Yesterday we spotlighted Prodip Karmakar, the National Director for Awana in Bangladesh. In his ministry, he reaches children and their families in a colony of lepers. Many of us may sit back and say “wow, that’s great”, but I want to ask you, are you reaching the “lepers” in your community?
They may be the special needs child, the “trouble” child, the child who doesn’t have great social skills, it may just be any child in the community. Sometimes we get so comfortable with the “well-behaved” “church kids”, and parents sometimes want to isolate their children from “bad influences”, that when an “unchurched” child from the neighborhood arrives, they are immediate an outcast, a leper, because they do not fit into the “mold” we have made for the “church” kids. It is as if we are treating them as lepers, as “unclean”, and avoiding them. Think about that… they really are “unclean” because they have not been “washed in the Blood” – but should we avoid them? Don’t we want them to “be clean” and to know Jesus?
This summer, as you evaluate your ministry, what can you do better to reach out to the “lepers” in your community?
