The Alex McFarland Show-34-Reaching Every Child for Christ with guest Lydia Kaiser

The spiritual condition of America, politics, culture, and current events, analyzed through the lens of Scripture.

Welcome to the Alex McFarland Show. Very famously in the Gospel of Matthew chapter 28 verses 18 through 20 is a passage of Scripture that has come to be known as the Great Commission. Jesus has risen from the dead, he's ascending back to heaven, and he says, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.

Hi, Alex McFarland here. We've got a great show and you've tuned in on a wonderful day. If, like myself, you care about this thing we call the Great Commission and telling all the world, and as the Scripture says in Matthew 28, 18, and 19, go into all the world. Tell the world about the Lord Jesus.

And then in verse 20 it says, Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you, and lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. What a great commission, something to live for, to tell the world about salvation and to tell people of all ages around the globe how they can grow in the Lord and they can experience God's plan for their life. Well, I am at the headquarters of a place, an organization that has given decades and decades to the fulfillment of Christ's Great Commission, a ministry very, very special to me. And I'll tell you why, but it's Child Evangelism Fellowship. And I am in middle America at the CEF headquarters and I'm with one of the leaders of Child Evangelism Fellowship, a dear sister in Christ, Lydia Kaiser. And so, Lydia, first of all, I want to say thank you for spending some moments with us, but also, and I know I speak for millions of people, thank you and your team for what you're doing to take the name of Christ around the world to people of all ages, but especially children. So I want to hear all about what God is doing in CEF, Child Evangelism Fellowship, and we welcome to the program Lydia Kaiser. Thanks so much for having me, Alex.

I feel very humbled for you to say thank you to me because there are so many workers out on the field who are working very hard every day. And I just have the privilege of supporting them in a small way. But here in the U.S., we have 400 offices around the country, and we call them chapters, and we have state chapters. And most of your listeners can go on chapters.cefonline.com and look up their nearest chapters.

But those people, I tell you, they just represent hundreds of years. Many times when people get into CEF, they just never get out because they find out that there's nothing better you can do with your life than to lead children to Christ. Well, I heartily agree, and I'm looking at your magazine, Impact Magazine, and the subtitle says, Reaching the Next Generation One Child at a Time. Tell me, Lydia, what is the vision of Child Evangelism Fellowship? What's it all about?

Give us some of the history, if you would, and then why this is the calling and the passion that you all share. Well, CEF was started in 1937 by Jesse Ervin Overholtzer, and he was affectionately known as Mr. O. And he took the little wordless book that Spurgeon came up with, with just the three colors, the black, red, and white. And then I think D.L. Moody added the gold page, and Overholtzer went to Chicago and got some support from Moody Church and loved D.L. Moody, and he added, Overholtzer added the green page.

And along the tradition of D.L. Moody reaching those children in the inner city, Overholtzer won hundreds of children to Christ in just one summer there as he was learning how to do this. And then he had this globe, which you're going to see when I take you on a tour of the whole world, and he prayed for every country of the world. And our slogan now is, Every Child, Every Nation, Every Day. And his vision, the vision God gave him, is being realized now as we are all over the world, and we stand on the shoulders of both Mr. O. and so many other great evangelists as we are reaching these children. So that's our next big vision, is to reach 100 million children a year. Pre-COVID, we were reaching face-to-face now, not just with all the other media, we don't count all that, but face-to-face, over 25 million children a year. And our president is challenging us that in 10 years from now, we need to be reaching 100 million children a year.

And so we are kicking that off with a big Christmas party club push, because when kids come to these Christmas party clubs, they get excited about Jesus, and then we'd like for them to begin regularly coming to a good news club. This is wonderful, and you know, I was somewhat familiar with the back story of Jesse Overholtzer, because one of our very closest friends, Lydia Bowman, who is in heaven now, but 24 years ago when we started the ministry that I lead, Truth for a New Generation, Lydia was our founding board member, and she was the first full-time female employee of CEF. She had told us that story many times.

