Word: jesus
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...minutes after 3 o'clock on a spring afternoon, a color poster of a crucified Jesus hangs in front of the art classroom in a public school in Pennsylvania. For the next hour, three adults will guide 21 children between the ages of 4 and 12 through songs they know by heart (Good News, Jesus Died for Me!) and a Bible lesson ("Heaven's a perfect place. And Jesus wants you to live there!"). It sounds and feels like Sunday school, but it's Wednesday. This is the meeting of Pleasant Gap Elementary's Good News Club, a weekly event...
...Fellowship, which supports 4,600 Good News Clubs spanning all 50 states, focuses on children because they are so approachable. Its literature exhorts members to seize "every opportunity to instill God's Word in tender hearts while they are young." Most born-again Christians accept Jesus Christ as their Saviour before age 18, according to surveys conducted by the Barna Research Group, an organization based in California that tracks religious attitudes. And children under 14 are most open to the idea, the group has found. Last year, according to the Fellowship's careful record keeping, 17,537 children professed their...
...sustain interest in the club, leaders use every imaginable child enticement: colorful Jesus dolls, cheery songs and mountains of sugar. The Pleasant Gap session starts with a round of cookies. At another club nearby, kids who answer scriptural questions get pelted with candy fired out of a spring-loaded catapult. Children get $1 in fake money for coming and $2 for bringing a friend. Every few months, they can redeem the "money" for--guess what?--more candy...
...every meeting, the club leader asks if anyone would like to accept Jesus as his Saviour. If a child raises his hand, the leader has a one-on-one conversation with him to see if he is ready to be "saved" then and there. That practice has been criticized by mainline churches, even as they applaud the Fellowship's other activities. Says Rosalie Potter, head of evangelism and church development at the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.): "It would be hard to expect a child of four or five to have a conversion experience with integrity." Fellowship leaders say that attitude underestimates...
...wake-up call [NATION, May 7]. With innocent missionaries being killed, Colombia torn apart by prohibition-fueled violence and America's prison population at record levels, perhaps it's time for politicians to drop the drug-war hysteria. As a Christian, I feel I should ask myself, What would Jesus do? The answer is not to persecute, incarcerate and deny forgiveness to drug users--the essence of America's zero-tolerance drug policy. ROBERT SHARPE Washington...