly distributed literature that might just prompt someone to go and seek counsel on what this whole Jesus thing is about? So, yes, we have a variety of literature. We have literature that we produce right here in Warrington, Missouri, and that is helpful for the teachers. So when they're teaching

Teaching when they're standing in front of the class and they're actually teaching visuals, there's lesson text, etc. But then we have another set of literature that is designed specifically for children, so it's something you would pass out, something the child would read. We have two different types of devotional books. See, when a child comes to Christ, there's this natural desire to want to get to know God better, so someone has to invest in them. And so devotional books are very, very important. Teaching a child to spend time with God every day, that's one of the purposes that we want to do as we establish them, as we disciple them in the Word of God, is to teach them, God wants to have a relationship with you. And so here's a devotional. Get your Bible out, go through this devotional. And they're written at a child's level. So we have an early reader version that a lot of times parents will help with that. It's a little more graphic. It's more color. And so it can, it has more graphics, I should say. I used the wrong word there. That's more graphics in it. And so there's some more activity for those early readers. And so that really helps. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian-owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free retirement defense guide or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. And then there's the other, it's a one-year devotional book that's for 60 days. And so it's a devotional for the next 60 days. And that helps the child go through those devotionals. And by the way, Warren Wiersbe, who's now home with the Lord, he said as he reviewed these devotional books, we sent him a copy to them when we were developing them. And he says, this is theology for children. When you think about that, teaching theology to children, but at a child's level, that will carry them into the future. It's an amazing thing. So anyways, there's devotional books, but then there's what I would say evangelistic things that are handed out. The Do You Wonder Why is a booklet that's designed to go into an area after a disaster, whether that be a school shooting, which I'm sorry to say they do happen from time to time. We'll take them there. We'll distribute them to the community. We'll offer them to the school themselves. We'll offer them to the churches to use to help answer the question, why do bad things happen in our world? And so that's written at a child's level as well. And we've distributed those around the world in Turkey after the earthquakes in 2023. And we've distributed after hurricanes and flooding in Kentucky. So anywhere that there's a disaster, that's what that book is designed to do. And that answers the question. And not only does it answer the question, but it shares the gospel so they can understand it. If a bad thing happens to you, you know that God loves you and he has a plan for you and he has a purpose for you and that you can rest in your future because your future is with him in eternity. And so that's another product. We have another product. It's Meet the King. And that's a booklet that was designed specifically to reach into the Muslim world. And so that is written with some terminology that helps a Muslim community know and understand the gospel and come to Christ. So that shares the gospel. And then we have some tracts written just for children. Of course, that shares the gospel, helps them to understand the gospel. So literature is a big part of what we do. And why do we do that? It's because we know we won't have all the children that we want to reach in our ministries coming to an event, coming to a club, but we still feel called to share the gospel to all boys and girls so they can have a personal relationship with Christ. Well, and I love the topics and I can only envision, my wife and I have a little joke that I'm a great teenage dad. I'm not kid friendly is usually the way I phrase it. I grew up as an only child, and so I never had younger siblings or was really ever around babies. My son was the first baby I ever held. And so I'm relatively new to children other than just trying to avoid them as a teenager and those kind of things. But as a teenage dad, I'm actually pretty great. Once they can talk and have conversations and really think more in more complex ways, I think it's why I was more effective sort of college teacher than I would ever be in children's ministry worker. But what I what I would say is I can really appreciate the complexity of boiling down something like theodicy. Why do bad things happen to in the world if God is good, why are bad things happening? That has to be a very complicated task to convey in a way that kids would understand it and it actually be compelling for them to understand that God still loves them in the midst of all this pain and suffering. I just I really appreciate that. That's a that's a direction that you all took. So how maybe, you know, maybe you don't, but how how is that done? Like, how do you how do you begin that? Where does it really take the child through this journey? Because they're experiencing something the way I'm understanding you describing it. Obviously, it's available whenever, but it's specifically available when there is a traumatic event of some sort. Right, right. So basically, it's so beautiful how the gospel really is woven into this because we start off in this booklet talking about who God is, the fact that God dearly loves them and he he hurts when bad things happen in the world. But then we start talking about, well, why is there evil in the world? Why do bad things happen in the world? Why are there evil people in the world that perpetrate some of these events? Now, of course, disasters aren't one of those, but like a school shooting. And we just equate to the fact that evil entered into the world and it broke things. Our world has been broken because of that. And so that's where the disasters come from. That's where the evil comes from. We talk about the fact that there is there is evil in the world and where that originated from, which was Satan. He deceived. And so we we actually share the gospel because that's part of it. God loves me, but there's but there's sin