She died at 103 about a year ago. But Mrs. Bowman was a champion for CEF in our part of the world, Greensboro, North Carolina, and of course we know a lot of other people as well. But I did not know the D.L. Moody connection and the Spurgeon. Now the wordless book, Lydia, when I was a youth pastor and a children's minister, we used the wordless book, you know, black and red and white and green and gold, but I did not know the connection between Moody and Mr. O and how CEF had used that as well. That's wonderful.

Right. Well, I believe that the use of the book probably would have died if it were not for Mr. Overholtzer. He's discovered it, or his wife discovered it in a little shop where they carried things from Spurgeon and said, oh, this is interesting. But Moody and Overholtzer realized that you really need to start with the gold page, and that's even more true today because when you talk about God, even today, you don't know if others are thinking of the same God we're thinking of. It used to be you could just say God and everyone would picture the same thing in their mind, but it's very important that you establish first who and what we're talking about when we say God and that we establish that he created us, created us in his image, that he loves you, that he wants to be your forever friend and draw you to himself, but something is separating us from God. And then you go on to the dark page. Well, I want you, and we've got so much to talk about, folks, if you're just tuning in, this is Alex McFarland here in Missouri at the headquarters of Child Evangelism Fellowship, and I'm speaking with Lydia Kaiser. We've got a brief break in a few seconds, actually, but I want you to give the website because, look, church is everywhere. Folks, I've seen it. When people get involved in ministering to children and leading them to Christ, it brings a move of God's Spirit. I'm just going to say it, Lydia.

I think it brings revival to the churches that participate. So give the website for CEF, please. Sure. CEFonline.com. CEFonline.com. Well, stay tuned, folks. We're going to come back and talk about what the world needs in terms of not only a simple gospel presentation, but even a defense of the gospel, apologetics.

And CEF is on the cutting edge because they've got a vision for that as well. This is the Alex McFarland Show. Stay tuned. We are back after this brief break.

Fox News and CNN call Alex McFarland a religion and culture expert. Stay tuned for more of his teaching and commentary after this. What are you doing next summer?

Hey, how about this? I want to invite you to join me in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, August 6 through 11, 2023, for the Faith and Family Retreat. It's going to be awesome. We'll talk about foundational things. What does it mean to be a disciple?

How can you defend your faith? Family time, concerts, renewal of wedding vows. It's going to be great. Then fun, a trip to Dollywood.

Who wouldn't like that? And then faith in action. There will be a mission outreach, talking to people about Christ. So again, August 6 through 11, 2023, Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. Go to faithandfamilyretreat.com. I hope to see you there.

He's been called trusted, truthful, and timely. Welcome back to the Alex McFarland Show. Go into all the world and make disciples of every nation.

Tell them the good news. Hi, Alex McFarland here. Welcome back to the program. We're speaking with Lydia Kaiser. And what a blessing to be at the world headquarters of Child Evangelism Fellowship, a ministry I've heard about my whole life, really, my whole Christian life.

And Lydia, first of all, thanks for being with us. But as Angie and I drove in, we were kind of blown away. This is an amazing campus, a very large campus. And if you would, tell us what all goes on here in all of these buildings. What's going on here at CEF World Headquarters? Well, first, you should know that we have divided the world into eight regions. And so each region has its own Children's Ministries Institute. So here at headquarters in the USA, we do run the North American Caribbean Children's Ministries Institute, or CMI.

And so that's going to be true for all the other eight regions. And each region has their own regional director, literature director, education director, multimedia director, and so on. But we do a lot of training here for all types of leadership. We have folks come here to learn how to be a state director or a chapter director. We hold a lot of events. We have CEF Press here, where we publish our curriculum and all of the offices for supporting the field people. And then we have a brand new 10,000 square foot digital ministries facility, where we are pumping out lots of new digital resources to reach children with that vehicle now. Yeah, I saw that. In fact, I've got it on my mobile device right now, Unite, U-N-I-T-E, uniting kids with the gospel through animated adventure songs, missionary stories, and more.

This is beautiful. So is this like an app, a digital app that you've come out with? Yes, it is. So we actually have three platforms, and all three apps can be downloaded on any mobile device. And there's Unite TV, which has all the video content. And so that is at cefonline.com-unitetv. Then we have Unite Radio. So again, cefonline.com-uniteradio.

