Football-kicking teens from a club in Agbodankope, Togo, West Africa recently found out that “leadership is not about position but about serving” enthused Eric, a children’s & sports ministry champion from Togo. For a week the teens were exposed to the gospel, shown the love of God and servant leadership. They were trained how to handle and obey the Bible and how to share the Gospel.
The camp was designed to prepare the teen leaders to serve a community and apply all that they had learnt. The result? They ran a KidsGames event for 300 children in their village, attended by the village chief and parents. Eric said, “it was (a) great success and opened (a way) for the Gospel in this village.”
Eric’s assistant head of the camp was Wisdom, a young man Eric has mentored since he was a teen. Now Wisdom initiates many such camps and gospel initiatives in villages across Togo.
Eric wrote: “the impact of the KidsHub leadership camp were many.
- Teens were convinced that there is a hope in Jesus.
- All 23 teens gave their lives to Jesus.
- They have confidence and are ready to serve their own community.”
Another outcome of the camp was 15 teens sought forgiveness from their parents during the camp recognising they had behaved badly towards them. Both parents and camp coaches were touched by their decision as a result of the training in the camp
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Another camp in a village called Sodo Zion saw 21 leaders from 3 different KidsHubs based in Lome come together to run a village outreach for 50 young people. Each morning Discovery Bible Studies were run and 150 adults and young people came from the Sodo Zion village to be part of it. The leaders encouraged the young people involved to be part of serving the old people of the village fetching water.
Eric said, “our young leaders experienced the joy of serving others. The village has also learned how they can involve the young people to be engaged in community transformation. We also ran KidsHub training to show how they could launch the next KidsHub in Sodo.”
Teen leaders are a powerful resource. Are you building up and equipping yours?