The 2016 edition of the Jesus Kids Rally, organised by the International Central Gospel Church (ICGC), Horeb Temple at Weija, Accra, witnessed its highest turnout ever, on Monday (Boxing Day) December 26, 2016.
Hundreds of excited and enthusiastic children between the ages of 2-17 years, were taught the word of God, fed and taken through several games at the 3rd edition of the event.
The rally, which is in its third year, is held every last Saturday of December.
This year’s event attracted over 1, 500 kids, as against the 2015 figure of eight hundred and thirteen (813) children.
With 130 volunteers for the 2016 edition, majority of the children, assembled from the community to join the kids of the church, were adequately fed, taught the word of God, as the messages focused on the birth of Jesus Christ.
They were taking through a time of praises, praise and worship, as they also memorized some Bible verses, and performed the ‘junko’ dance – a choreographic performance made out of Biblical stories.
The kids were also presented with Christmas hats, cards, T-shirts, toffees and other gifts.
They were later engaged in several fun games such as football, swimming, basketball, volley-ball, face painting, skipping rope, seesaw, bouncy castle and trampoline amongst others.
A Pastoral Assistant at the Horeb Temple ICGC, Gilbert Quarcoopome, told citifmonline.com that the church uses the event as an evangelism tool to reach out to the children in the community and draw them to Christ.
According to him, this year’s event was an improvement over the previous years in terms of numbers. He said there were children who came from other parts of Accra to participate.
“Our first target was to bring Christ to the community through this programme. We targeted about 1,500 and indeed we had over 1,500 coming and they were all fed, they had gifts and they’ve had a lot of fun; and I think they have enjoyed themselves. We’ve given them the word of God; they memorized Bible verses, and they’ve had a lot of fun with the word of God; and I believe that they are not going home the same as they came.”
He said the next event in 2017, will target over 2,000 kids.
He also expressed the hope that the event will grow to become a larger national event that will reach out to many more kids in the years to come.
“Moving forward next year, we hope to make this bigger and much better; by targeting over 2000 kids. This year we were blessed from having kids from Laterbiokoshie who came from a different church; and that tells us that this is a tool that can be used to win souls for the Kingdom of God.”
He explained that children are important to the Kingdom of God and to nation building, explaining that children form the next generation, and hence efforts must be made to hone their skills and talent, whiles giving them the platform to express themselves and be confident.
“This is so important because you remember that when children were coming to Jesus they were turning them away, but Jesus stopped that from happening. Children are so important and I keep saying that children are the next generation; we because they are the next generation, we need to give them all the necessary skills and empowerment for them to takeover this nation and the kingdom of God to the next level so it’s very important. And in our culture, children aren’t supposed to be heard, they are not given the platform of expression; and this offers them that platform to express themselves, learn the word of God and have fun.”
The Pastoral Assistant urged churches to focus more on nurturing Children in God’s word in order to bring out a new generation of morally upright youth to save the country from corruption and other ills that threaten its development.
According to him, that is the only way to get Ghana on track since the current generation have become adamant to transformation. He says the nation faces a huge risk if much focus is not paid to the right upbringing of children.
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(Via: CitiFM Online Ghana)
