Evangelicals and Catholics together.

I got this link from a friend of mine who told me to check it out. And I´m just stunned over what it says. The following post is a summary of an article called "Let the Little Children Come To Me" (Bruce Hindmarsh), posted in Christianity Today, and it just reminds me, once again, what are we doing!? What are we making Christianity into? Where did we lose the point? This is just a reminder of the future; That it starts with today.

The revival in central Europe began when school-age children of Protestant parents were not willing, like their elders, to be silenced and marginalized by their Catholic rulers. The children at Sprottau (near Glogau) began to meet in the open fields outside the town at daybreak and two or three more times a day. They would form a circle and pray—sometimes lying prostrate—and then sing Lutheran hymns, read Psalms and devotional texts, and close with a blessing. One Protestant father was so worried about the children doing this in defiance of the authorities that he tried to lock his son and daughter in their bedrooms. When he heard that they were going to climb out the window, he relented and let them go.

Soon the adults were gathering and forming a circle around the children. As the children sang and prayed, the adults wept. In several towns, as many as 300 children gathered. Later, one observer reported a thousand. The magistrates issued orders to desist, but the children wouldn't stop. At Frideberg, the hangman was sent with a whip to disperse the children who were meeting in the marketplace, but when he saw them at their prayers, he couldn't do it. At Breslau, some of the Roman Catholic children joined the Lutheran children, despite strict orders from the magistrates for parents to keep their children at home. And still thousands looked on. Evangelicals and Catholics together.

Roman Catholic theologians speak of religious orders forming around a founding charism—a particular grace given by the Holy Spirit to equip that religious group to serve the church in a unique way. Was there a founding charism in the rise of evangelical Christianity in the 18th century? Though many features of evangelical renewal could be identified, the story I've been telling here certainly reminds us of one important characteristic: that young people are the life of the church.

Since at least the 1930s, the evangelical movement in America has shown tremendous energy for youth work and student organizations. This shows no signs of changing anytime soon. And wherever the church is growing most rapidly around the world today, evangelical forms of Christianity are again taking root among the rising generation. As Philip Jenkins has pointed out to us, half the world's population is under 24 years old, and 90% of these young people live in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. If the church is to thrive in the 21st century, it will have to thrive as a young people's movement—just as it did at Northampton in Massachusetts and at Teschen in Silesia at the beginning of modern evangelicalism.

PS: Rebels with a cause ;)