in the world and that can't enter into heaven. But Jesus came and he gave his life so you and I could be saved. He shed his blood on that cross and that paid. He was the propitiation for your and my sin. And now you can have a back. You can put that relationship back together that your world can be recreated because of your understanding and your relationship with Christ. Yeah, I mean, I mean, I love the way you phrase that. I think it's almost the way I would just straightforward describe it with adults, with older teens. You know, it's just such an enduring, persistent question. But I love that you are addressing it at this early age and really helping people reframe what could be something that turns them off to God. You know, suggesting that, well, if God is good, this never would have happened. But really helping them understand what the human responsibility is here and how sin ultimately enters the world and why it is that we need a savior. Seems just so crucial to me. So sort of elementary in its theological conception, but also so profound in just understanding that we're suffering because we've been disobedient, because we've because the world is broken and we're in waiting. God isn't fixing it yet, is almost sort of the way I describe it. It's you know, if if God didn't allow evil to happen, we'd be in utopia. And, you know, we'd have the new creation and the new heavens and the new earth already. That's what we're waiting for. So, of course, bad things are going to happen. Like it's sort of common sense to some of us, I suppose. But I just love that you tackle the topic with kids. I think it points to the idea that kids are really capable of in a lot of ways. Kids are probably more capable of receiving these messages. I mean, I don't know how you feel about that statement, but do you find that kids are just more receptive to the gospel? I mean, is there something to that sort of maxim that Jesus says, don't hinder the children from coming to me? Because if you're going to accept the kingdom of God, you need to approach me as a child. That's that is exactly right. Now, that doesn't mean we use the big theological words, of course. But yes, a child of five, if properly instructed, can as readily believe as an adult because the gospel is for children.

He said, let the children come to me, forbid them not. The kingdom of God belongs to such as these. And that was his point. Don't stop them. Don't hinder them. In fact, that would be better if a millstone was hung around your neck than to offend one of these little ones. And so Jesus is very, very clear when he rebukes his disciples and he says those words in the strongest form that the words that he uses are, if you look at that passage, it says he rebuked them. And it was very strong terminology. And so as Jesus is communicating to his disciples, he takes a child up in his arms and says, unless you become a child like this one, he says, you won't even see the kingdom of God. And so for him to make that statement, a child has to be able to understand and believe. So yes, I do agree with your statement that children, they have this inborn, especially at a young age, this desire to believe, this desire to trust, this desire to hear the truth and respond to it. We as adults or as we get older, if you haven't heard that message, the world starts to influence you. You start to question everything you hear. In fact, that's what the Satanic temple is all about. Question every authority. Don't trust anybody. But yet, what's our world like if we can't trust anyone? It would be terrible. And of course, we can trust the God of the Bible. So, you know, I deal a lot with the, what people usually phrase as the secularization of the United States, you know, the cultural drift that we're going through, the, however we might say it, the moral degradation, the departure of Judeo-Christian ethics or however that's phrased. And my sense is that that is beginning to creep into the way our kids are hearing statements about reality, stories about reality. And as we have sort of the internet, which is wonderful in many ways, but also rather detrimental in other ways, kids are exposed to a lot of different stories about reality and about the world. I think our tendency is to get fancy to solve that problem, you know, to come up with innovative ideas to address these issues and to be cooler and more relevant and all of those kind of things. How do you all think about that at CEF? Like if you're gonna reach a kid who's been influenced already early on by stories and conceptions of the world that are just antithetical to the gospel, what's your strategy there? Well, the truth of the gospel remains the same. This scripture is very clear. God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. And these are his words. And so we really depend on those words to communicate the truth and to allow the person or actually allow the Holy Spirit to take those truths and impress them deeply into the heart and minds and thoughts of a child or that adult. And that's what makes the difference. Yes, we can. We take on some, I would say, unique ways to present the gospel. And we do that. We have Unite TV, Unite Radio, Unite Kids app. We have those things. But the truth remains the same. That's kind of the window dressing. But the truth never changes. The message isn't changing. Now, would our applications to a child change? Oh, absolutely. We would talk about things that's going on in the world, the things that are going on in the world, the things that they're hearing, the things that they're being told. We would talk about those things to apply those truths to that child so they can relate to it. But the truth is still the truth is still the truth. Yeah. There's something so simple and profound about just sharing God's truth in ways that people can understand it. And I think, as I've looked at Unite TV and checked out some of your videos that you have online, you can just watching them, you can see how those would be appealing to a child. They are really convey the message of the scriptures in a medium that would make sense to a kid and that a kid could connect with. You know, it speaks in their language, so to speak. It's almost a translation issue. We could think about it like that. And so, but I think that ultimately, when I watched them, I didn't feel like, oh, this is CEF trying to create something that's uber relevant and super cool. And, you know, just trying to woo kids over