Train Up A Child

Proverbs 22:6 says "Train children in the right way, and when old, they will not stray." Sometimes I find myself reading Proverbs and thinking I've gotten a hold to a bunch of fortune cookies, but this is one scripture that I have seen come true. As a child I watched my parents, in their zeal and love for their church, work hard to make sure that every person who entered the church or heard the name of the church always thought positively about the church from their interaction with them. Not only did they tell us what we should do, but they exhibited that exact type of behavior. When I got married, I noticed that my husband's family, especially my father-in-law, exhibited the type of behavior that spoke "do as I do AND as I say" because they were mostly the same action.

Central United Methodist Church is fortunate to have young people who affiliate themselves with us, not because of parental involvement and persuasion, but because of the actions of quite a few of our members. The church as a whole should rally around these young people and train them in the proper way, so that when they are older, they will remember those teachings and continue them on into the next generation, and so on.

This summer eight young people from Central will participate in MissionFest 2011 at Galloway United Methodist Church and Millsaps College, a 250+% increase over the number of students who participated in MissionFest 2010. We will also have two young people who will travel to Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana to participate in Youth 2011. Youth 2011 is the national youth gathering for United Methodists. Held every four years, it is the opportunity for youth leaders and youth from all over the nation to come together and spend four days in powerful worship, bible study, workshops, training and fun. Convo 2011 is scheduled for July 8 - 10 and hopefully we will have young people attending it as well.

Please continue to pray for our young people and become actively involved in their Christian training. If we want them to have great values and morals we must first "train children in the right way, and when old, they will not stray."