Eating Worms for Missions
God is doing great things at LifeChurch in Maple Grove, Minnesota.
We are a growing church of 200, and we came to LifeChurch in 2007 to build a children's ministry from scratch. We started with 10 elementary-aged children and now we average 24 kids in kids' church and six in the nursery on Sunday mornings. We have seen an increase in retaining young families with children.
What we're seeing God do:
- Many children have accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.
- Those kids who accepted the Lord were water baptized.
- Children are receiving and seeking the baptism of the Holy Spirit.
- One child has been called to be a children's pastor, and she is currently serving and assisting in children's ministry.
- Children are praying for others and praying for their friends when they are sick.
- Children are receiving words of knowledge and visions from the Lord that have been 85 percent accurate to what our intercessors are receiving during their prayer times.
- Children are getting a heart to reach their friends, and they're inviting them to targeted outreach events.
- Currently we are building a family ministry and finding ways to connect our parents to kids while having periodic family services that are geared to the kids and parents.
In addition, our kids are getting a deep love for missions! The kids of LifeChurch rarely gave money to missions previously. So we made it a goal to train our kids about missions.
- In 2007 we raised $755.
- In 2008 we doubled our giving to $1,646.
- In 2009 we have set a three-month goal of $2,000. We raised $2,521.00! PTL!
In Jan the kids wanted me to eat a worm if we raised our goal. So in March we passed out BGMC Buddy Boxes to the church to help us out. On the last Sunday in March, we did a "dash for cash," which gave us more than what we needed to reach our goal.
Recently, before dismissing the kids from the adult service, I ate three worms because of the kids exceeded their goal. Kids came down to the front of the sanctuary with cameras and camcorders to document this awesome event. The church loved it, even though a few complain about me eating worms in church. It was worth it!
Go figure! In two years we have taken kids from playing dodge ball to being disciples who love coming to church each week.
-Steve Ekholm, children's pastor, LifeChurch
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