Christian Education Ministry for Children and Adolescents

Chile

The Pentecostal Church of Chile, a Global Ministries partner church for many years, has had great success with its just-concluded ten year plan for the development of its Christian Education Ministry for Children and Adolescents.  One testimony of the efficacy of this ministry was a story shared by three of the original committee members for the ministry.  In 2005 they visited a small church in Melipilla, near the capital city of Santiago.  The church had 25 participants and very few children.  The committee members encouraged the church to hold a vacation Bible school that summer, given that the children of the community had little to do over the summer school vacations.  The church brought together volunteers that included youth and adults from the church.  They received some training on working with children and began their task.  The theme was “Treasure Island” and they began to ask parents if they would allow their children to come to the VBS.  They registered over 60 children who participated for the five days.  Today the church in Melipilla not only has a Sunday school for children, it also has classes for youth and adults and has grown in membership and ministry.

With successes such as this, the Christian Education Ministry for Children and Adolescents proposes the following project for the next three years:

1. Increase by 24 the number of churches that hold Vacation Bible Schools by offering at least eight training workshops.
2. Offer local congregations, at their request, fund-raising training and assistance in order to secure funds available from municipality programs that fund educational efforts for children and adolescents.
3. The production of two new VBS curriculums and revision of the current material available to complete the ten year educational cycle.
4. Establish an information network on the ministry of VBS that will later be expanded to include the other components of the Christian education program.
5. Strengthen the Sunday school programs by promoting the use of the curriculum produced by the Christian Education Ministry for Children and Adolescents and other available didactic material already produced and a follow up system to track VBS participants and their families.
6. Collaborate with Shalom Center, the IPC’s rural camp and conference center, to coordinate and sponsor VBS at the Shalom Center.
7. Design and implement an evaluation event that will review the work of the Ministry every three years.
8. Organize and implement spiritual retreats at the Shalom Center for children of pastors and ministers.

Many of these items will happen concurrently with others, while others will take place in a systematic manner.  Expenses for the project include production of materials, workshop costs, travel costs to local congregations, and planning and training meetings.  IPC congregations will carry 20 percent of the total cost while IPC requests the remaining 80 percent from Global Ministries.