The Church and the Child A biblical /theological reflection
The Church and the Child A biblical /theological reflection By Vinay Samuel Introduction: Much has been said about the “ecclesial deficit” among evangelical, bible believing Christians. Evangelical commitment to evangelism, to leading individuals including children to a personal faith in the Lord Jesus is paramount. In the past forty years, there is also the focus among many committed to evangelism to move ahead and plant churches, that is, worshipping and fellowshipping congregations. However, the main goal of church planting is often described as reproducing more churches like themselves through evangelism. The planted churches are to be primarily evangelistic action groups drawing on a theological conviction that the more unbelievers are made believers the closer the parousia gets. A recent doctoral dissertation at the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies identified how the literature evangelism agency “Every Home Crusade” (EHC) was embarrassed by the spontaneous formation of bel...