The children are our future. Teach them well and let them lead the way.
Remember that song from the 1980s? It is called “The Greatest Love of All.” And what greater love is there than God’s love for the children? 
The chorus in that song goes “the greatest love of all Is happening to me. I found the greatest love of all inside of me.”
While serving as a Presbyterian Young Adult Volunteer, Cherokee Adams experienced the greatest love of all. She said that during her service, “the Holy Spirit took me and changed me in ways I wasn’t expecting.” Now Cherokee hopes to go to seminary and be a pastor. She wants to share the greatest love of all, God’s love, as it was shared with her, with as many people as she can touch.
It is so important that we support young people like Cherokee because a foundation of faith established during childhood through young adulthood helps ensure lifelong faith and service. The programs we support through the Pentecost Offering helps our youth — church of the future — to embrace the true meaning of God’s love in their own lives. Perhaps Kylie, a young woman from South Dakota, said it best when recalling her own experience at the Presbyterian Youth Triennium. 
“Before confirmation, it was like you went to church because your parents did, but now we have a more personal connection with faith,” she explained. “Then we went to Triennium, it became even more personal. It was amazing to see all the people who were there sharing the same faith as I did and felt the same way about it as I did.”
The Pentecost Offering is also dedicated to helping children at-risk. One such program is Rising TIDE, an after-school ministry of Covenant Presbyterian Church in Long Beach, California.
“Those who come from helpful and supportive families experience the Rising TIDE family as a supplementary family,” says Rev. Rob Langworthy, who co-founded Rising TIDE with his wife, Rev. Adele Langworthy. “Others who don’t have that kind of family at home find Rising TIDE as their source of support and inspiration and guidance and encouragement.” 
And forty percent of the Pentecost Offering stays in congregations so they can provide support, inspiration, guidance and encouragement as well to young people in their own communities.
Bottom line, through your gifts to the Pentecost Offering we are sharing the greatest love of all—God’s love. And what better gift could we possibly give our children than the gift of faith, and love, to last a lifetime?
Let us pray
God of love, draw us together in your Holy Spirit with all your children. May we shape the next generation even as we are shaped by them, and transform each of us through the power of your love. Amen.
Join us
For more information and resources related to the Pentecost offering, visit presbyterianmission.org/pentecost.
This post is based on the Minute for Mission script which can be found on our website as a script.
Please give generously to the Offering:
- Through your congregation
- Text YOUNG to 20222 to give $10
- Donate online