Children's Cells

The greatest pitfall facing the Cell Church movement is our failure to form cells for children between the ages of 5 and 13. Our tendency is to develop home cells for young people and adults, relegating the children during cell meetings to baby sitters or viewing television.

George Barna states: "What you believe at age 13 is pretty much what you’re going to die believing." Research compiled by his Barna Group shows that children between the ages of 5 and 13 have a 32 percent probability of accepting Jesus Christ as their Savior. That likelihood drops to 4 percent for teenagers between the ages of 14 and 18, and ticks back up to 6 percent for adults older than 18.

I am an example. 79 years ago as a five-year old child, I accepted Jesus as my Lord sitting on my father’s lap. It has amazed me to meet Christian workers who think we do not need to focus on harvesting children.

A remnant when a traditional church transitions to a cell church is the retaining of children’s programs (Awana, for example). Programs are organizations, not an organism. An authentic ecclesia replaces programs with body life. It becomes the family of God, cherishing each child as a vital part of the community.

Children who become part of a cell with other children develop a bond that lasts for a lifetime. In our TOUCH FAMILY, formed in 2000, we blended children with parents in our home cells. When we gather for worship, these children treat each other as brothers and sisters. They have had years of sharing, praying, learning about their Bibles together and most of all they only know “church” in its cell/congregation format.

A cell church that does not blend its children into its home groups, ignoring them or causing them to be left out of the adult group, will produce unattached young adults who will not have cell life as a core value.

A memory I cherish from the 1990’s when Lorna Jenkins led our children’s cells attached to Faith Community Baptist Church is a cell group where a man in a wheel chair came for prayer. The adults prayed fervently for him, without any observable healing. The adults drifted into the kitchen for refreshments, leaving the man and an 8 year old girl behind. The child stared at the man and finally said, “Well, why don’t you get up and walk?” The Spirit of God fell on him at that moment and he rose up and walked into the kitchen. Astonished, the adults asked, “What happened?” “It was the little girl! She told me to walk.” When the adults queried the girl, she simply said, “Well, you all prayed for him. So I just told him to walk because he was healed.”

Childlike faith must be stimulated by mingling with all the aunties and uncles that compose a home group. Let’s include them, not isolate them!

THE MOUNTAIN OF MOSES

Greetings!

As we complete the fourth week of this amazing training event, I want to share some thoughts before I get back to the USA. You have no idea what the spiritual level is when you have 10,000 devoted people who are willing to spend an entire month of daily gatherings to focus on the kingdom of God. People came from many nations with the predominance being from the Ukraine. These are all Russian speaking people who have been victimized by communism and even today are considered to be a sect within their societies. One dear Pastor has spent four years in a Muslim prison for preaching the gospel, another elderly man spent 20 years in a Siberian prison camp. 

The issue that makes this community of Christians different is their awareness of the supernatural and that there is a radical difference between churchianity and true, authentic activities directed by the Holy Spirit. Because the history for 1000 years has been rooted in dead Russian orthodoxy smothered by communism, the past generations were worshipers of demonic powers. Witchcraft and curses and belief in horoscopes, etc., with unspeakable immorality and drunkenness are all generational curses. 

Most unique is the way this pastor came into the knowledge of God. After spending much of his teenage years in prison for stealing and selling drugs at the age of 20 he had destroyed his body and doctors sent him home to die. For the first time a Christian intercepted him, gave him the New Testament, and he was introduced to the God he had never known. Without knowing any believers he fasted and prayed and was instantly and miraculously completely healed. From the moment of his conversion he became a healer through a very simple method. In the gatherings, he says we will wait on the Holy Spirit to come and set you free from whatever bondage you have been living with. It is an amazing thing to see 10,000 people who are all in one accord, all having experienced deliverance of one sort or another, silently waiting for the Holy Spirit to fall upon the group. Yesterday afternoon we waited in unity together for an hour and when God began to work there were people healed and set free from demonic control. Only in the Ivory Coast have I seen such demonic manifestations! Those in the Western world have no idea of the way a possessed person is caused to scream when the demonic power fights to remain. I feel so sad that "moderate Christians" in America are limited in their understanding of what supernatural activities are in the heavenlies and the warfare of the battle we wage. Here it is not contrived but very real!

This Godly pastor amazes me. Pastor Vladimir has not built this ministry around himself. He is continually letting others he has mentored pray for the sick, preach, etc. He slips away for 3 days at a time to devote himself to prayer. One of the "experiences" of the Mountain of Moses he teaches is sacrificial giving to the Lord. He taught them to make a sacrificial gift to the Lord without even knowing what it would be used for! He told me privately, "we need to teach sacrificial giving! Not for causes, but unto the Lord." Last year the giving in the special offering was $225,000 and the total sum was sent intact to a church in Siberia, a cell church that was exploding and needed larger facilities. This year, the 10,000 people gave an offering of $325,000. Last night the Leadership Team designated the entire amount to be wire transferred to Yonggi Cho at Church Growth International for him to distribute as he saw fit! I was asked to make the contact since I have known Cho for years. When I contacted them they assumed this was another scam . . .who sends such an amount out of the blue?????

I am now waiting for wire transfer instructions!

I addressed about 2,500 Cell Leaders at 6 pm last night! I am now ready for heaven! What a joy to be with my brothers and sisters who together lead at least a quarter of a million Russians in weekly home groups!