The Fertile Soil of God’s Generational Harvest

By Family Evangelist Frank King

But rise and stand on your feet; for I have appeared to you for this purpose, to make you a minister and a witness both of the things which you have seen and of the things which I will yet reveal to you – Acts 26:16

It started when a nine-year-old prayed at the altar. Nobody else knelt to pray with him, so I did. He told me of his struggles trying to serve God in a school full of non-Christians, with no special teaching and with parents at home who fought all the time.

After several meetings with Pastor Warner (in which I encouraged him to start a children’s ministry), and after a conversation with Pastor Mitchell, I finally listened to God as He dealt with my own heart, and made plans to start it myself.

Next Generation Ministries (NGM) began in 1979 as a Sunday morning children's church service for kids ages 4-12. We met in the living room of a small duplex apartment across the parking lot from The Door Church on Veteran's Boulevard in Tucson, Arizona.

Attending the first meeting were four adults: Frank and Susan King and Herb and Cheryon Unruh – and approximately 12 children. Our supplies consisted of various finger puppets constructed from doll parts, a puppet stage made from an old converted bamboo bar, and a good deal of imagination.

Sought

Sermons were a little different in NGM. We quickly discovered that you cannot preach 1-hour 3-point sermons to 6-year-old children. So, we broke our sermons down into 5-minute segments and delivered them in a variety show format. We took a little story, added in some songs and a puppet skit or directed kid skits, based it all in Scripture – mixed in lots of love and patience, and NGM had its beginning.

Saved

Kids began responding to the Gospel message. They answered altar calls and asked for prayer. They made a stand for Jesus. We began to realize that the issue of confused messages was ubiquitous. Our personal prayer lists grew, as did the number of kids who prayed.

Discipled

New “puppets” followed the finger puppets. These were made of styrofoam balls covered with nylon stockings, with mouths cut and hinged in them. Sally, the first of these puppets, appeared one summer day in 1979 and asked the kids what they were doing there. The kids told her about Jesus and led her to the Lord.

This may have been the first time they led someone to the Lord, but not the last, for some of those first dozen kids are now married with kids of their own, and several of those who followed them are now pastors and pastors’ wives.

We outgrew the living room, so we began to meet in the “old” building on Veterans Blvd. Then, as the church grew, we moved with her from building to hotel to high school, and at last into the Fellowship Hall at 2950 E. Irvington... until 2021 brought us into our very own Children’s Wing in all of Building 1.

Sent

Kids began to “go into the world.” They lived out the lessons they had learned. They became ministers and witnesses. First as missionaries to their schools, then to the nations where their parents pioneered, then as pastors and pastor’s wives themselves. Those first dozen children are all grown now. Some are married, and their children and grandchildren are our second and third generation of NGM; others are in college or the workforce.

The adult workers, thank God, have not grown up, and all four are still involved in ministry. Dozens of other adults (not to mention dozens of teen helpers) are now involved in Next Generation Ministries, and we daily minister through the various gifts with which God has blessed us.

Epilogue

As the years pass, I am more aware that I wasn’t saved for me, but for the Church, and for my children, and for the children of all the saints. The next generation were known to God “in their mother’s womb.” He sought, saved and sent them to the nations, and every children’s worker is humbled and amazed at what The Lord has done.

“Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you; before you were born, I sanctified you; I ordained you a prophet to the nations” (Jeremiah 1:5).