with a, you know, sort of, as you mentioned previously, an entertainment sort of venue. It really is just a translation, a rendering to give kids a new, a different sort of picture of what it is that they're looking at. But what they're always looking at is the gospel of Jesus Christ. They're always looking at God's word. They're always looking at the truth. Yes, that's exactly true. It reminds me of one of the videos that's on there. I don't know if you saw it and I do apologize. The title of it just slips my mind, but the purpose of this video was to reach the heart of refugees. There's two friends that are talking and they're talking about fitting in and what do they have to do to fit in? And this refugee, of course, is saying to her friend, I want to fit in. I get, I'm invited to this girl's house, but I know there's some activities going on there that I shouldn't get involved in. But I want to fit in. Help me. And this other child then just basically tells them the gospel and that they can have help by God himself to deal with those feelings and that situation and find a friend basically in God and in other believers. It's just a wonderful way to connect even with a refugee that they have, they're wondering a lot of things. They've left their homeland. They're in a new place. They don't know what to do and they want to have friends. Who's the best friend? It's having a friend called Jesus. Very cool. Was we, as we kind of, we're getting toward the end of this, but I wanna, I wanna sort of segment out because from what I understand at CEF, there's this breadth of offerings that I think you have. And so I wanted to sort of segment it and ask some questions about how people might get involved with CEF from a variety of positions. So let's say a parent, where would you suggest a parent of a small child connect with CEF to get their so-called biggest bang for their buck, let's say, and really benefit the most from your ministry as a parent of a small child? So I would, I would say to that parent, check out your local chapter. See if there's a Good News Club in your school. You know, get your, get your child involved in that. Get a devotional book. Get some information that's going to help that child get to know God. I think a parent's desire for a young child is that they come to Christ at an early age. And so some of our devotional books are written with that in mind. They are helping to describe and helping a parent explain the gospel just by reading it with the child, looking at the scripture, reading that verse, talking about it with the child, answering their questions that, because a parent's going to go, how do I relate to my four or five year old or six year old? How do I communicate the gospel that I understand as an adult to them? Well, we have those tools that can help them do that. But I would say plug them into ministry. Send them to a five day club, which is a summer club. Send them to one of our Good News camps. Get them involved with CEF somewhere in some way. But the devotionals are out there. Again, use those. It's a great, great way to help the child, help the parent, help the child. And so that's what I would say to a parent, generally speaking. Now, I love when parents say, I want to send my child to a Good News club, but I want to be there too. I want to learn how to teach and to be involved. I'd say take some training with CEF. Training is offered around this country in those chapters. We have training online, CMI online. You can check out CMI online, register for some courses. There's some free courses there. There's some that you have to pay for, but take some training. Learn about how to minister to your children. Okay. And then when you're thinking about churches, you know, a church who is looking out and trying to think about how to reach children and parents, how to serve their community. And they're seeing, you know, they have these public schools and public spaces that they aren't currently accessing. How would they plug into CEF? What's the process of getting, let's say, a Good News club started? Sure. So you'd want to connect with your local chapter. Now you could contact us out here and we can help facilitate that. But the easiest way is to go on our website, CEFonline.com. And if you go to ministries, it's a tab.

to the top, go there, click on that. You'll see all kinds of things listed, but towards the bottom of the page, you'll actually see find a chapter near you. And if you click on that, plug in your zip code, it'll connect you with the local chapter. And you can reach out to them, say, hey, we'd love to get involved in a Good News Club that already exists, or we'd like to start one in our local school that's across the street, or just down the street. And CEF will come in, they'll do a presentation. They'll share with the congregation, hey, this is the way that you can get involved, or any of you feel called to minister to children, this is a great way to do it. And so CEF can come right alongside the church and help the church walk each step of the way to start a Good News Club in your local area. But I would say, now that's a pretty big commitment. The easiest commitment to start with, if you're a church and you've never heard of CEF, connect with CEF, like I described, but say, we'd like to do a party club in our community. Maybe it's a Christmas party club. Maybe it's a Valentine's party club. Maybe it's a watermelon club in the neighborhood. You know, whatever it is, just start small like that too, and say, we'd like to do a club. Now, CEF will come alongside, they'll help you. They'll give you ideas of where to conduct a club in a community center, maybe even in the public school for a one-time event. That's true. You can do a Christmas party club at a public elementary school after school. Invite all the parents, invite the children. It's a great way to share the gospel with a lot of people at a time where people just love Christmas. So there's lots of different ways churches can get involved. Very cool. And how long, what's the, so when you talk about starting, let's say, just a Good News club, you know, some of the, all of these are gonna require planning, right? But if you're starting from zero and going to a Good News club, what's the normal timeframe for that? So I've seen them begin in two months or less, but I would say the average is about three months from the first contact because there's presentations that have to be given. You have to collect