How do we reach the kids?
In Australia, we can reach them through RE (Religious Education) and Scripture Union, but there are many restrictions that apply within the confines of school walls and, sadly, often the church.
So I believe the best way to equip kids to pray is through a local Kidspray Club, which can work alongside the church. Your church can sponsor a Kidspray Club, and send your children’s workers to a training seminar or even sponsor one.
Background
While living in the United States, I worked as an occupational therapist in the Virginia Beach City Schools, Virginia, for ten years (1987 to 1997). During that time I observed serious moral decline in those schools, which was reflective of what was happening across American society after public prayer and the Ten Commandments were taken out of the public schools in 1962 and 1980 respectively.
When I returned to Australia in August 1999, I observed that this moral decline was also taking place in Australian schools. I developed a burden to see “prayer put back into the schools.” In one sense prayer has never been taken out of the schools. As one teacher said, “As long as there are tests, students will pray.” But public prayer as an integral part of public education has been banned in deference to “multiculturalism,” even though Australia has a Christian constitution. In some states in Australia we have the privilege of teaching Religious Education classes. The Scripture Union, Miracle Education, chaplains, and many other organizations also work with students, so public prayer has not been completely expelled from the schools.
As an intercessor, I have attended hundreds of adult prayer meetings, but my association with the Children’s Prayer Network (from 2001) inspired me to raise up children to pray. While researching for my book, Let the Children (2007), which features the story of the Children’s Prayer Network, I observed how God has always used children. I remember reading how Esther Ilnisky, founder of the Children’s Global Prayer Movement, asked God, “Where are the intercessors for this sore world?”
“Turn to the children,” God replied. “They will pray; they will intercede; they will cry out for the lost; they will not give up till the answer comes” (page 135). Ilnisky believes God has placed in every child a desire to pray. It is up to parents and their teachers to release and mentor that desire.
The History of Kidspray Clubs
The history of Kidspray Clubs goes back a long way. From the time that I rounded up children on Australian beaches with the Children’s Special Service Mission (CSSM), now the Scripture Union, I have always had kids on my heart. We know they are on God’s heart too, because he died for them as well as you. “Let the children come to me,” he said, “for of such is the kingdom of heaven.” And “except you become as a little child, you cannot enter in.”
Years ago, while working as Children’s Pastor at New Life Bible Church in Cleveland Tennessee, I developed the highly successful “Adventure Clubs”—soul winning out where the children are. I moved on to other things, but God has recently resurrected the idea, refined it and honed it to focus on kids praying. This is in line with the Children in Prayer (CIP) global movement that God is raising up.
Recently God sent us to the Yarrabah Aboriginal Community near Cairns in Australia “to teach the children to pray.” That was our commission. But how, Lord? I knew the Lord’s Prayer was a key and we had opportunity to present it to seventeen classrooms during Religious Education. But we felt there was more. God showed me to start an after-school club. I saw a school gate and as I stood there with a banner and balloons, the kids came and followed us to a community hall. We commenced with vegemite sandwiches, bickies, and cordial. That was the beginning.
