-Bible: And the child grew and became strong; he was filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon him. (Luke 3:40)

-Title: What can we leave to our next generation as an inheritance?

Upper St. Croix parish had the 2017 VBS Camp in Burnett County Lake from Aug 8th to 10th. 26 children and youths and 8 teachers and volunteers participated in this year’s parish VBS. There was lots of joy, activities, meaningful crafts, Christian messages and delicious food. I want to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to all the teachers and volunteers including Kim Wheeler who is the director of VBS and the entire church family of Upper St. Croix Parish who supported this event through prayers and material.

You may remember that I had three important prayer requests, 1. safety, 2. spiritual growth 3 good weather for the VBS.

Because of your strong prayers, we never had any safety accidents during VBS. Also, many of our kids shared our worship with meaningful crafts, which connected to the main theme of giving some chance to grow their faith and think deeply about the Creation of God. I am convinced that they grew their faith spiritually in all parts of VBS. We had some heavy rain during the evening and night of the second day of VBS, but it didn’t affect our evening programs and sleep so we finished very well our VBS following our original schedule.

As Christians, we have the duty to raise and nurture our next generation with faith like Jesus did in Luke 3. Unfortunately, almost all churches in America are losing some attendance of Sunday School kids, youths and young family in the church. Some church members may think that we don’t have a hope for growing because we don’t have many children and youths.

However, better late than never is also true. We still don’t have many children and youths as compared with our past, but we have some positive signs last and this year like the parish youth group, Atlas Fun Sunday, parish VBS, Sunday School at each church, etc.

When I asked our confirmands on Confirmation Sunday this year in June, “Your role is to support the church not only spiritually but also physically, especially being presence continually,” all of our confirmands promised that they would try to do it as continually as they can as official church members.

What is our role? What can we leave our next generation as their church family? Our role is to raise them to become strong, to nurture them to be filled with wisdom, and to lead them to the grace of God’s will upon them. Put Christian faith to them as the Christian inheritance.

In addition, we need to maintain and grow our church when they visit again with their children. It is our best Christian inheritance to our next generation. Keep maintaining their spiritual home as the Christian inheritance.

Again, thanks for your tremendous support and strong prayers for 2017 Parish VBS. Please, keep praying and supporting our next generation and let’s work together to leave good Christian inheritances to them.

-Rev. Kookho Kim

Posted in From The Pastors