And that's a podcast, and that can also be found in any of your podcast platforms. And then we also have Unite Kids, which is a devotional, a daily devotional for kids. And that includes lots of activities, things that they can do to get in their Bible reading, and quizzes, and things they can earn.

You know, it's a lot of fun. Last week when you and I taught, we were kind of queuing up this visit because we were talking about what the Lord's had us doing with apologetics clubs, and we've been working with high schoolers and all across the nation trying to get high schoolers to obviously have a relationship with the Lord and be born again, but to know what they believe. And the subject came up of apologetics. And Lydia, you mentioned a girl that you were sharing the Gospel with, an 11-year-old girl, and it illustrates the need for apologetics. Now, folks, when we talk about apologetics, we're not saying that we're apologizing. We're not saying, oh, I'm sorry for being a Christian, but it means to defend the faith. You have seen in your time with CEF that even children have a skepticism sometimes that needs to be addressed.

Talk, if you would, about the overlap of apologetics and evangelism as you see it, if you would. Well, you mentioned that little girl I told you about. She was 11, and she said, you know, I've come to camp two years now, and I'd like to ask Jesus into my heart, but I can't because the Bible isn't true. And I said, why would you say that? And she said, well, my science teacher says that, you know, the moon broke off from the earth and blah, blah, blah, all this stuff, but there's something totally different in the Bible, you know, with the creation story.

So I said, let's sit down and talk about this. And so I explained to her how that we can look around us and see from a scientific standpoint that everything in the world needs everything else, that it's a very codependent ecology, and so it had to have been created within a few days, exactly like the Bible says, and that what we see around us is reflected by what's in the Bible more scientifically than these other ideas. And so she was satisfied, and she asked Jesus to save her, and she was only 11. And I thought, oh, my goodness, if an 11-year-old can see that there's a problem with needing to know that the Bible is God's word before you trust the Lord, you know, with your life, then children need apologetics, and so we need to be teaching that at every opportunity. We've got a couple of new videos that I just love on Unite TV. They're animated videos, and one of them is, is there a God?

And another one is, has the Bible changed? And for the children, even they can understand with this animation all about the manuscripts and the Dead Sea Scrolls and things like that. It's really wonderful. And let me encourage everybody listening.

Children can get it. When you talk about God, one of the illustrations we've used, Lydia, is like a building. I've said to children, you know, we're in this building. How did this building get here?

What's more likely? Did a tree fall in a windstorm and hit some rocks? Or maybe somebody built this building. Now, I don't know who the architect was, but somebody designed it. And somebody came and brought the lumber and built the building. And kids can get this, whether it be a simple illustration like that. You mentioned the interdependency of things, that everything needs everything else. Whether it be the rationality of God existing, or God gave us the Bible, and the Bible is completely, entirely God's word.

And Jesus died and took our punishment on the cross. We have found, and I know you would concur, children can get it, can't they? Absolutely. One of my favorite illustrations is to just take a mousetrap and have the kids count the parts of the mousetrap. And they say, well, let's just take one piece off of this and see if it works. Well, no, it can't.

It needs every part. And that is exactly what we see in creation. And it's so important for kids to know this because they need to know that God created them special.

He knows them. They are not an accident. And when you see these kids who have a single mom, or they weren't planned, or they're shuffled back and forth and they don't feel loved and valued, when you look into their eyes and explain this to them, the light that comes onto their face, the head lifts, the chin lifts, the eyes lighten up, and they realize, there's a reason for my being here. I'm loved, I'm special, I'm created, and it makes it all worth it.

Well, it really does. Lydia, in prepping for my time out here, because I've got the privilege of speaking to some of your staff tomorrow, I was doing a lot of prepping, reading about teens and teen mental health as of October. So this is a very fresh statistic just a month and a half ago. 63% of all of America's mental health bandwidth, counselors, psychologists, psychiatrists, mental health hospitals, substance abuse programs, 63% of all of the mental health profession in America is devoted to 13- to 17-year-olds.

