Sunday school teacher that touches a soul

“Over 80% of the children in the United States don’t go to church on Sundays. However, over 85% of the Christians in United States accepted Jesus Christ as their savior in ages between 4 and 15. What does this mean?”

On Tuesday, the 16th at noon, monthly regional pastoral seminar was held at Capital Bible Seminary, in Virginia campus.

The seminar was lead by missionary Wayne Rautio, also a director at Child Evangelism Fellowship (“CEF”). The discussion was about “Teachers that Touch Lives”, and director Wayne emphasized how important the Sunday school teachers are.

Director Wayne said, “the true teaching is to let the children experience the ‘change’ in their lives. The teachers should experience the ‘change’ in their spiritual lives before they can lead the children to experience the change their spiritual lives”. The only model we can follow and the best teacher of all time is ‘Jesus Christ’ alone.

Director Wayne faced a lot of challenges and experienced the changes in his life after a mission trip to Eastern Europe including Moscow, and that it was a turning-point in his service at CEF. Moreover, he pointed that many congregations will go back to their regular life with any changes in their lives even though they attended the service and as they were leaving the church they tell the pastor “how graceful the service” was.

“However, God demands changes in our lives. More importantly, the Sunday school teachers must experience that changes in their lives first and it will affect children”.

He also said, “today is multi-media era, various worldly culture inundates through number of videos and/or programs, but the most important thing we have to approach them is with the “words”.

He emphasized, “the kids should be taught Daily Devotion at home, not only at Sunday school, especially it is important to start before age of 5.”

Precise and methodical teaching of Gospel through variety programs offered by CEF is their strong point. Good News Club is the one of the programs that they offer. A family will open their house to invite the kids and teach the Gospel through fun activities.

In Northern Virginia, instead of opening someone’s house, they made it as one of the after school activities. About from 20 to 50 kids are enrolled in these types of programs and learn the Gospel through Good New Club.

A Korean missionary Eui-Jung Hwang, serves at Northern Virginia CEF, explained a forte of Good News Club, “it is very difficult to arrange these types of programs even at a big church. Which means they are short on teachers or servants to teach the kids. In such, I think it is very important that we are able to teach kids after school at a public school”.

In 2001, the Supreme Court granted Good New Club to hold programs at a local public school. It was prohibited to hold religious programs, not limited to praying and bible study publicly before then. However, CEF took the case to the court and the Supreme Court granted in June 2001. Since then, CEF’s Good News Club expanded to hold bible studies at public elementary schools across the states in U.S.

Missionary Hwang added, “we will see a huge improvement in children ministry if Korean churches unite with a strong effort to gather the children who have not heard the Gospel to local public schools.”

Hannah Seo and Grace Lee were two Koreans whom are currently serving Good News Club and teaching the Gospel at a public school were trained through Super Seminars Program (a program to produce teachers) which it started November of last year.

Many Korean churches in Northern Virginia with a heart towards Children Ministry invited missionary Eui-Jung Hwang to lead a seminar.

CEF is wide open to anyone who loves children. Contact: 703-641-9201 (ext.3)
Missionary Eui-Jung Hwang’s e-mail: livingwords@gmail.com

-Translated by Jenny Choi