Along the Kenyan Coast Children are an endangered species. This is due to the early tourism exposure along the beaches amongst other causes. These have led to child prostitution, school dropping and later to drug addiction amidst other social problems. To combat this trend, the Kenyan government and the Nongovernmental organizations have laid down local strategies and significant results are being felt.

However amidst many other factors the church institution must be brought aboard. Through the church long term and life time results can be achieved, by transforming and reforming not only the child but the family institution as well.

The church therefore, whether deliberate or otherwise cannot sit and watch from the side shows, as that will be an indicator that the church may not be aware of  the in-depth of the issues facing our children. I tried to address part of this complex issue on 11/6/2011 during my Key note address at the Sai Rock Hotel during a Parents and Teachers Retreat organized by C.E.F Mombasa office.

One of the initiatives which C.E.F (Child Evangelism Fellowship) has set up is a program by the name CBS (Children Bible School), they launched this program a few years ago and are appealing to the churches around to adopt it. It is structured in a way that it brings both parents and teachers aboard as equal partners towards reaching the child.

The equilibrity of this program is solidly on both parties agreeing to work together at the local church level to initiate a conducive learning environment for the child in the church and at home.

In our gathering today, I drew the child as the common denominator between parents and the teachers. This called for an understanding of who the child is? Drawing my devotional thought from both Psalm 127:3-5 and Malachi 4:4:6. The following lessons were reached:

I. That Children are given by God and as such we cannot handle them effectively without consulting with the gift giver. This can be done by employing spiritual disciples in reference to God’s word.

II. That like an arrow children have targeted purpose in life which the teacher and the parent must aim at, the purpose is within God’s perfect will for every child.

III. That Children can produce great works for God, in the family, church and society, when an arrow hits its target an outcome is expected.

III. That children need to be straightened and sharpened by both parents and teachers. This can be done through usage of available resources, tools, personnel etc. and programs such as CBS.

A Call to Task: I challenge the church along the Kenyan coast and elsewhere to awaken to this reality and partner with C.E.F through her CBS program which is already yielding much fruit within 90 local churches.  We already know how much effort the Muslim fraternity is engaged towards Islamizing our local schools, we also know the dangers we are exposed to through recruitment of some of our youth’s to Al Shabab amongst other vigilantes.

We must sow the seed (The Word) in the fertile grounds. These grounds are our children. If the future generation is to have a church along our Kenyan coast, then we must secure our children in Christ through the programs we have at hand. Failure to this we risk going the way of Northern Africa which once was a Christian region. Today the church is claiming that region through prayers and persecution.