Isn't that amazing? That's from the Center for Disease Control, because there's a crisis of identity and a crisis of purpose. And like you say, when kids realize that, look, yes, the Lord made you, God wanted you here, God created you, you have a purpose, God loves you, God has a plan for your life, when they realize that God is real and He has a plan for their life and they are very special in the eyes of God, it changes everything, doesn't it?

Absolutely. And the CDC also came out with some statistics showing that the suicide rate is skyrocketing among children and adolescents. And we just reached 8 billion people in the world, and 2.2 billion of them, that is about 28%, are children. So as the population goes up, the percentage of us that are children is also going up. We're going to approach one-third of us being children, 40% of us being children, and so on. So we have got to reach children. If we want to reach the world for Jesus, we need to reach children and we need to become better at presenting to children and answering their concerns. Stay tuned, we've got a brief break when we come back, more about how Child Evangelism Fellowship is touching the world and how your church, and yes, you, can be involved in reaching children in partnership with CEF.

Don't go away, we're back after this. Fox News and CNN call Alex McFarland a religion and culture expert. Stay tuned for more of his teaching and commentary after this.

Do you have a desire to deepen your faith, better understand Christian apologetics, or to get a biblical perspective on current events? Well, I've tried to make it simple for you to do just that. On my website, alexmcfarland.com, there's a new section called Ask Alex Online.

It's simple, it's clean, and you can read my answers to common questions about God, faith, and the Bible. So visit the website alexmcfarland.com and look for the section that says Ask Alex Online. He's been called trusted, truthful, and timely. Welcome back to the Alex McFarland Show. Welcome back and Merry Christmas.

Alex McFarland here. We're talking with Lydia Kaiser from Child Evangelism Fellowship. By the way, with Christmas approaching, you probably aren't thinking about the summer of 2023, but I want to remind you something. We will be, as we are every summer, mid-summer, we'll be at the Cove in western North Carolina, the Billy Graham Training Center in Asheville, July 7 through 9.

I'm very honored Will Graham has invited me back to finish my series on First and Second Peter. And the theme is Thriving Till He Comes. And every year it fills up and we meet with people from all over America, Canada, internationally.

We get around the Word of God and we drill down deeply into the Scriptures and we fellowship and we pray together. And there are just inspiring sites. There's so much about the ministry of Billy Graham and then, of course, there's great food. But the Cove, the website is thecove.org, T-H-E-C-O-V-E, thecove.org. I would love to see you there July 7 through 9.

And it would make a great Christmas gift for someone you love or your pastor. So check out thecove.org and just look for my name, if you would, in the search bar, Alex McFarland. Also let me remind you to please keep in prayer the Viral Truth Clubs. We're chartering new clubs all across the country, we're equipping high schoolers and even have some chapters at colleges and middle schoolers, too, to know Christ and to love the Lord and be able to defend their faith.

And you can find my travel schedule at my own website, which is alexmcfarland.com, viraltruth.com. And we ask for your prayers and we thank you for your interest and involvement and financial support. Well, God bless you. And Lydia, I want to say thank you for what you're doing with CEF. You know, as you and I record this, we're only several weeks away from Christmas, my favorite holiday, because there couldn't be an Easter and an empty tomb if there weren't also a Christmas and the coming of Christ. And it really is, I'm not trying to be trite or cliché here, it is the greatest story ever told because, as you and I were saying before the break, in a time when people have kind of a crisis of identity and youth don't know why their life would matter, this is the verse I think of, Romans 5-8, God demonstrated His love and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. People need to know that they matter so much to the Lord that Jesus came from heaven to earth to die to rise again. That love from Jesus to each one of us personally, that will change a life, won't it?

Absolutely. And you know, this time of year when we are so grateful for the way Jesus came and gave His life for us, came as a baby to live on this earth, our hearts overflow with, I want to share this, I want to do something, I want to give a gift in the name of Jesus. Well, one of the most rewarding things that you can do is volunteer in a Christmas party club. And it is so fun, I mean, it's kind of shocking that there are children who don't really understand the true meaning of Christmas. And when you look at a child and tell them that God came as a little baby and grew up as a child, He was your age one time, He was a kid, He understands you, He gets you, and He wants to spend time with you.

