During the first week end in December 2009 the Adventist Church in the Euro-Africa region started a program that offers a unique opportunity to parents who wants to pass on their children Christian values. The program knew as Kids in Discipleship (K.I.D) helps primarily parents to live out every day a personal, practical, meaningful, and fruitful relationship with Jesus Christ, and equips them to teach their children to do the same.
Most parents today don’t have a problem spending time with their kids when it comes to sports, homework, and other daily routines, but they find problems once they have to connect spiritually with their kids. When it comes to faith and spirituality, many parents don’t know where to start or how to do it.
K.I.D. is a ministry that both calls parents back to their children and equips them on how they can disciple their children to Jesus Christ and build faith in the home. The K.I.D Program is based on the Biblical principle stated in Deuteronomy 6: 4-7: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.”
K.I.D Ministry was developed in 2002 by Pastor Don MacLafferty at the Collegedale Seventh-day Adventist Church in Collegedale, Tennessee. Gradually it was used by the Adventist Church in North America and worldwide. Since then, the Kids In Discipleship Ministry has grown tremendously. It is now represented in 9 out 13 Seventh-day Adventist world regions and has trained more than 250 church teams worldwide.
The program seeks to equip church congregations, parents, and key mentors to implement the biblical model of discipleship that will help foster a family’s ability to use their gifts for worship, ministry, and mission. Through interactive small groups using K.I.D.’s Footprints curricula, families learn to reconnect spiritually each other and build a strong personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
As explains Elsa Cozzi, Children Ministries Director and Director of the K.I.D Ministry in the Euro-Africa region: “I am glad that at the beginning of this December we were able to launch our first training for trainers and also our first practical schooling for local churches, which will help them to implement the program. This training program for local congregations is called K.I.D. University. We were happy to have as participants teams from Austria, Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Romania and Switzerland.
The first K.I.D. University Training event in the Euro-Africa region took place in Portugal because Portugal already started the ministry at the beginning of 2009, with the Setubal local congregation as a ‘pilot church’. It has been really inspiring for all 60 participants to see how Setubal church families are living this ‘new’ experience.”
Some participants expressed their impressions: “Very strong and meaningful time…Wonderful to see the effects on the families…The Holy Spirit was visible…Moving and motivating”
As one of them said: “I’m sure that K.I.D. Program is a real blessing for our churches and families as well as for me personally. It will help me and my church to come across a spiritual renewal. Mostly, I hope that children in my church may meet Jesus as Savior, personally and permanently”
Cozzi also said: “I will be more than happy to help other EUD territories to learn more about this program, to help them preparing the trainers’ teams, receiving material and tools they need to start the K.I.D in local churches. I am persuaded that this program has an enormous potential and is the answer to many of our questions, worries and problems as parents and spiritual mentors of children. K.I.D is an unique chance and a blessful opportunity for our families and our local congregations.”
Mission of the K.I.D Program is to “mentor children to be empowered disciples of Jesus, NOW!” and it has a systematic approach of creating relationships, to help implement discipleship principles that will build a child’s faith to become a lifestyle.
To learn more about the possibilities to implement K.I.D. Program in the Euro-Africa region, contact Elsa Cozzi. To learn more about the program, visit the K.I.D web site.