NRB Chronicles 2022 - Child Evangelism Fellowship's Lydia Kaiser

How fun, always, to be at the NRB and see all the different ways God has used in folks.

Sort of an old friend, I guess we've done this a few times, but it's so cool to see. God loves children, and so He loves what Lydia Kaiser is doing with Child Evangelism Fellowship. Children lead to so many wonderful things, so welcome, Lydia. Thank you.

Thanks for having me, Robbie. And so what's going on new with Child Evangelism Fellowship? Well, let me tell you real quick, in case people don't know what CEF does, we reach children around the world, we're international, and our flagship program is the Good News Club, which meets after school and in public schools.

And I've had a number of people say to me today, is that legal? Yes, they have to give us the same access any other club might have. Children have to get a permission slip to attend any club, and so we have 5,000 Good News Clubs in public schools and another 1,000 that meet off school property after school. And that's during the school year, and then during the summer we have five-day clubs, and those are taught by teenagers in the Christian Youth in Action program, where we train them for a month and then they just work their tails off, doing club after club, day after day, for the month of July, reaching thousands and thousands of children. Yeah, and not just thousands and thousands of children, because the genius of Child Evangelism Fellowship, or it's God's genius, right, is how many times do the kids then impact the parents? Right, yes, and this is duplicated all over the world, we're in most countries of the world and reach. Pre-COVID numbers were over 25 million the year 2020, we were down to about 16 something, 16 million something.

Just a mere 16 million. Yeah, but we'll be getting back up there again, and that's thanks to very dedicated workers, 96% of our workers are nationals, you know, they already know the language, they know the culture and the context, and probably most importantly, when the bullets fly, when the flood waters come, you know, when the wars start, they stay with their people, and keep evangelizing, even in refugee camps, wherever they are, they don't leave, so they keep reaching those kids. Yeah, which is unfortunately happening more and more in the season that we're in, you know, how beautiful that there are people there, like you said, nationals that speak the language, know the culture, know what these kids are facing versus other kids, and can reach out? Right, and you know, when they run for their lives, with only what they can carry, guess what they carry?

Their CEF materials, their flashcards, and their heavy printed material, knowing that wherever they end up, there's going to be kids there that need the comfort of Jesus. Really? Yeah. So, wow, do you have, like, I guess you have reports of that, that kind of thing happening? Yes, absolutely. So, Afghanistan, now Ukraine, I mean, the refugee situations just, and from other ministries I work with, you know, it's such a vulnerable time. Absolutely, yeah, we have 70 workers in Ukraine, and that's just, you know, plus their family members, and so we are very concerned for them at this time. And so CEF is very much an international thing? Yes, yes, so whatever programs you see running here, we run everywhere. So we've divided the world up in eight regions.

Each region has a regional director, an education director, a literature director, a media director, and we duplicate everything that we do here in the U.S. So, awesome. So what, when you came to NRB this year, what were you hoping to do? Well, have some interviews, get the word out, because I feel like, you know, I talk to people who are over 50, and they seem to know who CEF is, and the Good News Club, people under 50 don't seem to. So I feel like we are the country's best kept secret, and so we want more, we want to partner with churches. So whenever I see someone with a little orange church badge, I tell them how we want to help their church to do better at what they do when reaching children. We can come in and do trainings and help them with their Sunday school children's church so that they have more. So somebody right now is listening, and they are like a Sunday school teacher.

Right, and you know, most churches, they have a handful of people who are just getting burnt out reaching the kids. And so what we want to do is help them get more people trained so that they have more people who are confident and competent, and they can share the gospel clearly with children, they know how to teach a lesson, teach a verse, music, and so on. And then when that church has a good solid group of strong children's workers and trained people, then they can adopt a school and sponsor a Good News Club in that school and have a community outreach to that school. And we want them to love on the schools. Anyway, a lot of churches have a school that they've adopted, you know, they might go in and do a backpack thing or paint the school or love on the teachers or something like that.