Again, it just really builds up that child and draws them with the good news of Jesus. And it is a fabulous way to celebrate Christmas is to volunteer in a Christmas party club. So yeah, you can go to chapters.cefonline.com and find your nearest chapter and go party for Christmas. Now, when churches link arms with CEF, is it like the pastor or can any adult leaders from a church get involved? Who do you most like to partner with from local churches? Well, we love to partner with churches. And what we want to do is strengthen the church itself. A lot of churches have just a handful of people who are doing all the children's ministry and they're, frankly, kind of burned out. And so what we like to do is come into that church and do some training so that there are more people who are competent and confident to work in the children's ministry. And when that church is feeling strong, then we grease the rails for them to do outreaches in the community.

Christmas party clubs, good news clubs, five-day clubs in the summertime, we train teenagers. And so then we help them to reach children in the community who would not have otherwise come into church. But then once they get excited about Jesus and they say, Mom, Dad, we need to go to church, well, where do you think they'll go? So this is a wonderful way to reach people in the community and bring them into church. Do you find that a lot of the people that as they grow up and they either get involved with CEF or they contribute to CEF, they are alums. I mean, they were reached as children, and then years and years later as adults, they somehow get involved.

Yes, that's right. Sometimes I'll say, are you familiar with Child Evangelism Fellowship? And they'll say, no, I don't think I am. I say, well, we have this program called Good News Clubs. Oh, I went to a good news club, you know, or a five-day club or Backyard Bible Club or whatever. And they realized that they might have even come to Christ through CEF.

But because they were children, they didn't realize that the parent organization was Child Evangelism Fellowship. Well, I want you to give, if you would, the website again. And folks, this digital content, UNITE, U-N-I-T-E, it is world class.

It will impact the children that you have in your life. But websites, online, app, tell us how to find all things CEF, Lydia. Well, go to your app store and look for UNITE and CEF.

And you should be able to find at least two of them. Go to your podcast app or platform and look for UNITE and the letter CEF. But then if you go on the website, our website, you can also find instructions all about and how to sign up so that you can get notifications when new things are being...

There's new content all the time and you want to know what that is. So you go to CEFonline.com slash UNITEkids. You know, the Bible says that this gospel of the kingdom will be preached to all nations around the world and then the end will come. And we're living in a time that things like Bible translations, computer software aids in that, and online and international travel, we're living in the generation that is seeing great, great strides for the Great Commission. And we might be the generation that's here when Jesus returns. But we have this moment and this day to evangelize. And the Bible says that we have to work while it is day. The night comes when no one can work. Isn't there a sense of urgency and excitement? We're almost out of time, Lydia, but just this one brief life to live, to invest in the gospel, and Christ is coming. We've got to do this and be proactive while we have opportunity, don't we? Yes, we do. And it is so rewarding.

There's just really no better way to spend your life. Well, I want to say thank you. God bless you. You'll definitely remain much in our prayers. We're very excited for what God is doing through CEF to reach, yes, the world, but to reach children. You're doing a great work, and we thank you. Thank you for having CEF, for featuring CEF on your program, Alex. Well, folks, you can share this. I would encourage you to share this with somebody. We're on all the podcast platforms.

We're on 251 radio stations a week. Thank you for listening. God bless you. Tell somebody about the Alex McFarland show, but most of all, tell somebody about Jesus. Alex McFarland Ministries are made possible through the prayers and financial support of partners like you. For over 20 years, this ministry has been bringing individuals into a personal relationship with Christ and has been equipping people to stand strong for truth. Learn more and donate securely online at Alex McFarland dot com. You may also reach us at Alex McFarland, P.O. Box 10231, Greensboro, North Carolina 27404, or by calling 1-877-YES-GOD and the number one. That's 1-877-Y-E-S-G-O-D one. Thanks for joining us. We'll see you again on the next edition of the Alex McFarland Show.