volunteers. There's some training that has to be done. And so there's a process. But if individuals wanna get involved and they say, plug me in wherever I can be plugged in, that can be different. That can happen very quickly. Easy. Three months is not a long time. Oh, no, it's not. Not to make an eternal difference. Yeah, it's a relatively short timeframe to suffer through in order to start a Good News club. That's fantastic. Well, hey, so I usually end my podcast with a question to my guests, and it's the same question every time. And so I wanna ask you this before we finish up here. But what topics do you think Christians should be thinking about to help them be and make disciples more faithfully in America today? And I would expand it maybe for you around the world today. You're involved in an international ministry, so feel free not to limit your insights to America. When I get that question, you gotta know, give, go, get involved somehow. So you gotta know the facts. You wanna understand, you wanna be prepared. So get some training, but then you wanna get involved. You wanna, or you wanna give. So give supports other people around the world, as you mentioned. We have workers in red countries, which I mentioned earlier, where we can't talk about them. We need to protect their identities. But they can't raise support to minister to boys and girls in those countries, Muslim countries, highly Islamic countries. They can't raise the support there. So we are supporting them. So they can give to the local area. They can give to headquarters to help facilitate that. They can give through headquarters to reach some of those missionaries, what we call sponsor a national missionary. And so they can help in that way too. So, or they can personally get involved, which we've already talked about. So pray, give, and go. That really is the key for people. And they can go around the world. They can visit some of our ministries in other parts of the world and get involved there, especially once they've had training here, they can go. They can go to some of these countries. We have workers in Haiti. Of course, that's not the greatest place to go at this point in time because of the unrest. But when things calm down there, it's a great place to go. It's not far. And you can go there and you can minister to boys and girls and allow God to use you wherever you feel called. That's the key. Is God calling you to serve him somewhere, somehow? Answer that call. Yeah. No, I love that. I mean, just, I've always, I'm always fascinated to hear the answers to that question. But I would say that many of them group into this idea of just do the basics. The basics of the faith are so foundational for Christians. Pray, give, and go. I mean, these are things that we've all heard if we've been Christian for any length of time. Right. You know, you throw Bible in Bible study in there, you pretty much got, you know, everything you need. But those basic practices of the faith, they really do reorient us to what God is trying to do in the world. And they give us then a vision of the world that is more shaped by what God would have us do than what we would prefer to do. And I just find those answers to be, I really appreciate that answer. It gets it down to something that people could actually tangibly, you know, perceive themselves as doing in such a simple, simple fashion. So, yes. Yeah, one thing that just comes to mind as you were sharing some of those things is we have this constant bombardment, especially in America, but really all over the world, that we're hearing this message that you deserve certain things. You know, you need to decide what's best for you. And we stop listening to what the Bible has said or what God is saying, what the Holy Spirit is speaking to us and what God's heart is for the world. We start to hear those other voices that say, no, please yourself. Do what feels good to you. And even as the Christians in the church, sometimes those voices become so loud, we start believing that and we start heading that direction. And so we do need to reorient ourselves from time to time to really what God has called us to. Well, Fred, I appreciate the work you're doing at Child Evangelism Fellowship. As I said, you know, I was fascinated by Jesse Overholzer and his whole process of even starting the organization. And I'm just, I don't know whether it's appropriate to say I'm a fan of what you all do, but I think it's so different. The expertise and the care, the orientation, everything about it is so different than what I usually do. I am not, you'd never call me and be like, hey, James, do you wanna run a children's ministry? That's a bad idea. It's just, it's not the right move. And so I think it's, I so appreciate your focus on children, having raised kids myself and knowing the difficulties of conveying these complex theological topics in simple terms. I just think it's a really profound work that you're doing. I appreciate your partnership with the local church. I think that's crucial. And I just really love what CEF is doing. And so just thanks for your work. Really appreciate it. For the glory of God. Absolutely. Well, thanks for being on the show. Thanks for being here with us. Thanks for sharing what CEF is all about. It's been a pleasure to talk with you. And hopefully if there's anything going on with CEF that we need to know, you can come back and share that with us. I'd love to. Thanks so much for the invitation. Yeah, absolutely. Hey everybody, thanks for tuning in to this episode. You can check out all of the links that Fred mentioned in the show notes. I'll get those all up there as we post this episode. And I just encourage you to take a look at everything that CEF is doing. It's fantastic stuff. If you have kids, if you're in a community, if your church is interested in working in the public school, CEF would be a fantastic partner. And that'll all be in the show notes for you to check out. We will catch you on the next episode of Thinking Christian. Thanks everyone. I just want to take a second to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the Thinking Christian podcast. If you go to lifeaudio.com, you'll find dozens of other faith-centered podcasts in their network. They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more. Has fear stolen your peace? I'm Jennifer Slattery, lead host of the Faith Over Fear podcast, helping you fight your fears and grow your faith. Subscribe at lifeaudio.com.