So they already have that relationship, so starting a Good News Club is a really good next step. And when those kids get excited about Jesus, and they start making their parents think, you know, church, where do you think they're going to go? You know, they're going to go to the church that their Good News Club teacher goes to. That is so awesome.

That is so awesome. And I think that, you know, the churches and that combination, you know, you're using folks to disciple, right, in the exact roles that they've been called to, and what a resource. Well, and, you know, because the Good News Club meets almost every week, there's discipleship happening. This is not a one and done thing or a five day thing, you know, or a BBS where kids might come in and they might raise their hand. How many times have you met someone that said, oh, you know, when I was a kid, I raised my hand to BBS and it didn't work.

And you're like, it didn't work? Well, you need to keep coming to church, you know, you need to be in the Word, you need to be discipled. So we want to see if, number one, we evangelize the kids. Number two, we disciple them through the weekly program. But number three, we want to establish them in a local Bible-believing church so that they can grow in their faith. In a community, right? Because you're around, if you're all by yourself out there as a child and you're the only one that isn't doing all that stuff, you know, but if you've got six or seven good friends from Sunday school, which is really what happened in my own daughter's case, she never could connect the kids in her school, but she connected so well with the youth group at church that that was her community. And it actually went up even when she picked her roommate for college, they both went off to Alabama.

We lived in North Carolina. And her friend from youth group and her shared a room all the way through college and even after they graduated now. And what a support, you know, having that community. Absolutely. Well, the Bible says that a cord of three strands will not be broken, and so what I encourage kids to have is to have three friends that will hold each other accountable and say, are you having your devotions, you know, and are you standing up for what you believe and talking about, you know, what you believe and making sure that they stick together, that they're loyal to each other, because, yeah, kids can be... So, you know, that idea of the Good News Club is so much, again, genius from my perspective. It's genius because if we could give this, you know, these kids a community of friends, you know, in that age, in a lot of situations, they're much more affected by their peer group than they are by their parents. Right.

And they've got to have at least one other. So I work at the international headquarters, which is an hour west of St. Louis, and so I just have the wonderful privilege of meeting a lot of missionaries that are coming through and a lot of workers from around the world, around the country. And so a couple weeks ago, I was visiting with a couple that are missionaries to Thailand, and they told a story about these children who came to Christ in their Good News Club, and as they walked into school, they decided not to bow to the Buddha statue anymore. And the principal was watching the kids file in.

And I guess they have a morning assembly or something. So she called these two children up onto the platform and said, Why did you not bow to Buddha when you came in? And they were just shaking in fear. But they witnessed to the entire school body that they now follow Jesus and waited for the repercussions. And the principal said, Well, that's really great that you're standing up for what you believe in. You don't have to bow to the Buddha anymore when you come in. So that kind of gave them permission to not be harassed by their classmates after that.

But such boldness. But can you imagine if there was just one of them? But since two of them walked in together and said, Let's not do this.

And then they walked up to the stage together. That's what kids need. Maybe at least one or two others is great. That's powerful. That's absolutely amazing. Really? I mean, you get a chance to see stuff like that internationally. Yeah. Right? It's duplicated, replicated all over the world.

And so, wow, again, Lydia Kaiser. So how would you tell people and discriminate? You don't deal with Methodists, do you? Because they're united from what I heard. We are non-denominational.

We work with any church that agrees with our simple statement of faith. And if people want to read some of these fantastic stories, like I just told you, they can get either a digital or a print-free Impact magazine. They can go to our website, cefonline.com slash impact, and sign up to either get the printed copy or the digital copy. And it's beautiful. And each copy has stories from each of the regions of the world, as well as the U.S. Say that website one more time. Cefonline.com is the main website. And there you can find out about Good News Club, or Five Day Club, or CYA, Christian Youth in Action.

But then if you add a slash impact, you can sign up for the magazine. So awesome. Thank you so much. God bless you. I appreciate so much what you're doing. Thank you. Thanks for having me, Robbie. God bless you. Have a great day.